“What fools,” said Doltaire presently, “to burn the bread and oven too!
If only they were less honest in a world of rogues, poor moles!”
Coming nearer, we saw that La Friponne itself was safe, but one
warehouse was doomed and another threatened. The streets were full of
people, and thousands of excited peasants, laborers, and sailors were
shouting, “Down with the palace! Down with Bigot!”
We came upon the scene at the most critical moment. None of the
Governors soldiers were in sight, but up the Heights we could hear the
steady tramp of General Montcalm’s infantry as they came on. Where
were Bigot’s men? There was a handful--one company--drawn up before La
Friponne, idly leaning on their muskets, seeing the great granary burn,
and watching La Friponne threatened by the mad crowd and the fire. There
was not a soldier before the Intendant’s palace, not a light in any
window.
“What is this weird trick of Bigot’s?” said Doltaire, musing.
The Governor, we knew, had been out of the city that day. But where was
Bigot? At a word from Doltaire we pushed forward towards the palace, the
soldiers keeping me in their midst. We were not a hundred feet from
the great steps when two gates at the right suddenly swung open, and a
carriage rolled out swiftly and dashed down into the crowd. I recognized
the coachman first--Bigot’s, an old one-eyed soldier of surpassing
nerve, and devoted to his master. The crowd parted right and left.
Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Bigot stood up, folding his arms,
and glancing round with a disdainful smile without speaking a word. He
carried a paper in one hand.
Here were at least two thousand armed and unarmed peasants, sick with
misery and oppression, in the presence of their undefended tyrant.
One shot, one blow of a stone, one stroke of a knife--to the end of a
shameless pillage. But no hand was raised to do the deed. The roar of
voices subsided--he waited for it--and silence was broken only by the
crackle of the burning building, the tramp of Montcalm’s soldiers in
Mountain Street, and the tolling of the cathedral bell. I thought it
strange that almost as Bigot came out the wild clanging gave place to a
cheerful peal.
After standing for a moment, looking round him, his eye resting on
Doltaire and myself (we were but a little distance from him), Bigot said
in a loud voice: “What do you want with me? Do you think I may be moved
by threats? Do you punish me by burning your own food, which, when the
English are at our doors, is your only hope? Fools! How easily could I
turn my cannon and my men upon you! You think to frighten me. Who do you
think I am?--a Bostonnais or an Englishman? You--revolutionists! T’sh!
You are wild dogs without a leader. You want one that you can trust; you
want no coward, but one who fears you not at your wildest. Well, I will
be your leader. I do not fear you, and I do not love you, for how have
you deserved my love? By ingratitude and aspersion? Who has the King’s
favour? Francois Bigot. Who has the ear of the Grande Marquise? Francois
Bigot. Who stands firm while others tremble lest their power pass
to-morrow? Francois Bigot. Who else dare invite revolution, this
danger”--his hand sweeping to the flames--“who but Francois Bigot?” He
paused for a moment, and looking up to the leader of Montcalm’s soldiers
on the Heights, waved him back; then he continued:
“And to-day, when I am ready to give you great news, you play the mad
dog’s game; you destroy what I had meant to give you in our hour of
danger, when those English came. I made you suffer a little, that
you might live then. Only to-day, because of our great and glorious
victory--”
He paused again. The peal of bells became louder. Far up on the Heights
we heard the calling of bugles and the beating of drums; and now I saw
the whole large plan, the deep dramatic scheme. He had withheld the news
of the victory that he might announce it when it would most turn to his
own glory. Perhaps he had not counted on the burning of the warehouse,
but this would tell now in his favour. He was not a large man, but he
drew himself up with dignity, and continued in a contemptuous tone:
“Because of our splendid victory, I designed to tell you all my plans,
and, pitying your trouble, divide among you at the smallest price, that
all might pay, the corn which now goes to feed the stars.”
At that moment some one from the Heights above called out shrilly, “What
lie is in that paper, Francois Bigot?”
I looked up, as did the crowd. A woman stood upon a point of the great
rock, a red robe hanging on her, her hair free over her shoulders, her
finger pointing at the Intendant. Bigot only glanced up, then smoothed
out the paper.
He said to the people in a clear but less steady voice, for I could
see that the woman had disturbed him, “Go pray to be forgiven for your
insolence and folly. His most Christian Majesty is triumphant upon the
Ohio. The English have been killed in thousands, and their General with
them. Do you not hear the joy-bells in the Church of Our Lady of the
Victories? and more--listen!”
There burst from the Heights on the other side a cannon shot, and
then another and another. There was a great commotion, and many ran
to Bigot’s carriage, reached in to touch his hand, and called down
blessings on him.
“See that you save the other granaries,” he urged, adding, with a sneer,
“and forget not to bless La Friponne in your prayers!”
It was a clever piece of acting. Presently from the Heights above came
the woman’s voice again, so piercing that the crowd turned to her.
“Francois Bigot is a liar and a traitor!” she cried. “Beware of Francois
Bigot! God has cast him out.”
A dark look came upon Bigot’s face; but presently he turned, and gave a
sign to some one near the palace. The doors of the courtyard flew open,
and out came squad after squad of soldiers. In a moment, they, with the
people, were busy carrying water to pour upon the side of the endangered
warehouse. Fortunately the wind was with them, else it and the palace
also would have been burned that night.
The Intendant still stood in his carriage watching and listening to the
cheers of the people. At last he beckoned to Doltaire and to me. We both
went over.
“Doltaire, we looked for you at dinner,” he said. “Was Captain
Moray”--nodding towards me--“lost among the petticoats? He knows the
trick of cup and saucer. Between the sip and click he sucked in secrets
from our garrison--a spy where had been a soldier, as we thought. You
once wore a sword, Captain Moray--eh?”
“If the Governor would grant me leave, I would not only wear, but use
one, your excellency knows well where,” said I.
“Large speaking, Captain Moray. They do that in Virginia, I am told.”
“In Gascony there’s quiet, your excellency.”
Doltaire laughed outright, for it was said that Bigot, in his coltish
days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to send to heaven
before her time. I saw the Intendant’s mouth twitch angrily.
“Come,” he said, “you have a tongue; we’ll see if you have a stomach.
You’ve languished with the girls; you shall have your chance to drink
with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when we have drunk to the first
cockcrow, should you be still on your feet, you’ll fight some one among
us, first giving ample cause.”
“I hope, your excellency,” I replied, with a touch of vanity, “I have
still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to cockcrow, if you will.
And if my sword prove the stronger, what?”
“There’s the point,” he said. “Your Englishman loves not fighting for
fighting’s sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well, see: if
your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your ways to
where you will. Voila!”
If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this pair
of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill to me,
and neither was content that I should be shut away in the citadel, and
no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them their due: the
trap was skillful, and in those times, with great things at stake,
strategy took the place of open fighting here and there. For Bigot I was
to be a weapon against another; for Doltaire, against myself.
What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my
lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till
I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing
nothing, thinking with horror on a long winter in the citadel, and I
caught at the least straw of freedom.
“Captain Moray will like to spend a couple of hours at his lodgings
before he joins us at the palace,” the Intendant said, and with a nod
to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the
great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here
and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had
made an impression. The Intendant’s men essayed to trace these noises,
but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had
gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in my face, and he said:
“Some bad fighting hours with the Intendant at Chateau Bigot, and then a
fever, bringing a kind of madness: so the story creeps about, as told by
Bigot’s enemies.”
Just at this point I felt a man hustle me as he passed. One of the
soldiers made a thrust at him, and he turned round. I caught his eye,
and it flashed something to me. It was Voban the barber, who had shaved
me every day for months when I first came, while my arm was stiff from
a wound got fighting the French on the Ohio. It was quite a year since
I had met him, and I was struck by the change in his face. It had grown
much older; its roundness was gone. We had had many a talk together; he
helping me with French, I listening to the tales of his early life in
France, and to the later tale of a humble love, and of the home which
he was fitting up for his Mathilde, a peasant girl of much beauty, I
was told, but whom I had never seen. I remembered at that moment, as he
stood in the crowd looking at me, the piles of linen which he had bought
at Ste. Anne de Beaupre, and the silver pitcher which his grandfather
had got from the Duc de Valois for an act of merit. Many a time we had
discussed the pitcher and the deed, and fingered the linen, now talking
in French, now in English; for in France, years before, he had been a
valet to an English officer at King Louis’s court. But my surprise had
been great when I learned that this English gentleman was no other than
the best friend I ever had, next to my parents and my grandfather. Voban
was bound to Sir John Godric by as strong ties of affection as I. What
was more, by a secret letter I had sent to George Washington, who was
then as good a Briton as myself, I had been able to have my barber’s
young brother, a prisoner of war, set free.
I felt that he had something to say to me. But he turned away and
disappeared among the crowd. I might have had some clue if I had known
that he had been crouched behind the Intendant’s carriage while I was
being bidden to the supper. I did not guess then that there was anything
between him and the Scarlet Woman who railed at Bigot.
In a little while I was at my lodgings, soldiers posted at my door and
one in my room. Doltaire gone to his own quarters promising to call for
me within two hours. There was little for me to do but to put in a bag
the fewest necessaries, to roll up my heavy cloak, to stow safely my
pipes and two goodly packets of tobacco, which were to be my chiefest
solace for many a long day, and to write some letters--one to Governor
Dinwiddie, one to George Washington, and one to my partner in Virginia,
telling them my fresh misfortunes, and begging them to send me money,
which, however useless in my captivity, would be important in my fight
for life and freedom. I did not write intimately of my state, for I was
not sure my letters would ever pass outside Quebec. There were only two
men I could trust to do the thing. One was a fellow-countryman, Clark,
a ship-carpenter, who, to save his neck and to spare his wife and child,
had turned Catholic, but who hated all Frenchmen barbarously at heart,
remembering two of his bairns butchered before his eyes. The other was
Voban. I knew that though Voban might not act, he would not betray
me. But how to reach either of them? It was clear that I must bide my
chances.
One other letter I wrote, brief but vital, in which I begged the
sweetest girl in the world not to have uneasiness because of me; that
I trusted to my star and to my innocence to convince my judges; and
begging her, if she could, to send me a line at the citadel. I told her
I knew well how hard it would be, for her mother and her father would
not now look upon my love with favour. But I trusted all to time and
Providence.
I sealed my letters, put them in my pocket, and sat down to smoke and
think while I waited for Doltaire. To the soldier on duty, whom I did
not notice at first, I now offered a pipe and a glass of wine, which he
accepted rather gruffly, but enjoyed, if I might judge by his devotion
to them.
By-and-bye, without any relevancy at all, he said abruptly, “If a little
sooner she had come--aho!”
For a moment I could not think what he meant; but soon I saw.
“The palace would have been burnt if the girl in scarlet had come
sooner--eh?” I asked. “She would have urged the people on?”
“And Bigot burnt, too, maybe,” he answered.
“Fire and death--eh?”
I offered him another pipeful of tobacco. He looked doubtful, but
accepted.
“Aho! And that Voban, he would have had his hand in,” he growled.