"Strike them all dead, eh?" Lucien said as he got rid of another weed. "One fine day, my son, you will make your country a fine general."

"If the Republic of Quebec needs me as a general, it will be in a great deal of trouble," Georges said with conviction. He looked down at the ground. "Come on, you weeds-get out of the potato trenches and charge the machine guns! Die, and save me the trouble of grubbing you out." Beaming at Lucien, he went on, "Perhaps you have reason. I can talk like a general, n 'est-cepas?"

His father snorted. "As always, you are a nonpareil." He bent his back to the weeding, not wanting Georges to see any surprise on his face. He'd forgotten, as he sometimes could in the daily routine of farm life, that this was, and had been for the past year and more, the Republic of Quebec, dancing attendance on the United States, and not the province of Quebec, a French-speaking appendage to the British Empire.

He laughed-at himself, as he often did. He'd forgotten the American-fostered Republic of Queb ec, and that with an American son-in-law. There was absentmindedness worthy of a professor or a priest.

When he straightened again, he glanced over in the direction of the hospital the Americans had built on his land to care for their wounded from the fighting north of the St. Lawrence. The hospital remained, but no longer flew the Stars and Stripes. Instead, the Republic's flag (which had also been the provincial flag) floated above it: a field of blue quartered by a white cross, and in each quadrant a white fleur-de-lys. These days, the hospital drew its patients from the people of Quebec.

As the sun went down, he and Georges shouldered their hoes like rifles and trudged back toward the farmhouse. A Ford was parked by the house: not one in a coat of green-gray U.S. official paint, nor the Republic's equivalent blue-gray, but somber civilian black. Georges grinned when he saw it. "Ah, good," he said. "My sister is here for me to harass."

"Yes, and her husband is here to give you what you deserve for harassing her, too," Lucien replied, to which his son responded with a magnificent Gallic shrug.

Charles, Georges' older brother, came out of the barn just as Lucien and Georges headed toward it to hang the hoes on the rack Lucien's grandfather had built long years before. Charles looked like Lucien, but was more sobersided-he had to take after his mother there.

Marie greeted her husband and sons on the front porch, as much to make sure they wiped their feet as for any other reason. She was a small, dark, sensible woman, ideally suited to be a farm wife. Her younger daughters, Susanne, Denise, and Jeanne, who ranged in age from sixteen down to eleven, also came out. Susanne sixteen! Galtier shook his head. She had been a child when the war started. Seeing her ripening figure forcibly reminded him she was a child no longer.

Lucien waded through his younger daughters to give Nicole a hug. She looked very much the way Marie had as a young wife. She also looked happy, which made her father happy in turn. When she turned Lucien loose, he shook his son-in-law's hand. "And how does it march with you, the distinguished Dr. O'Doull?" he asked.

Dr. Leonard O'Doull looked back over his shoulder, as if to see whether Galtier were speaking to someone behind him. With a chuckle, he answered, "It marches well enough with me, mon beau-pere. And with you?"

"Oh, with me?" Galtier said lightly as he got out a jug of the applejack one of his neighbors-most unofficially-cooked up. "It is good of you to ask. It is good of you to deign to visit my home here, instead of returning to the palace in which you dwell in Riviere-du-Loup."

"Father!" Nicole said indignantly.

"Be calm, my sweet," Leonard O'Doull said, laughter in his green eyes. "He was trying to make you squeak, and he did it." He'd spoken French-Parisian French-before he came up to Quebec. He still spoke Parisian French, but now with a heavy Quebecois overlay. In another few years, he would probably sound like someone who'd grown up here.

Nicole sniffed. "I expected such behavior from my brother, not from my own dear papa." She laid the treacle on with a trowel. Her eyes glowed.

"Why?" Georges asked innocently. "What did you expect Charles to do?" That set Nicole to spluttering, Charles to glaring, and the young ladies of the family to chaffing both their brothers impartially.

In the midst of that racket, Lucien spoke more seriously to Dr. O'Doull: "It is always good to see you." He handed his son-in-law a glass of the apple brandy. "To your health."

"And to yours," O'Doull said. They drank. Galtier gasped a little as the applejack clawed its way down to his belly: this was a rougher batch than most his neighbor made. If it fazed Leonard O'Doull, he didn't let on. Irishmen were supposed to have well-tempered gullets, and he lived up to that. After another sip, he went on, "Nicole and I finished our work at about the same time, and we thought we would pay you a visit."

"You should have such thoughts more often," Galtier said, but then qualified that by adding, "Are you certain it has been good for Nicole to continue to work instead of keeping house full time?"

"She has become a good nurse," O'Doull answered, "and the hospital would be the poorer if it lost her. And she desires to work, and I, believe me, I am perfectly happy with the way she keeps house "

"So long as a man is happy, everything will march well," Lu-cien said gravely, and his son-in-law nodded. The farmer raised an eyebrow. "Is it for this reason-to boast of your happiness- that you do us the honor of this visit?"

"By no means." O'Doull could match Georges absurdity for absurdity and Lucien dry for dry. "It is because a little bird whispered in my ear that Nicole's mother was fixing a great stew of lapins auxpruneaux."

"Ah, is that the reason?" Lucien slowly nodded. "Very well. Very well indeed, in fact. The rabbits think I set the cabbages there for them to enjoy. I, on the other hand, think God put the rabbits there for me to enjoy. After you taste of the stew"- whose hot, meaty odor filled the farmhouse-"you will decide."

"Any rabbit who presumes to taste of your cabbages surely deserves to end up auxpruneaux" his son-in-law agreed with a face so perfectly straight that Galtier, well pleased, elbowed him in the ribs as if he were a son of his own flesh and poured him another glass of the homemade Calvados.

The meal was a great success. Afterwards, Nicole helped her mother and sisters with the dishes-with so many hands, the work could not help being light. O'Doull handed fragrant Ha-banas to Lucien and his sons and lit one for himself. Galtier savored the aroma before drawing the first sweet smoke from his own panatela. He whistled. "Tabernac," he said reverently.

"By the tobacco they grow there, Habana must be very close to Paradise."

"Closest part of the Confederate States, anyhow, not that that's saying much," Dr. O'Doull replied.

Charles said nothing, which was not surprising. Georges said nothing, which was an astonishment. Both young men puffed happy clouds. So did Lucien. He could not recall the last time he'd been more content, at least outside the marriage bed.

And then another astonishment took place: Nicole came out of the kitchen, followed by Marie and Susanne and Denise and Jeanne. Galtier did not find that an astonishment of the pleasant sort; custom was that the women let their menfolk linger over liquor and tobacco. He reckoned that a good custom, one in no need of breaking. "What's this?" he asked. "A parade?"

"No, cher papa, only something I have to tell you- something I have to tell everyone," Nicole said. "Everyone except Leonard, that is, for he knows." Even by the ruddy light of kerosene lamps, Lucien could see her blush. He knew then what was coming, knew it before she spoke: "Cherpapa, cher maman, you will be grandparents next year."