Notre-Dame-du-Lac lakeside is where a journey through Loïc’s childhood region becomes both an intimate turning point and the setting for a crucial retelling of the family cameo’s history. On an inn balcony above Lake Témiscouata, the landscape connects Loïc and Laurence’s developing love with the Founder’s passage across the same lake and the mystery of his origins.

Setting and Visit

At the end of summer, Loïc takes Laurence to the Bas-Saint-Laurent to show her the country of his childhood. Their stay in Notre-Dame-du-Lac is described as a honeymoon before the fact: the journey confirms their love and draws them closer. The defining scene takes place on the balcony of their inn, with the lake illuminated by a full moon.

The Cameo’s History

The lakeside evening gives Loïc an occasion to tell Laurence about the family cameo, an enigma that had preoccupied him for nearly a year. He recounts how his cousin Régis D’Anjou found a Jesuit manuscript describing a young woman who froze to death while protecting a living infant, wrapping the child in her own clothing. A cameo was fastened to the baby’s swaddling clothes. The discovery, near St. Louis in late November 1842, fits the Founder’s age; a French-Canadian couple named D’Anjou, newly settled nearby and without children, adopted the child, who was baptized a few days later. A baptismal record among Loïc’s ancestor’s papers helped him trace the connection.

A Landscape of Origins

Laurence links the account to the place itself: Loïc’s great-grandfather crossed the lake from here to establish what would become Loïc’s home village, carrying the cameo with him. Loïc imagines that the object was kept close. The lakeside thus joins an ancestral route to the story of an infant’s rescue and adoption, while the conversation brings Laurence into an investigation that had previously occupied Loïc alone. When she asks who the dead young woman was and where she came from, the account has reached the limit of what the evidence presented at the inn can answer.