The most meagre intelligence came to me from the outer world. I
no longer saw Gabord; he had suddenly been with drawn and a new
jailer substituted, and the sentinels outside my door and beneath
the window of my cell refused all information. For months I had no
news whatever of Alixe or of those affairs nearest my heart. I
heard nothing of Doltaire, little of Bigot, and there was no sign
of Voban.
Sometimes I could see my new jailer studying me, if my plans were
a puzzle to his brain. At first he used regularly to try the bars
of the window, and search the wall as though he thought my devices
might be found there.
Scarrat and Flavelle, the guards at my door, set too high a
price on their favours, and they talked seldom, and then with
brutal jests and ribaldry, of matters in the town which were not
vital to me. Yet once or twice, from things they said, I came to
know that all was not well between Bigot and Doltaire on one hand,
and Doltaire and the Governor on the other. Doltaire had set the
Governor and the Intendant scheming against him because of his
adherence to the cause of neither, and his power to render the
plans of either of no avail when he chose, as in my case.
Vaudreuil's vanity was injured, and besides, he counted Doltaire
too strong a friend of Bigot. Bigot, I doubted not, found in Madame
Cournal's liking for Doltaire all sorts of things of which he never
would have dreamed; for there is no such potent devilry in this
world as the jealousy of such a sort of man over a woman whose
vanity and cupidity are the springs of her affections. Doltaire's
imprisonment in a room of the Intendance was not so mysterious as
suggestive. I foresaw a strife, a complication of intrigues, and
internal enmities which would be (as they were) the ruin of New
France. I saw, in imagination, the English army at the gates of
Quebec, and those who sat in the seats of the mighty, sworn to
personal enmities--Vaudreuil through vanity, Bigot through cupidity,
Doltaire by the innate malice of his nature--sacrificing the
country; the scarlet body of British power moving down upon a
dishonoured city, never to take its foot from that sword of France
which fell there on the soil of the New World.
But there was another factor in the situation which I have not
dwelt on before. Over a year earlier, when war was being carried
into Prussia by Austria and France, and against England, the ally
of Prussia, the French Minister of War, D'Argenson, had, by the
grace of La Pompadour, sent General the Marquis de Montcalm to
Canada, to protect the colony with a small army. From the first,
Montcalm, fiery, impetuous, and honourable, was at variance with
Vaudreuil, who, though honest himself, had never dared to make open
stand against Bigot. When Montcalm came, practically taking the
military command out of the hands of the Governor, Vaudreuil
developed a singular jealous spirit against the General. It began
to express itself about the time I was thrown into the citadel
dungeon, and I knew from what Alixe had told me, and from the
gossip of the soldiers, that there was a more open show of
disagreement now.
The Governor, seeing how ill it was to be at variance with both
Montcalm and Bigot, presently began to covet a reconciliation with
the latter. To this Bigot was by no means averse, for his own
position had danger. His followers and confederates, Cournal,
Marin, Cadet, and Rigaud, were robbing the King with a daring and
effrontery which must ultimately bring disaster. This he knew, but
it was his plan to hold on for a time longer, and then to retire
before the axe fell, with an immense fortune. Therefore, about the
time set for my execution, he began to close with the overtures of
the Governor, and presently the two formed a confederacy against the
Marquis de Montcalm. Into it they tried to draw Doltaire, and were
surprised to find that he stood them off as to anything more than
outward show of friendliness.
Truth was, Doltaire, who had no sordid feeling in him, loathed
alike the cupidity of Bigot and the incompetency of the Governor,
and respected Montcalm for his honour, and reproached him for his
rashness. From first to last, he was, without show of it, the best
friend Montcalm had in the province; and though he held aloof from
bringing punishment to Bigot, he despised him and his friends,
and was not slow to make that plain. D'Argenson made inquiry of
Doltaire when Montcalm's honest criticisms were sent to France in
cipher, and Doltaire returned the reply that Bigot was the only
man who could serve Canada efficiently in this crisis; that he had
abounding fertility of resource, a clear head, a strong will, and
great administrative faculty. This was all he would say, save that
when the war was over other matters might be conned. Meanwhile
France must pay liberally for the Intendant's services.
Through a friend in France, Bigot came to know that his affairs
were moving to a crisis, and saw that it would be wise to retire;
but he loved the very air of crisis, and Madame Cournal, anxious to
keep him in Canada, encouraged him in his natural feeling to stand
or fall with the colony. He never showed aught but a hold and
confident face to the public, and was in all regards the most
conspicuous figure in New France. When, two years before, Montcalm
took Oswego from the English, Bigot threw open his palace to the
populace for two days' feasting, and every night during the war he
entertained lavishly, though the people went hungry, and their own
corn, bought for the King, was sold back to them at famine prices.
As the Governor amid the Intendant grew together in friendship,
Vaudreuil sinking past disapproval in present selfish necessity,
they quietly combined against Doltaire as against Montcalm. Yet at
this very time Doltaire was living in the Intendance, and, as he
had told Alixe, not without some personal danger. He had before
been offered rooms at the Chateau St. Louis; but these he would
not take, for he could not bear to be within touch of the Governor's
vanity and timidity. He would of preference have stayed in the
Intendance had he known that pitfalls and traps were at every
footstep. Danger gave a piquancy to his existence. I think he did
not greatly value Madame Cournal's admiration of himself; but when
it drove Bigot to retaliation, his imagination got an impulse, and
he entered upon a conflict which ran parallel with the war, and
with that delicate antagonism which Alixe waged against him, long
undiscovered by himself.
At my wits' end for news, at last I begged my jailer to convey a
message for me to the Governor, asking that the barber be let
come to me. The next day an answer arrived in the person of Voban
himself, accompanied by the jailer. For a time there was little
speech between us, but as he tended me we talked. We could do
so with safety, for Voban knew English; and though he spoke it
brokenly, he had freedom in it, and the jailer knew no word of it.
At first the fellow blustered, but I waved him off. He was a man
of better education than Gabord, but of inferior judgment and
shrewdness. He made no trial thereafter to interrupt our talk, but
sat and drummed upon a stool with his keys, or loitered at the
window, or now and again thrust his hand into my pockets, as if
to see if weapons were concealed in them.
"Voban," said I, "what has happened since I saw you at the
Intendance? Tell me first of mademoiselle. You have nothing from
her for me?"
"Nothing," he answered. "There is no time. A soldier come an
hour ago with an order from the Governor, and I must go all at
once. So I come as you see. But as for the ma'm'selle, she is well.
Voila, there is no one like her in New France. I do not know
all, as you can guess, but they say she can do what she will at
the Chateau. It is a wonder to see her drive. A month ago, a
droll thing come to pass. She is driving on the ice with ma'm'selle
Lotbiniere and her brother Charles. M'sieu' Charles, he has
the reins. Soon, ver' quick, the horses start with all their might.
M'sieu' saw and pull, but they go the faster. Like that for a mile
or so; then ma'm'selle remember there is a great crack in the ice a
mile farther on, and beyond the ice is weak and rotten, for there
the curren' is ver' strongest. She see that M'sieu' Charles, he can
do nothing, so she reach and take the reins. The horses go on; it
make no diff'rence at first. But she begin to talk to them so sof',
and to pull ver' steady, and at last she get them shaping to the
shore. She have the reins wound on her hands, and people on the
shore, they watch. Little on little the horses pull up, and stop at
last not a hunder' feet from the great crack and the rotten ice.
Then she turn them round and drive them home.
"You should hear the people cheer as she drive up Mountain
Street. The bishop stand at the window of his palace and smile at
her as she pass, and m'sieu'"--he looked at the jailer and
paused--"m'sieu' the gentleman we do not love, he stand in the
street with his cap off for two minutes as she come, and after she
go by, and say a grand compliment to her, so that her face go pale.
He get froze ears for his pains--that was a cold day. Well, at night
there was a grand dinner at the Intendance, and afterwards a ball in
the splendid room which that man" (he meant Bigot: I shall use names
when quoting him further, that he may be better understood) "built
for the poor people of the land for to dance down their sorrows. So
you can guess I would be there--happy. Ah yes, so happy! I go and
stand in the great gallery above the hall of dance, with crowd of
people, and look down at the grand folk.
"One man come to me and say, 'Ah, Voban, is it you here? Who would
think it!'--like that. Another, he come and say, 'Voban, he can not
keep away from the Intendance. Who does he come to look for? But no,
SHE is not here--no.' And again, another, 'Why should not Voban be
here? One man has not enough bread to eat, and Bigot steals his
corn. Another hungers for a wife to sit by his fire, and Bigot takes
the maid, and Voban stuffs his mouth with humble pie like the rest.
Chut! shall not Bigot have his fill?' And yet another, and voila,
she was a woman, she say, 'Look at the Intendant down there with
madame. And M'sieu' Cournal, he also is there. What does M'sieu'
Cournal care? No, not at all. The rich man, what he care, if he has
gold? Virtue! ha, ha! what is that in your wife if you have gold for
it? Nothing. See his hand at the Intendant's arm. See how M'sieu'
Doltaire look at them, and then up here at us. What is it in his
mind, you think? Eh? You think he say to himself, A wife all to
himself is the poor man's one luxury? Eh? Ah, M'sieu' Doltaire, you
are right, you are right. You catch up my child from its basket in
the market-place one day, and you shake it ver' soft, an' you say,
"Madame, I will stake the last year of my life that I can put my
finger on the father of this child." And when I laugh in his face,
he say again, "And if he thought he wasn't its father, he would cut
out the liver of the other--eh?" And I laugh, and say, "My Jacques
would follow him to hell to do it." Then he say, Voban, he say to
me, "That is the difference between you and us. We only kill men who
meddle with our mistresses!" Ah, that M'sieu' Doltaire, he put a
louis in the hand of my babe, and he not even kiss me on the cheek.
Pshaw! Jacques would sell him fifty kisses for fifty louis. But sell
me, or a child of me? Well, Voban, you can guess! Pah, barber, if
you do not care what he did to the poor Mathilde, there are other
maids in St. Roch.'"
Voban paused a moment then added quietly, "How do you think I bear
it all? With a smile? No, I hear with my ears open and my heart
close tight. Do they think they can teach me? Do they guess I sit
down and hear all without a cry from my throat or a will in my body?
Ah, m'sieu' le Capitaine, it is you who know. You saw what I would
have go to do with M'sieu' Doltaire before the day of the Great
Birth. You saw if I am coward--if I not take the sword when it was
at my throat without a whine. No, m'sieu', I can wait. Then is a
time for everything. At first I am all in a muddle, I not how what
to do; but by-and-bye it all come to me, and you shall one day what
I wait for. Yes, you shall see. I look down on that people dancing
there, quiet and still, and I hear some laugh at me, and now and
then some one say a good word to me that make me shut my hands
tight, so the tears not come to my eyes. But I felt alone--so much
alone. The world does not want a sad man. In my shop I try to laugh
as of old, and I am not sour or heavy, but I can see men do not say
droll things to me as once back time. No, I am not as I was. What am
I to do? There is but one way. What is great to one man is not to
another. What kills the one does not kill the other. Take away from
some people one thing, and they will not care; from others that
same, and there is nothing to live for, except just to live, and
because a man does not like death."