The Treaty of Aix La Chapelle, so long tossed about on the waves of war,
was finally signed in the beginning of October. A swift-sailing goelette
of Dieppe brought the tidings to New France, and in the early nights
of November, from Quebec to Montreal. Bonfires on every headland blazed
over the broad river; churches were decorated with evergreens, and Te
Deums sung in gratitude for the return of peace and security to the
Colony.
New France came out of the struggle scathed and scorched as by fire,
but unshorn of territory or territorial rights; and the glad colonists
forgot and forgave the terrible sacrifices they had made in the
universal joy that their country, their religion, language, and laws
were still safe under the Crown of France, with the white banner still
floating over the Castle of St. Louis.
On the day after the arrival of the Dieppe goelette bringing the news of
peace, Bigot sat before his desk reading his despatches and letters from
France, when the Chevalier de Pean entered the room with a bundle of
papers in his hand, brought to the Palace by the chief clerk of the
Bourgeois Philibert, for the Intendant's signature.
The Bourgeois, in the course of his great commercial dealings, got
possession of innumerable orders upon the royal treasury, which in due
course had to be presented to the Intendant for his official signature.
The signing of these treasury orders in favor of the Bourgeois never
failed to throw Bigot into a fit of ill humor.
On the present occasion he sat down muttering ten thousand curses upon
the Bourgeois, as he glanced over the papers with knitted eyebrows and
teeth set hard together. He signed the mass of orders and drafts made
payable to Nicolas Philibert, and when done, threw into the fire the
pen which had performed so unwelcome an office. Bigot sent for the chief
clerk who had brought the bills and orders, and who waited for them in
the antechamber. “Tell your master, the Bourgeois,” said he, “that
for this time, and only to prevent loss to the foolish officers, the
Intendant has signed these army bills; but that if he purchase more, in
defiance of the sole right of the Grand Company, I shall not sign them.
This shall be the last time, tell him!”
The chief clerk, a sturdy, gray-haired Malouin, was nothing daunted by
the angry look of the Intendant. “I shall inform the Bourgeois of your
Excellency's wishes,” said he, “and--”
“Inform him of my commands!” exclaimed Bigot, sharply. “What! have
you more to say? But you would not be the chief clerk of the Bourgeois
without possessing a good stock of his insolence!”
“Pardon me, your Excellency!” replied the chief clerk, “I was only going
to observe that His Excellency the Governor and the Commander of the
Forces both have decided that the officers may transfer their warrants
to whomsoever they will.”
“You are a bold fellow, with your Breton speech; but by all the saints
in Saintonge, I will see whether the Royal Intendant or the Bourgeois
Philibert shall control this matter! And as for you--”
“Tut! cave canem! let this cur go back to his master,” interrupted
Cadet, amused at the coolness of the chief clerk. “Hark you, fellow!”
said he, “present my compliments--the Sieur Cadet's compliments--to your
master, and tell him I hope he will bring his next batch of army bills
himself, and remind him that it is soft falling at low tide out of the
windows of the Friponne.”
“I shall certainly advise my master not to come himself, Sieur Cadet,”
replied the chief clerk; “and I am very certain of returning in three
days with more army bills for the signature of his Excellency the
Intendant.”
“Get out, you fool!” shouted Cadet, laughing at what he regarded the
insolence of the clerk. “You are worthy of your master!” And Cadet
pushed him forcibly out of the door, and shut it after him with a bang
that resounded through the Palace.
“Don't be angry at him, Bigot, he is not worth it,” said Cadet. “'Like
master like man,' as the proverb says. And, after all, I doubt whether
the furred law-cats of the Parliament of Paris would not uphold the
Bourgeois in an appeal to them from the Golden Dog.”
Bigot was excessively irritated, for he was lawyer enough to know
that Cadet's fear was well founded. He walked up and down his cabinet,
venting curses upon the heads of the whole party of the Honnêtes Gens,
the Governor and Commander of the Forces included. The Marquise de
Pompadour, too, came in for a full share of his maledictions, for
Bigot knew that she had forced the signing of the treaty of Aix la
Chapelle,--influenced less by the exhaustion of France than by a
feminine dislike to camp life, which she had shared with the King, and a
resolution to withdraw him back to the gaieties of the capital, where he
would be wholly under her own eye and influence.
“She prefers love to honor, as all women do!” remarked Bigot; “and likes
money better than either. The Grand Company pays the fiddler for the
royal fêtes at Versailles, while the Bourgeois Philibert skims the cream
off the trade of the Colony. This peace will increase his power and make
his influence double what it is already!”
“Egad, Bigot!” replied Cadet, who sat near him smoking a large pipe of
tobacco, “you speak like a preacher in Lent. We have hitherto buttered
our bread on both sides, but the Company will soon, I fear, have no
bread to butter! I doubt we shall have to eat your decrees, which will
be the only things left in the possession of the Friponne.”
“My decrees have been hard to digest for some people who think they will
now eat us. Look at that pile of orders, Cadet, in favor of the Golden
Dog!”
The Intendant had long regarded with indignation the ever increasing
trade and influence of the Bourgeois Philibert, who had become the great
banker as well as the great merchant of the Colony, able to meet the
Grand Company itself upon its own ground, and fairly divide with it the
interior as well as the exterior commerce of the Colony.
“Where is this thing going to end?” exclaimed Bigot, sweeping from him
the pile of bills of exchange that lay upon the table. “That Philibert
is gaining ground upon us every day! He is now buying up army bills, and
even the King's officers are flocking to him with their certificates of
pay and drafts on France, which he cashes at half the discount charged
by the Company!”
“Give the cursed papers to the clerk and send him off, De Pean!” said
Bigot.
De Pean obeyed with a grimace, and returned.
“This thing must be stopped, and shall!” continued the Intendant,
savagely.
“That is true, your Excellency,” said De Pean. “And we have tried
vigorously to stop the evil, but so far in vain. The Governor and the
Honnêtes Gens, and too many of the officers themselves, countenance his
opposition to the Company. The Bourgeois draws a good bill upon Paris
and Bordeaux, and they are fast finding it out.”
“The Golden Dog is drawing half the money of the Colony into his
coffers, and he will blow up the credit of the Friponne some fine day
when we least expect it, unless he be chained up,” replied Bigot.
“'A méchant chien court lien,' says the proverb, and so say I,” replied
Cadet. “The Golden Dog has barked at us for a long time; par Dieu! he
bites now!--ere long he will gnaw our bones in reality, as he does in
effigy upon that cursed tablet in the Rue Buade.”
“Every dog has his day, and the Golden Dog has nearly had his, Cadet.
But what do you advise?” asked Bigot.
“Hang him up with a short rope and a shorter shrift, Bigot! You have
warrant enough if your Court friends are worth half a handful of chaff.”
“But they are not worth half a handful of chaff, Cadet. If I hung the
Bourgeois there would be such a cry raised among the Honnêtes Gens in
the Colony, and the whole tribe of Jansenists in France, that I doubt
whether even the power of the Marquise could sustain me.”
Cadet looked quietly truculent. He drew Bigot aside. “There are more
ways than one to choke a dog, Bigot,” said he. “You may put a tight
collar outside his throat, or a sweetened roll inside of it. Some course
must be found, and that promptly. We shall, before many days, have La
Corne St. Luc and young Philibert like a couple of staghounds in full
cry at our heels about that business at the Château. They must be thrown
off that scent, come what will, Bigot!”
The pressure of time and circumstance was drawing a narrower circle
around the Intendant. The advent of peace would, he believed, inaugurate
a personal war against himself. The murder of Caroline was a hard blow,
and the necessity of concealing it irritated him with a sense of fear
foreign to his character.
His suspicion of Angélique tormented him day and night. He had loved
Angélique in a sensual, admiring way, without one grain of real respect.
He worshipped her one moment as the Aphrodite of his fancy; he was ready
to strip and scourge her the next as the possible murderess of Caroline.
But Bigot had fettered himself with a lie, and had to hide his thoughts
under degrading concealments. He knew the Marquise de Pompadour was
jealously watching him from afar. The sharpest intellects and most
untiring men in the Colony were commissioned to find out the truth
regarding the fate of Caroline. Bigot was like a stag brought to bay. An
ordinary man would have succumbed in despair, but the very desperation
of his position stirred up the Intendant to a greater effort to free
himself.
He walked gloomily up and down the room, absorbed in deep thought.
Cadet, who guessed what was brooding in his mind, made a sign to De Pean
to wait and see what would be the result of his cogitations.
Bigot, gesticulating with his right hand and his left, went on
balancing, as in a pair of scales, the chances of success or failure in
the blow he meditated against the Golden Dog. A blow which would scatter
to the winds the inquisition set on foot to discover the hiding-place of
Caroline.
He stopped suddenly in his walk, striking both hands together, as if in
sign of some resolution arrived at in his thoughts.
“De Pean!” said he, “has Le Gardeur de Repentigny shown any desire yet
to break out of the Palace?”
“None, your Excellency. He is fixed as a bridge to fortune. You can no
more break him down than the Pont Neuf at Paris. He lost, last night,
a thousand at cards and five hundred at dice; then drank himself dead
drunk until three o'clock this afternoon. He has just risen; his valet
was washing his head and feet in brandy when I came here.”
“You are a friend that sticks closer than a brother, De Pean. Le Gardeur
believes in you as his guardian angel, does he not?” asked Bigot with a
sneer.
“When he is drunk he does,” replied De Pean; “when he is sober I care
not to approach him too nearly! He is a wild colt that will kick his
groom when rubbed the wrong way; and every way is wrong when the wine is
out of him.”
“Keep him full then!” exclaimed Bigot; “you have groomed him well, De
Pean! but he must now be saddled and ridden to hunt down the biggest
stag in New France!”
De Pean looked hard at the Intendant, only half comprehending his
allusion.
“You once tried your hand with Mademoiselle de Repentigny, did you not?”
continued Bigot.
“I did, your Excellency; but that bunch of grapes was too high for me.
They are very sour now.”
“Sly fox that you were! Well, do not call them sour yet, De Pean.
Another jump at the vine and you may reach that bunch of perfection!”
said Bigot, looking hard at him.
“Your Excellency overrates my ability in that quarter, and if I were
permitted to choose--”
“Another and a fairer maid would be your choice. I see, De Pean, you
are a connoisseur in women. Be it as you wish! Manage this business of
Philibert discreetly, and I will coin the Golden Dog into doubloons for
a marriage portion for Angélique des Meloises. You understand me now?”
De Pean started. He hardly guessed yet what was required of him, but he
cared not in the dazzling prospect of such a wife and fortune as were
thus held out to him.
“Your Excellency will really support my suit with Angélique?” De Pean
seemed to mistrust the possibility of such a piece of disinterestedness
on the part of the Intendant.
“I will not only commend your suit, but I will give away the bride, and
Madame de Pean shall not miss any favor from me which she has deserved
as Angélique des Meloises,” was Bigot's reply, without changing a muscle
of his face.
“And your Excellency will give her to me?” De Pean could hardly believe
his ears.
“Assuredly you shall have her if you like,” cried Bigot, “and with a
dowry such as has not been seen in New France!”
“But who would like to have her at any price?” muttered Cadet to
himself, with a quiet smile of contempt,--Cadet thought De Pean a
fool for jumping at a hook baited with a woman; but he knew what the
Intendant was driving at, and admired the skill with which he angled for
De Pean.
“But Angélique may not consent to this disposal of her hand,” replied
De Pean with an uneasy look; “I should be afraid of your gift unless she
believed that she took me, and not I her.”
“Hark you, De Pean! you do not know what women like her are made of,
or you would be at no loss how to bait your hook! You have made four
millions, they say, out of this war, if not more.”
“I never counted it, your Excellency; but, much or little, I owe it all
to your friendship,” replied De Pean with a touch of mock humility.
“My friendship! Well, so be it. It is enough to make Angélique des
Meloises Madame de Pean when she finds she cannot be Madame Intendant.
Do you see your way now, De Pean?”
“Yes, your Excellency, and I cannot be sufficiently grateful for such a
proof of your goodness.”
Bigot laughed a dry, meaning laugh. “I truly hope you will always think
so of my friendship, De Pean. If you do not, you are not the man I take
you to be. Now for our scheme of deliverance!
“Hearken, De Pean,” continued the Intendant, fixing his dark, fiery eyes
upon his secretary; “you have craft and cunning to work out this design
and good will to hasten it on. Cadet and I, considering the necessities
of the Grand Company, have resolved to put an end to the rivalry and
arrogance of the Golden Dog. We will treat the Bourgeois,” Bigot smiled
meaningly, “not as a trader with a baton, but as a gentleman with a
sword; for, although a merchant, the Bourgeois is noble and wears a
sword, which under proper provocation he will draw, and remember he
can use it too! He can be tolerated no longer by the gentlemen of the
Company. They have often pressed me in vain to take this step, but now
I yield. Hark, De Pean! The Bourgeois must be INSULTED, CHALLENGED, and
KILLED by some gentleman of the Company with courage and skill enough
to champion its rights. But mind you! it must be done fairly and in open
day, and without my knowledge or approval! Do you understand?”
Bigot winked at De Pean and smiled furtively, as much as to say, “You
know how to interpret my words.”
“I understand your Excellency, and it shall be no fault of mine if your
wishes, which chime with my own, be not carried out before many days. A
dozen partners of the Company will be proud to fight with the Bourgeois
if he will only fight with them.”
“No fear of that, De Pean! give the devil his due. Insult the Bourgeois
and he will fight with the seven champions of Christendom! so mind you
get a man able for him, for I tell you, De Pean, I doubt if there be
over three gentlemen in the Colony who could cross swords fairly and
successfully with the Bourgeois.”
“It will be easier to insult and kill him in a chance medley than to
risk a duel!” interrupted Cadet, who listened with intense eagerness.
“I tell you, Bigot, young Philibert will pink any man of our party. If
there be a duel he will insist on fighting it for his father. The old
Bourgeois will not be caught, but we shall catch a Tartar instead, in
the young one.”
“Well, duel or chance medley be it! I dare not have him assassinated,”
replied the Intendant. “He must be fought with in open day, and not
killed in a corner. Eh, Cadet, am I not right?”
Bigot looked for approval from Cadet, who saw that he was thinking of
the secret chamber at Beaumanoir.
“You are right, Bigot! He must be killed in open day and not in a
corner. But who have we among us capable of making sure work of the
Bourgeois?”
“Leave it to me,” replied De Pean. “I know one partner of the Company
who, if I can get him in harness, will run our chariot wheels in triumph
over the Golden Dog.”
“And who is that?” asked Bigot eagerly.
“Le Gardeur de Repentigny!” exclaimed De Pean, with a look of
exultation.
“Pshaw! he would draw upon us more readily! Why, he is bewitched with
the Philiberts!” replied Bigot.
“I shall find means to break the spell long enough to answer our
purpose, your Excellency!” replied De Pean. “Permit me only to take my
own way with him.”
“Assuredly, take your own way, De Pean! A bloody scuffle between
De Repentigny and the Bourgeois would not only be a victory for the
Company, but would breakup the whole party of the Honnêtes Gens!”
The Intendant slapped De Pean on the shoulder and shook him by the hand.
“You are more clever than I believed you to be, De Pean. You have hit
on a mode of riddance which will entitle you to the best reward in the
power of the Company to bestow.”
“My best reward will be the fulfilment of your promise, your
Excellency,” answered De Pean.
“I will keep my word, De Pean. By God you shall have Angélique, with
such a dowry as the Company can alone give! Or, if you do not want the
girl, you shall have the dowry without the wife!”
“I shall claim both, your Excellency! But--”
“But what? Confess all your doubts, De Pean.”
“Le Gardeur may claim her as his own reward!” De Pean guessed correctly
enough the true bent of Angélique's fancy.
“No fear! Le Gardeur de Repentigny, drunk or sober, is a gentleman. He
would reject the Princess d'Elide were she offered on such conditions
as you take her on. He is a romantic fool; he believes in woman's virtue
and all that stuff!”
“Besides, if he kill the Bourgeois, he will have to fight Pierre
Philibert before his sword is dry!” interjected Cadet. “I would not give
a Dutch stiver for Le Gardeur's bones five hours after he has pinked the
Bourgeois!”
An open duel in form was not to be thought of, because in that they
would have to fight the son and not the father, and the great object
would be frustrated. But the Bourgeois might be killed in a sudden fray,
when blood was up and swords drawn, when no one, as De Pean remarked,
would be able to find an i undotted or a t uncrossed in a fair record of
the transaction, which would impose upon the most critical judge as an
honorable and justifiable act of self-defence.
This was Cadet's real intent, and perhaps Bigot's, but the Intendant's
thoughts lay at unfathomable depths, and were not to be discovered by
any traces upon the surface. No divining-rod could tell where the secret
spring lay hid which ran under Bigot's motives.
Not so De Pean. He meditated treachery, and it were hard to say whether
it was unnoted by the penetrating eye of Bigot. The Intendant, however,
did not interfere farther, either by word or sign, but left De Pean
to accomplish in his own way the bloody object they all had in view,
namely, the death of the Bourgeois and the break-up of the Honnêtes
Gens. De Pean, while resolving to make Le Gardeur the tool of his
wickedness, did not dare to take him into his confidence. He had to
be kept in absolute ignorance of the part he was to play in the bloody
tragedy until the moment of its denouement arrived. Meantime he must be
plied with drink, maddened with jealousy, made desperate with losses,
and at war with himself and all the world, and then the whole fury
of his rage should, by the artful contrivance of De Pean, be
turned, without a minute's time for reflection, upon the head of the
unsuspecting Bourgeois.
To accomplish this successfully, a woman's aid was required, at once to
blind Le Gardeur and to sharpen his sword.
In the interests of the Company Angélique des Meloises was at all times
a violent partisan. The Golden Dog and all its belongings were objects
of her open aversion. But De Pean feared to impart to her his intention
to push Le Gardeur blindly into the affair. She might fear for the life
of one she loved. De Pean reflected angrily on this, but he determined
she should be on the spot. The sight of her and a word from her, which
De Pean would prompt at the critical moment, should decide Le Gardeur to
attack the Bourgeois and kill him; and then, what would follow? De
Pean rubbed his hands with ecstasy at the thought that Le Gardeur would
inevitably bite the dust under the avenging hand of Pierre Philibert,
and Angélique would be his beyond all fear of rivals.