Claude Trépagny’s pursuit of Duquet

Claude Trépagny’s pursuit of Duquet is a failed attempt to reclaim a runaway employee that grows into a long-delayed vendetta and ends in Trépagny’s violent death. Set against Duquet’s ascent in the fur trade, the pursuit exposes the limits of seigneurial authority: Trépagny can invoke a contract and command Elphège, but he cannot make Duquet submit, and his own expedition disappears into the wilderness.

The provocation at Wobik

Duquet’s reputation reaches Trépagny through an account of his success in the fur country. He is described as clever, connected to influential men in the fur company, and willing to make side deals that let him keep marten pelts for himself. He also brings forbidden whiskey north and uses it to make Indigenous traders too drunk to secure favorable terms. Above all, he is said to be exceptionally strong and enduring. The account makes him a rising legend, but Trépagny hears it as a personal affront: this is the man who signed a three-year contract to work for him and then ran away.

Trépagny confronts the story’s tellers, demanding to know whether the celebrated Duquet is indeed the runaway who had called him cruel. Fernand confirms it. Trépagny answers that Duquet does not yet know how cruel he can be, declares that he will go to Wobik, and vows to make Duquet serve out the remaining three years. His language turns a labor claim into a contest of force and reputation; the contract supplies the stated grievance, while the threat of violence reveals how personally he has taken the escape.

Toussaint warns his brother that Duquet is dangerous and urges him to leave the matter alone. Trépagny treats the warning as disloyalty rather than prudence and orders Elphège to saddle his horse. The exchange establishes the pursuit’s central imbalance: Trépagny is determined to assert command, while those with knowledge of Duquet’s danger understand that the runaway is not an easy target.

The first pursuit fails

Trépagny’s haste does not give him the advantage. While he takes a few minutes to explain his abrupt departure to his new wife, Toussaint and Fernand steal his canoe and paddle downstream toward Wobik at a reported forty-five strokes a minute. Trépagny travels by horse and reaches the settlement only in the late afternoon. By then the brothers and Duquet have gone.

The abandoned canoe offers a parting taunt rather than a trail to follow: a marten pelt lies draped over its thwart as Duquet’s mocking signature. The image makes the failure legible. Trépagny arrives too late to enforce his claim, and the very pelts associated with Duquet’s profitable trade become the mark of the fugitive’s control over the encounter.

A vendetta renewed

The failed attempt does not end Trépagny’s fixation. Farther west, his household has become a source of discontent: he tires of his commanding wife’s repeated desire to return to Paris and begins cursing the world he has built. His attention shifts away from consolidating his family estate and toward vengeance. He says that, had Duquet been a gentleman, he would have tracked him down and challenged him to a duel; though much time has passed, he announces that he will resume the pursuit at the next full moon.

Trépagny orders Elphège to accompany him as his squire. The decision may also be driven by the prospect of a new road-building corvée called by Bouchard, an onerous obligation that even a man of Trépagny’s rank cannot evade. The narrative thus places the pursuit beside another demand on his authority: whatever his status, the road-building duty presses upon him, while the hunt for Duquet is a personal undertaking he chooses to revive.

Before leaving, Trépagny buries a small metal box beneath the front doorstep, muttering curses. A Spanish maid watches from an upstairs hall window. Trépagny and Elphège depart under the hard dot of the moon, and no word is heard of either man, Duquet, or the bearded brothers until the following spring. The departure closes the pursuit’s visible action without resolving its outcome, leaving the household to wait through an unexplained absence.

Elphège’s return and the hidden outcome

In spring, as snowmelt gathers around the trees and runs across the ground, a limping man enters the clearing. Mari recognizes Elphège and helps bring him inside. He is emaciated, covered in old cuts and bruises, and has a badly swollen right ankle. He cannot answer René’s questions about Trépagny. Mari tends him with a sleep potion, nourishing moose broth, and a poultice made from white cedar cones and fern root and leaf.

Elphège remains quiet and half-asleep for nine days before recovering strength. Within a month he is back in the woods chopping beside René, but he rarely smiles and keeps his eyes lowered. His return is therefore not a triumphant resolution of the pursuit: Trépagny is absent, Elphège bears its bodily cost, and the reason for his silence remains concealed for months.

Much later, Elphège finally tells René what happened. Iroquois women severed Trépagny’s leg tendons, sewed him up tightly, and closed the openings of his body. After two or three days he swelled and burst. Elphège asks René not to tell Mari because he believes she would suffer. René nevertheless thinks she would not suffer, yet cannot bring himself to describe Trépagny’s agonizing death to her. The pursuit’s ending is thus delivered not as a witnessed confrontation with Duquet but through Elphège’s delayed testimony, and its final consequence is a painful knowledge that René keeps from Mari.