Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather — Read

On the last Friday of October Auclair went as usual to the market, held in front of Notre Dame de la Victoire, the only church in the Lower Town. All the trade in Quebec went on in the Lower Town, and the principal merchants lived on the market square. Their houses were built solidly around three sides of it, wall against wall, the shops on the ground floor, the dwelling-quarters upstairs. On the fourth side stood the church. The merchants' houses had formerly been of wood, but sixteen years ago, just after the Count de Frontenac was recalled to France, leaving Canada a prey to so many misfortunes, the Lower Town had been almost entirely wiped out by fire. It was rebuilt in stone, to prevent a second disaster. This square, which was the centre of commerce, now had a look of permanence and stability; houses with walls four feet thick, wide doorways, deep windows, steep, slated roofs and dormers. La Place, as it was called, was an uneven rectangle, cobble-paved, sloping downhill like everything else in Quebec, with gutters to carry off the rainfall. In the middle was a grass plot (pitifully small, indeed), protected by an iron fence and surmounted by a very ugly statue of King Louis.

On market days the space about this iron fence was considered the right of the countrywomen, who trudged into Quebec at dawn beside the dogs that drew their little two-wheeled carts. Against the fence they laid out their wares; white bodies of dressed ducks and chickens, sausages, fresh eggs, cheese, butter, and such vegetables as were in season. On the outer edge of the square the men stationed their carts, on which they displayed quarters of fresh pork, live chickens, maple sugar, spruce beer, Indian meal, feed for cows, and long black leaves of native tobacco tied in bunches. The fish and eel carts, because of their smell and slimy drip, had a corner of the square to themselves, just at the head of La Place Street. The fishmongers threw buckets of cold water over their wares at intervals, and usually a group of little boys played just below, building "beaver-dams" in the gutter to catch the overflow.