The Count de la Galissonière, with a number of officers of rank in full
uniform, was slowly pacing up and down the long gallery that fronted
the Castle of St. Louis, waiting for the Council of War to open;
for although the hour had struck, the Intendant, and many other high
officials of the Colony, had not yet arrived from Beaumanoir.
The Castle of St. Louis, a massive structure of stone, with square
flanking towers, rose loftily from the brink of the precipice,
overlooking the narrow, tortuous streets of the lower town. The steeple
of the old Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, with its gilded vane, lay
far beneath the feet of the observer as he leaned over the balustrade of
iron that guarded the gallery of the Château.
A hum of voices and dense sounds rose up from the market of Notre Dame
and from the quay where ships and bateaux were moored. The cries of
sailors, carters, and habitans in thick medley floated up the steep
cliffs, pleasant sounds to the ear of the worthy Governor, who liked
the honest noises of industry and labor better than all the music of the
Academy.
A few merchantmen which had run the blockade of the English cruisers lay
at anchor in the stream, where the broad river swept majestically round
the lofty cape. In the midst of them a newly-arrived King's ship, the
Fleur-de-Lis, decorated with streamers, floated proudly, like a swan
among a flock of teal.
Le Gardeur, as an officer of the garrison, went to report himself to
the military commandant, while La Corne St. Luc and Colonel Philibert
proceeded to the gallery, where a crowd of officers were now assembled,
waiting for the Council.
The Governor at once called Philibert aside, and took his arm.
“Philibert,” said he, “I trust you had no difficulty in finding the
Intendant?”
“No difficulty whatever, your Excellency. I discovered the Intendant and
his friends by ear long before I got sight of them.” An equivocal smile
accompanied Philibert's words, which the Governor rightly interpreted.
“Ah! I understand, Philibert; they were carousing at that hour of
daylight? Were they all--? Faugh! I shame to speak the word. Was the
Intendant in a condition to comprehend my summons?” The Governor looked
sad, rather than surprised or angry, for he had expected no less than
Philibert had reported to him.
“I found him less intoxicated, I think, than many of his guests. He
received your message with more politeness than I expected, and promised
to be here punctually at the hour for opening the Council.”
“Oh, Bigot never lacks politeness, drunk or sober: that strong intellect
of his seems to defy the power of wine, as his heart is proof against
moral feeling. You did not prolong your stay in Beaumanoir, I fancy?”
remarked the Governor, dinting the point of his cane into the floor.
“I hastened out of it as I would out of hell itself! After making prize
of my friend De Repentigny and bringing him off with me, as I mentioned
to you, I got quickly out of the Château.”
“You did rightly, Philibert: the Intendant is ruining half the young men
of birth in the Colony.”
“He shall not ruin Le Gardeur if I can save him,” said Philibert,
resolutely. “May I count upon your Excellency's coöperation?” added he.
“Assuredly, Philibert! Command me in anything you can devise to rescue
that noble young fellow from the fatal companionship of Bigot. But I
know not how long I shall be permitted to remain in New France: powerful
intrigues are at work for my removal!” added the Governor. “I care not
for the removal, so that it be not accompanied with insult.”
“Ah! you have received news to-day by the frigate?” said Philibert,
looking down at the King's ship at anchor in the stream.
“News? Yes; and such news, Philibert!” replied the Governor in at one of
despondency. “It needs the wisdom of Solon to legislate for this land,
and a Hercules to cleanse its Augean stables of official corruption. But
my influence at Court is nil--you know that, Philibert!”
“But while you are Governor your advice ought to prevail with the King,”
replied Philibert.
“My advice prevail! Listen, Philibert: my letters to the King and the
Minister of Marine and Colonies have been answered by whom, think you?”
“Nay, I cannot conceive who, out of the legal channel, would dare to
reply to them.”
“No! no man could guess that my official despatches have been answered
by the Marquise de Pompadour! She replies to my despatches to my
sovereign!”
“La Pompadour!” exclaimed Philibert in a burst of indignation. “She,
the King's mistress, reply to your despatches! Has France come to be
governed by courtesans, like imperial Rome?”
“Yes! and you know the meaning of that insult, Philibert! They desire to
force me to resign, and I shall resign as soon as I see my friends safe.
I will serve the King in his fleet, but never more in a colony. This
poor land is doomed to fall into the hands of its enemies unless we get
a speedy peace. France will help us no more!”
“Don't say that, your Excellency! France will surely never be untrue
to her children in the New World! But our resources are not yet all
exhausted: we are not driven to the wall yet, your Excellency!”
“Almost, I assure you, Philibert! But we shall understand that better
after the Council.”
“What say the despatches touching the negotiations going on for peace?”
asked Philibert, who knew how true were the Governor's vaticinations.
“They speak favorably of peace, and I think, correctly, Philibert;
and you know the King's armies and the King's mistresses cannot all be
maintained at the same time--women or war, one or other must give way,
and one need not doubt which it will be, when the women rule Court and
camp in France at the same time!”
“To think that a woman picked out of the gutters of Paris should rule
France and answer your despatches!” said Philibert, angrily; “it is
enough to drive honorable Frenchmen mad. But what says the Marquise de
Pompadour?”
“She is especially severe upon my opposing the fiscal measures and
commercial policy, as she calls it, of her friend the Intendant! She
approves of his grant of a monopoly of trade to the Grand Company, and
disputes my right, as Governor, to interfere with the Intendant in the
finances of the Colony.”
Philibert felt deeply this wound to the honor and dignity of his chief.
He pressed his hand in warmest sympathy.
The Governor understood his feelings. “You are a true friend,
Philibert,” said he; “ten men like you might still save this Colony!
But it is past the hour for the Council, and still Bigot delays! He must
have forgotten my summons.”
“I think not; but he might have to wait until Cadet, Varin, Deschenaux,
and the rest of them were in a condition fit to travel,” answered
Philibert with an air of disgust.
“O Philibert! the shame of it! the shame of it! for such thieves to
have the right to sit among loyal, honorable men,” exclaimed, or rather
groaned, the Governor. “They have the real power in New France, and we
the empty title and the killing responsibility! Dine with me to-night
after the Council, Philibert: I have much to say to you.”
“Not to-night, your Excellency! My father has killed the fatted calf
for his returned prodigal, and I must dine with him to-night,” answered
Philibert.
“Right! Be it to-morrow then! Come on Wednesday,” replied the Governor.
“Your father is a gentleman who carries the principles of true nobility
into the walks of trade; you are happy in such a father, Philibert, as
he is fortunate in such a son.” The Governor bowed to his friend, and
rejoined the groups of officers upon the terrace.
A flash, and a column of smoke, white and sudden, rose from the great
battery that flanked the Château. It was the second signal for the
Council to commence. The Count de la Galissonière, taking the arm of
La Corne St. Luc, entered the Castle, and followed by the crowd of
officers, proceeded to the great Hall of Council and Audience. The
Governor, followed by his secretaries, walked forward to the vice-regal
chair, which stood on a daïs at the head of a long table covered with
crimson drapery. On each side of the table the members of the Council
took the places assigned to them in the order of their rank and
precedence, but a long array of chairs remained unoccupied. These seats,
belonging to the Royal Intendant and the other high officers of the
Colony who had not yet arrived to take their places in the Council,
stood empty.
The great hall of the Castle of St. Louis was palatial in its dimensions
and adornments. Its lofty coved ceiling rested on a cornice of rich
frieze of carved work, supported on polished pilasters of oak. The
panels of wainscoting upon the walls were surrounded by delicate
arabesques, and hung with paintings of historic interest--portraits of
the kings, governors, intendants, and ministers of state who had been
instrumental in the colonization of New France.
Over the Governor's seat hung a gorgeous escutcheon of the royal arms,
draped with a cluster of white flags sprinkled with golden lilies, the
emblems of French sovereignty in the Colony.
Among the portraits on the walls, besides those of the late and present
King,--which hung on each side of the throne,--might be seen the
features of Richelieu, who first organized the rude settlements on the
St. Lawrence into a body politic--a reflex of feudal France; and of
Colbert, who made available its natural wealth and resources by peopling
it with the best scions of the motherland, the noblesse and peasantry
of Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. There too might be seen the keen,
bold features of Cartier, the first discoverer, and of Champlain, the
first explorer of the new land and the founder of Quebec. The gallant,
restless Louis Buade de Frontenac was pictured there side by side with
his fair countess, called by reason of her surpassing loveliness
“the divine;” Vaudreuil too, who spent a long life of devotion to his
country, and Beauharnais, who nourished its young strength until it was
able to resist not only the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations
but the still more powerful league of New England and the other English
Colonies. There, also, were seen the sharp, intellectual face of Laval,
its first bishop, who organized the Church and education in the
Colony; and of Talon, wisest of intendants, who devoted himself to the
improvement of agriculture, the increase of trade, and the well-being
of all the King's subjects in New France. And one more striking
portrait was there, worthy to rank among the statesmen and rulers of
New France,--the pale, calm, intellectual features of Mère Marie de
l'Incarnation, the first superior of the Ursulines of Quebec, who, in
obedience to heavenly visions, as she believed, left France to found
schools for the children of the new colonists, and who taught her own
womanly graces to her own sex, who were destined to become the future
mothers of New France.
In marked contrast with the military uniforms of the officers
surrounding the council-table were the black robes and tonsured heads
of two or three ecclesiastics, who had been called in by the Governor
to aid the council with their knowledge and advice. There were the
Abbé Metavet, of the Algonquins of the North; Père Oubal, the Jesuit
missionary of the Abenaquais of the East, and his confrère, La
Richardie, from the wild tribes of the Far West; but conspicuous among
the able and influential missionaries who were the real rulers of the
Indian nations allied with France was the famous Sulpicien, Abbé Piquet,
“the King's missionary,” as he was styled in royal ordinances, and the
apostle to the Iroquois, whom he was laboring to convert and bring over
to the side of France in the great dispute raised between France and
England for supremacy in North America.
Upon the wall behind the vice-regal chair hung a great map, drawn by
the bold hand of Abbé Piquet, representing the claims as well as actual
possessions of France in America. A broad, red line, beginning in
Acadia, traversed the map westerly, taking in Lake Ontario and running
southerly along the crests and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains.
It was traced with a firm hand down to far-off Louisiana, claiming for
France the great valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the vast
territories watered by the Missouri and the Colorado--thus hemming the
English in between the walls of the Appalachian range on the west and
the seacoast on the east.
The Abbé Piquet had lately, in a canoe, descended the Belle Rivière,
as the voyageurs called the noble Ohio. From its source to its junction
with the solitary Mississippi the Abbé had planted upon its conspicuous
bluffs the ensigns of France, with tablets of lead bearing the
fleur-de-lis and the proud inscription, “Manibus date lilia
plenis,”--lilies destined, after a fierce struggle for empire, to be
trampled into the earth by the feet of the victorious English.
The Abbé, deeply impressed with the dangers that impended over the
Colony, labored zealously to unite the Indian nations in a general
alliance with France. He had already brought the powerful Algonquins
and Nipissings into his scheme, and planted them at Two Mountains as
a bulwark to protect the city of Ville Marie. He had created a great
schism in the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations by adroitly
fanning into a flame their jealousy of English encroachments upon their
ancient territory on Lake Ontario; and bands of Iroquois had, not long
since, held conference with the Governor of New France, denouncing the
English for disregarding their exclusive right to their own country.
“The lands we possess,” said they at a great council in Ville Marie,
“the lands we possess were given to us by the Master of Life, and we
acknowledge to hold of no other!”
The Abbé had now strong hopes of perfecting a scheme which he afterwards
accomplished. A powerful body of the Iroquois left their villages and
castles on the Mohawk and Genesee rivers, and under the guidance of the
Abbé settled round the new Fort of La Presentation on the St. Lawrence,
and thus barred that way, for the future, against the destructive
inroads of their countrymen who remained faithful to the English
alliance.
Pending the arrival of the Royal Intendant the members of the Council
indulged freely in conversation bearing more or less upon the important
matters to be discussed,--the state of the country, the movements of
the enemy, and not seldom intermingled remarks of dissatisfaction and
impatience at the absence of the Intendant.
The revel at Beaumanoir was well known to them; and eyes flashed
and lips curled in open scorn at the well-understood reason of the
Intendant's delay.
“My private letters by the Fleur-de-Lis,” remarked Beauharnais, “relate,
among other Court gossip, that orders will be sent out to stop the
defensive works at Quebec, and pull down what is built! They think
the cost of walls round our city can be better bestowed on political
favorites and certain high personages at Court.” Beauharnais turned
towards the Governor. “Has your Excellency heard aught of this?” asked
he.
“Yes! It is true enough, Beauharnais! I also have received
communications to that effect!” replied the Governor, with an effort at
calmness which ill-concealed the shame and disgust that filled his soul.
There was an indignant stir among the officers, and many lips seemed
trembling with speech. The impetuous Rigaud de Vaudreuil broke the
fierce silence. He struck his fist heavily on the table.
“Ordered us to stop the building of the walls of Quebec, and to pull
down what we have done by virtue of the King's corvée!--did I hear your
Excellency right?” repeated he in a tone of utmost incredulity. “The
King is surely mad to think of such a thing!”
“Yes, Rigaud! it is as I tell you; but we must respect the royal
command, and treat His Majesty's name as becomes loyal servants.”
“Ventre saint bleu!--heard ever Canadian or Frenchman such moonshine
madness! I repeat it, your Excellency--dismantle Quebec? How in God's
name are the King's dominions and the King's subjects to be defended?”
Rigaud got warmer. He was fearless, and would, as every one knew, have
out his say had the King been present in person. “Be assured, your
Excellency, it is not the King who orders that affront to his faithful
colony; it is the King's ministers--the King's mistresses--the
snuff-box-tapping courtiers at Versailles, who can spend the public
money in more elegant ways than in raising up walls round our brave old
city! Ancient honor and chivalry of France! what has become of you?”
Rigaud sat down angrily; the emotion he displayed was too much in accord
with the feelings of the gallant officers present to excite other
than marks of approbation, except among a few personal friends of the
Intendant, who took their cue from the avowed wishes of the Court.
“What reason does His Majesty give,” asked La Corne St. Luc, “for this
singular communication?”
“The only reason given is found in the concluding paragraph of the
despatch. I will allow the Secretary to read so much of it, and no more,
before the Intendant arrives.” The Governor looked up at the great clock
in the hall with a grim glance of impatience, as if mentally calling
down anything but a blessing upon the head of the loitering Intendant.
“The Count de le Galissonière ought to know,” said the despatch
sneeringly, “that works like those of Quebec are not to be undertaken
by the governors of colonies, except under express orders from the King;
and therefore it is His Majesty's desire that upon the reception of this
despatch your Excellency will discontinue the works that have been begun
upon Quebec. Extensive fortifications require strong garrisons for
their defence, and the King's treasury is already exhausted by the
extraordinary expenses of the war in Europe. It cannot at the same time
carry on the war in Europe and meet the heavy drafts made upon it from
North America.”
The Secretary folded the despatch, and sat down without altering a line
of his impassive face. Not so the majority of the officers round the
table: they were excited, and ready to spring up in their indignation.
The King's name restrained them all but Rigaud de Vaudreuil, who
impetuously burst out with an oath, exclaiming,--“They may as well sell
New France at once to the enemy, if we are not to defend Quebec! The
treasury wants money for the war in Europe forsooth! No doubt it wants
money for the war when so much is lavished upon the pimps, panders, and
harlots of the Court!”
The Governor rose suddenly, striking the table with his scabbard to stop
Rigaud in his rash and dangerous speech.
“Not a word more of comment, Chevalier Rigaud!” said he, with a sharp
imperative tone that cut short debate; “not another word! His Majesty's
name and those of his ministers must be spoken here respectfully, or not
at all! Sit down, Chevalier de Vaudreuil; you are inconsiderate.”
“I obey your Excellency--I am, I dare say, inconsiderate! but I am
right!” Rigaud's passion was subsiding, but not spent. He obeyed the
order, however. He had had his say, and flung himself heavily upon his
chair.
“The King's despatch demands respectful and loyal consideration,
remarked De Lery, a solid, grave officer of engineers, “and I doubt
not that upon a proper remonstrance from this council His Majesty will
graciously reconsider his order. The fall of Louisbourg is ominous of
the fall of Quebec. It is imperative to fortify the city in time to meet
the threatened invasion. The loss of Quebec would be the loss of the
Colony; and the loss of the Colony, the disgrace of France and the ruin
of our country.”
“I cordially agree with the Chevalier de Lery,” said La Corne St. Luc;
“he has spoken more sense than would be found in a shipload of such
despatches as that just read! Nay, your Excellency,” continued the old
officer, smiling, “I shall not affront my sovereign by believing that
so ill-timed a missive came from him! Depend upon it, His Majesty has
neither seen nor sanctioned it. It is the work of the minister and his
mistresses, not the King's.”
“La Corne! La Corne!” The Governor raised his finger with a warning
look. “We will not discuss the point further until we are favored
with the presence and opinion of the Intendant; he will surely be here
shortly!” At this moment a distant noise of shouting was heard in some
part of the city.
An officer of the day entered the hall in great haste, and whispered
something in the Governor's ear.
“A riot in the streets!” exclaimed the Governor. “The mob attacking the
Intendant! You do not say so! Captain Duval, turn out the whole guard
at once, and let Colonel St. Remy take the command and clear the way for
the Intendant, and also clear the streets of all disturbers.”
A number of officers sprang to their feet. “Keep seated, gentlemen! We
must not break up the Council,” said the Governor. “We are sure to
have the Intendant here in a few minutes and to learn the cause of this
uproar. It is some trifling affair of noisy habitans, I have no doubt.”
Another loud shout, or rather yell, made itself distinctly heard in the
council-chamber. “It is the people cheering the Intendant on his way
through the city!” remarked La Corne St. Luc, ironically. “Zounds! what
a vacarme they make! See what it is to be popular with the citizens of
Quebec!”
There was a smile all round the table at La Corne's sarcasm. It offended
a few friends of the Intendant, however.
“The Chevalier La Corne speaks boldly in the absence of the Intendant,”
said Colonel Leboeuf. “A gentleman would give a louis d'or any day to
buy a whip to lash the rabble sooner than a sou to win their applause! I
would not give a red herring for the good opinion of all Quebec!”
“They say in France, Colonel,” replied La Corne de St. Luc, scornfully,
“that 'King's chaff is better than other people's corn, and that fish in
the market is cheaper than fish in the sea!' I believe it, and can prove
it to any gentleman who maintains the contrary!”
There was a laugh at La Corne's allusion to the Marquise de Pompadour,
whose original name of Jeanne Poisson, gave rise to infinite jests and
sarcasms among the people of low and high degree.
Colonel Leboeuf, choleric as he was, refrained from pressing the quarrel
with La Corne St. Luc. He sat sulkily smothering his wrath--longing to
leave the hall and go to the relief of the Intendant, but kept against
his will by the command of the Governor.
The drums of the main guard beat the assembly. The clash of arms and
the tramp of many feet resounded from the court-yard of the Château. The
members of the Council looked out of the windows as the troops formed in
column, and headed by Colonel St. Remy, defiled out of the Castle gate,
the thunder of their drums drowning every other sound and making the
windows shake as they marched through the narrow streets to the scene of
disturbance.