La Corriveau took the ebony casket from her bosom and laid it solemnly on the table. “Do not cross yourself,” she exclaimed angrily as she saw Angélique mechanically make the sacred sign. “There can come no blessings here. There is death enough in that casket to kill every man and woman in New France.”
Angélique fastened her gaze upon the casket as if she would have drawn out the secret of its contents by the very magnetism of her eyes. She laid her hand upon it caressingly, yet tremblingly—eager, yet fearful, to see its contents.
“Open it!” cried La Corriveau, “press the spring, and you will see such a casket of jewels as queens might envy. It was the wedding-gift of Beatrice Spara, and once belonged to the house of Borgia—Lucrezia Borgia had it from her terrible father; and he, from the prince of demons!”
Angélique pressed the little spring,—the lid flew open, and there flashed from it a light which for the moment dazzled her eyes with its brilliancy. She thrust the casket from her in alarm, and retreated a few steps, imagining she smelt the odor of some deadly perfume.
“I dare not approach it,” said she. “Its glittering terrifies me; its odor sickens me.”
“Tush! it is your weak imagination!” replied La Corriveau; “your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to its victim.”
Angélique with a strong effort tried to master her fear, but could not. She would not again handle the casket.
La Corriveau looked at her as if suspecting this display of weakness. She then drew the casket to herself and took out a vial, gilt and chased with strange symbols. It was not larger than the little finger of a delicate girl. Its contents glittered like a diamond in the sunshine.
La Corriveau shook it up, and immediately the liquid was filled with a million sparks of fire. It was the aqua tofana undiluted by mercy, instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by any antidote. Once administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up to a black, unsightly cinder!
This was the poison of anger and revenge that would not wait for time, and braved the world's justice. With that vial La Borgia killed her guests at the fatal banquet in her palace, and Beatrice Spara in her fury destroyed the fair Milanese who had stolen from her the heart of Antonio Exili.
This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners; but it formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear, avarice, or hypocrisy mingled with the element of time, and colored with the various hues and aspects of natural disease.
Angélique sat down and leaned towards La Corriveau, supporting her chin on the palms of her hands as she bent eagerly over the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks in the water poured upon it. “What is that?” said she, pointing to a vial as white as milk and seemingly as harmless.
“That,” replied La Corriveau, “is the milk of mercy. It brings on painless consumption and decay. It eats the life out of a man while the moon empties and fills once or twice. His friends say he dies of quick decline, and so he does! ha! ha!—when his enemy wills it! The strong man becomes a skeleton, and blooming maidens sink into their graves blighted and bloodless, with white lips and hearts that cease gradually to beat, men know not why. Neither saint nor sacrament can arrest the doom of the milk of mercy.”
“This vial,” continued she, lifting up another from the casket and replacing the first, licking her thin lips with profound satisfaction as she did so,—“this contains the acrid venom that grips the heart like the claws of a tiger, and the man drops down dead at the time appointed. Fools say he died of the visitation of God. The visitation of God!” repeated she in an accent of scorn, and the foul witch spat as she pronounced the sacred name. “Leo in his sign ripens the deadly nuts of the East, which kill when God will not kill. He who has this vial for a possession is the lord of life.” She replaced it tenderly. It was a favorite vial of La Corriveau.
“This one,” continued she, taking up another, “strikes with the dead palsy; and this kindles the slow, inextinguishable fires of typhus. Here is one that dissolves all the juices of the body, and the blood of a man's veins runs into a lake of dropsy. This,” taking up a green vial, “contains the quintessence of mandrakes distilled in the alembic when Scorpio rules the hour. Whoever takes this liquid”—La Corriveau shook it up lovingly—“dies of torments incurable as the foul disease of lust which it simulates and provokes.”
There was one vial which contained a black liquid like oil. “It is a relic of the past,” said she, “an heir-loom from the Untori, the ointers of Milan. With that oil they spread death through the doomed city, anointing its doors and thresholds with the plague until the people died.”
The terrible tale of the anointers of Milan has, since the days of La Corriveau, been written in choice Italian by Manzoni, in whose wonderful book he that will may read it.
“This vial,” continued the witch, “contains innumerable griefs, that wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers, and the wisest physician is mocked with lying appearances of disease that defy his skill and make a fool of his wisdom.”
“Oh, say no more!” exclaimed Angélique, shocked and terrified. However inordinate in her desires, she was dainty in her ways. “It is like a Sabbat of witches to hear you talk, La Corriveau!” cried she, “I will have none of those foul things which you propose. My rival shall die like a lady! I will not feast like a vampire on her dead body, nor shall you. You have other vials in the casket of better hue and flavor. What is this?” continued Angélique, taking out a rose-tinted and curiously-twisted bottle sealed on the top with the mystic pentagon. “This looks prettier, and may be not less sure than the milk of mercy in its effect. What is it?”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the woman with her weirdest laugh. “Your wisdom is but folly, Angélique des Meloises! You would kill, and still spare your enemy! That was the smelling-bottle of La Brinvilliers, who took it with her to the great ball at the Hôtel de Ville, where she secretly sprinkled a few drops of it upon the handkerchief of the fair Louise Gauthier, who, the moment she put it to her nostrils, fell dead upon the floor. She died and gave no sign, and no man knew how or why! But she was the rival of Brinvilliers for the love of Gaudin de St. Croix, and in that she resembles the lady of Beaumanoir, as you do La Brinvilliers!”
“And she got her reward! I would have done the same thing for the same reason! What more have you to relate of this most precious vial of your casket?” asked Angélique.
“That its virtue is unimpaired. Three drops sprinkled upon a bouquet of flowers, and its odor breathed by man or woman, causes a sudden swoon from which there is no awakening more in this world. People feel no pain, but die smiling as if angels had kissed away their breath. Is it not a precious toy, Mademoiselle?”
“Oh, blessed vial!” exclaimed Angélique, pressing it to her lips, “thou art my good angel to kiss away the breath of the lady of Beaumanoir! She shall sleep on roses, La Corriveau, and you shall make her bed!”
“It is a sweet death, befitting one who dies for love, or is killed by the jealousy of a dainty rival,” replied the witch; “but I like best those draughts which are most bitter and not less sure.”
“The lady of Beaumanoir will not be harder to kill than Louise Gauthier,” replied Angélique, watching the glitter of the vial in the lamplight. “She is unknown even to the servants of the Château; nor will the Intendant himself dare to make public either her life or death in his house.”
“Are you sure, Mademoiselle, that the Intendant will not dare to make public the death of that woman in the Château?” asked La Corriveau, with intense eagerness; that consideration was an important link of the chain which she was forging.
“Sure? yes, I am sure by a hundred tokens!” said Angélique, with an air of triumph. “He dare not even banish her for my sake, lest the secret of her concealment at Beaumanoir become known. We can safely risk his displeasure, even should he suspect that I have cut the knot he knew not how to untie.”
“You are a bold girl!” exclaimed La Corriveau, looking on her admiringly, “you are worthy to wear the crown of Cleopatra, the queen of all the gypsies and enchantresses. I shall have less fear now to do your bidding, for you have a stronger spirit than mine to support you.”
“'Tis well, La Corriveau! Let this vial of Brinvilliers bring me the good fortune I crave, and I will fill your lap with gold. If the lady of Beaumanoir shall find death in a bouquet of flowers, let them be roses!”
“But how and where to find roses? they have ceased blooming,” said La Corriveau, hating Angélique's sentiment, and glad to find an objection to it.
“Not for her, La Corriveau; fate is kinder than you think!” Angélique threw back a rich curtain and disclosed a recess filled with pots of blooming roses and flowers of various hues. “The roses are blooming here which will form the bouquet of Beaumanoir.”
“You are of rare ingenuity, Mademoiselle,” replied La Corriveau, admiringly. “If Satan prompts you not, it is because he can teach you nothing either in love or stratagem.”
“Love!” replied Angélique quickly, “do not name that! No! I have sacrificed all love, or I should not be taking counsel of La Corriveau!”
Angélique's thoughts flashed back upon Le Gardeur for one regretful moment. “No, it is not love,” continued she, “but the duplicity of a man before whom I have lowered my pride. It is the vengeance I have vowed upon a woman for whose sake I am trifled with! It is that prompts me to this deed! But no matter, shut up the casket, La Corriveau; we will talk now of how and when this thing is to be done.”
The witch shut up her infernal casket of ebony, leaving the vial of Brinvilliers shining like a ruby in the lamplight upon the polished table.
The two women sat down, their foreheads almost touching together, with their eyes flashing in lurid sympathy as they eagerly discussed the position of things in the Château. The apartments of Caroline, the hours of rest and activity, were all well known to Angélique, who had adroitly fished out every fact from the unsuspecting Fanchon Dodier, as had also La Corriveau.
It was known to Angélique that the Intendant would be absent from the city for some days, in consequence of the news from France. The unfortunate Caroline would be deprived of the protection of his vigilant eye.
The two women sat long arranging and planning their diabolical scheme. There was no smile upon the cheek of Angélique now. Her dimples, which drove men mad, had disappeared. Her lips, made to distil words sweeter than honey of Hybla, were now drawn together in hard lines like La Corriveau's,—they were cruel and untouched by a single trace of mercy.
The hours struck unheeded on the clock in the room, as it ticked louder and louder like a conscious monitor beside them. Its slow finger had marked each wicked thought, and recorded for all time each murderous word as it passed their cruel lips.
La Corriveau held the casket in her lap with an air of satisfaction, and sat with eyes fixed on Angélique, who was now silent.
“Water the roses well, Mademoiselle,” said she; “in three days I shall be here for a bouquet, and in less than thrice three days I promise you there shall be a dirge sung for the lady of Beaumanoir.”
“Only let it be done soon and surely,” replied Angélique,—her very tone grew harsh,—“but talk no more of it; your voice sounds like a cry from a dark gallery that leads to hell. Would it were done! I could then shut up the memory of it in a tomb of silence, forever, forever, and wash my hands of a deed done by you, not me!”
“A deed done by you, not me!” She repeated the words, as if repeating them made them true. She would shut up the memory of her crime forever; she reflected not that the guilt is in the evil intent, and the sin the same before God even if the deed be never done.
Angélique was already an eager sophist. She knew better than the wretched creature whom she had bribed with money, how intensely wicked was the thing she was tempting her to do; but her jealousy maddened her, and her ambition could not let her halt in her course.
There was one thought which still tormented her “What would the Intendant think? What would he say should he suspect her of the murder of Caroline?” She feared his scrutinizing investigation; but, trusting in her power, she risked his suspicions, nay, remembering his words, made him in her own mind an accessory in the murder.
If she remembered Le Gardeur de Repentigny at all at this moment, it was only to strangle the thought of him. She shied like a horse on the brink of a precipice when the thought of Le Gardeur intruded itself. Rising suddenly, she bade La Corriveau be gone about her business, lest she should be tempted to change her mind.
La Corriveau laughed at the last struggle of dying conscience, and bade Angélique go to bed. It was two hours past midnight, and she would bid Fanchon let her depart to the house of an old crone in the city who would give her a bed and a blessing in the devil's name.
Angélique, weary and agitated, bade her be gone in the devil's name, if she preferred a curse to a blessing. The witch, with a mocking laugh, rose and took her departure for the night.
Fanchon, weary of waiting, had fallen asleep. She roused herself, offering to accompany her aunt in hopes of learning something of her interview with her mistress. All she got was a whisper that the jewels were found. La Corriveau passed out into the darkness, and plodded her way to the house of her friend, where she resolved to stay until she accomplished the secret and cruel deed she had undertaken to perform.
The Count de la Galissonière was seated in his cabinet a week after the arrival of La Corriveau on her fatal errand. It was a plain, comfortable apartment he sat in, hung with arras, and adorned with maps and pictures. It was there he held his daily sittings for the ordinary despatch of business with a few such councillors as the occasion required to be present.
The table was loaded with letters, memorandums, and bundles of papers tied up in official style. Despatches of royal ministers, bearing the broad seal of France. Reports from officers of posts far and near in New France lay mingled together with silvery strips of the inner bark of the birch, painted with hieroglyphics, giving accounts of war parties on the eastern frontier and in the far west, signed by the totems of Indian chiefs in alliance with France. There was a newly-arrived parcel of letters from the bold, enterprising Sieur de Verendrye, who was exploring the distant waters of the Saskatchewan and the land of the Blackfeet, and many a missive from missionaries, giving account of wild regions which remain yet almost a terra incognita to the government which rules over them.
At the Governor's elbow sat his friend Bishop Pontbriand with a secretary immersed in papers. In front of him was the Intendant with Varin, Penisault, and D'Estèbe. On one side of the table, La Corne St. Luc was examining some Indian despatches with Rigaud de Vaudreuil; Claude Beauharnais and the venerable Abbé Piquet overlooking with deep interest the rude pictorial despatches in the hands of La Corne. Two gentlemen of the law, in furred gowns and bands, stood waiting at one end of the room, with books under their arms and budgets of papers in their hands ready to argue before the Council some knotty point of controversy arising out of the concession of certain fiefs and jurisdictions granted under the feudal laws of the Colony.
The Intendant, although personally at variance with several of the gentlemen sitting at the council table, did not let that fact be visible on his countenance, nor allow it to interfere with the despatch of public business.
The Intendant was gay and easy to-day, as was his wont, wholly unsuspecting the foul treason that was plotting by the woman he admired against the woman he loved. His opinions were sometimes loftily expressed, but always courteously as well as firmly.
Bigot never drooped a feather in face of his enemies, public or private, but laughed and jested with all at table in the exuberance of a spirit which cared for no one, and only reined itself in when it was politic to flatter his patrons and patronesses at Versailles.
The business of the Council had begun. The mass of papers which lay at the left hand of the Governor were opened and read seriatim by his secretary, and debated, referred, decided upon, or judgment postponed, as the case seemed best to the Council.
The Count was a man of method and despatch, clear-headed and singularly free from prejudice, ambiguity, or hesitation. He was honest and frank in council, as he was gallant on the quarter-deck. The Intendant was not a whit behind him in point of ability and knowledge of the political affairs of the colony, and surpassed him in influence at the court of Louis XV., but less frank, for he had much to conceal, and kept authority in his own hands as far as he was able.
Disliking each other profoundly from the total divergence of their characters, opinions, and habits, the Governor and Intendant still met courteously at the council-table, and not without a certain respect for the rare talents which each recognized in the other.
Many of the papers lying before them were on subjects relating to the internal administration of the Colony,—petitions of the people suffering from the exactions of the commissaries of the army, remonstrances against the late decrees of the Intendant, and arrêts of the high court of justice confirming the right of the Grand Company to exercise certain new monopolies of trade.
The discussions were earnest, and sometimes warm, on these important questions. La Corne St. Luc assailed the new regulations of the Intendant in no measured terms of denunciation, in which he was supported by Rigaud de Vaudreuil and the Chevalier de Beauharnais. But Bigot, without condescending to the trouble of defending the ordinances on any sound principle of public policy, which he knew to be useless and impossible with the clever men sitting at the table, contented himself with a cold smile at the honest warmth of La Corne St. Luc, and simply bade his secretary read the orders and despatches from Versailles, in the name of the royal ministers, and approved of by the King himself in a Lit de Justice which had justified every act done by him in favor of the Grand Company.
The Governor, trammelled on all sides by the powers conferred upon the Intendant, felt unable to exercise the authority he needed to vindicate the cause of right and justice in the colony. His own instructions confirmed the pretensions of the Intendant, and of the Grand Company. The utmost he could do in behalf of the true interests of the people and of the King, as opposed to the herd of greedy courtiers and selfish beauties who surrounded him, was to soften the deadening blows they dealt upon the trade and resources of the Colony.
A decree authorizing the issue of an unlimited quantity of paper bills, the predecessors of the assignats of the mother country, was strongly advocated by Bigot, who supported his views with a degree of financial sophistry which showed that he had effectively mastered the science of delusion and fraud of which Law had been the great teacher in France, and the Mississippi scheme, the prototype of the Grand Company, the great exemplar.
La Corne St. Luc opposed the measure forcibly. “He wanted no paper lies,” he said, “to cheat the husbandman of his corn and the laborer of his hire. If the gold and silver had all to be sent to France to pamper the luxuries of a swarm of idlers at the Court, they could buy and sell as they had done in the early days of the Colony, with beaver skins for livres, and muskrat skins for sous. These paper bills,” continued he, “had been tried on a small scale by the Intendant Hoquart, and on a small scale had robbed and impoverished the Colony. If this new Mississippi scheme propounded by new Laws,”—and here La Corne glanced boldly at the Intendant,—“is to be enforced on the scale proposed, there will not be left in the Colony one piece of silver to rub against another. It will totally beggar New France, and may in the end bankrupt the royal treasury of France itself if called on to redeem them.”
The discussion rolled on for an hour. The Count listened in silent approbation to the arguments of the gentlemen opposing the measure, but he had received private imperative instructions from the King to aid the Intendant in the issue of the new paper money. The Count reluctantly sanctioned a decree which filled New France with worthless assignats, the non-redemption of which completed the misery of the Colony and aided materially in its final subjugation by the English.
The pile of papers upon the table gradually diminished as they were opened and disposed of. The Council itself was getting weary of a long sitting, and showed an evident wish for its adjournment. The gentlemen of the law did not get a hearing of their case that day, but were well content to have it postponed, because a postponement meant new fees and increased costs for their clients. The lawyers of Old France, whom LaFontaine depicts in his lively fable as swallowing the oyster and handing to each litigant an empty shell, did not differ in any essential point from their brothers of the long robe in New France, and differed nothing at all in the length of their bills and the sharpness of their practice.
The breaking up of the Council was deferred by the Secretary opening a package sealed with the royal seal, and which contained other sealed papers marked SPECIAL for His Excellency the Governor. The Secretary handed them to the Count, who read over the contents with deep interest and a changing countenance. He laid them down and took them up again, perused them a second time, and passed them over to the Intendant, who read them with a start of surprise and a sudden frown on his dark eyebrows. But he instantly suppressed it, biting his nether lip, however, with anger which he could not wholly conceal.
He pushed the papers back to the Count with a nonchalant air, as of a man who had quite made up his mind about them, saying in a careless manner,—
“The commands of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour shall be complied with,” said he. “I will order strict search to be made for the missing demoiselle, who, I suspect, will be found in some camp or fort, sharing the couch of some lively fellow who has won favor in her bright eyes.”
Bigot saw danger in these despatches, and in the look of the Governor, who would be sure to exercise the utmost diligence in carrying out the commands of the court in this matter.
Bigot for a few moments seemed lost in reflection. He looked round the table, and, seeing many eyes fixed upon him, spoke boldly, almost with a tone of defiance.
“Pray explain to the councillors the nature of this despatch, your Excellency!” said he to the Count. “What it contains is not surprising to any one who knows the fickle sex, and no gentleman can avoid feeling for the noble Baron de St. Castin!”
“And for his daughter, too, Chevalier!” replied the Governor. “It is only through their virtues that such women are lost. But it is the strangest tale I have heard in New France!”
The gentlemen seated at the table looked at the Governor in some surprise. La Corne St. Luc, hearing the name of the Baron de St. Castin, exclaimed, “What, in God's name, your Excellency,—what is there in that despatch affecting my old friend and companion in arms, the Baron de St. Castin?”
“I had better explain,” replied the Count; “it is no secret in France, and will not long be a secret here.
“This letter, gentlemen,” continued he, addressing the councillors, and holding it open in his hand, “is a pathetic appeal from the Baron de St. Castin, whom you all know, urging me by every consideration of friendship, honor, and public duty, to aid in finding his daughter, Caroline de St. Castin, who has been abducted from her home in Acadia, and who, after a long and vain search for her by her father in France, where it was thought she might have gone, has been traced to this Colony, where it is said she is living concealed under some strange alias or low disguise.
“The other despatch,” continued the Governor, “is from the Marquise de Pompadour, affirming the same thing, and commanding the most rigorous search to be made for Mademoiselle de St. Castin. In language hardly official, the Marquise threatens to make stockfish, that is her phrase, of whosoever has had a hand in either the abduction or the concealment of the missing lady.”
The attention of every gentleman at the table was roused by the words of the Count. But La Corne St. Luc could not repress his feelings. He sprang up, striking the table with the palm of his hand until it sounded like the shot of a petronel.
“By St. Christopher the Strong!” exclaimed he, “I would cheerfully have lost a limb rather than heard such a tale told by my dear old friend and comrade, about that angelic child of his, whom I have carried in my arms like a lamb of God many and many a time!
“You know, gentlemen, what befell her!” The old soldier looked as if he could annihilate the Intendant with the lightning of his eyes. “I affirm and will maintain that no saint in heaven was holier in her purity than she was in her fall! Chevalier Bigot, it is for you to answer these despatches! This is your work! If Caroline de St. Castin be lost, you know where to find her!”
Bigot started up in a rage mingled with fear, not of La Corne St. Luc, but lest the secret of Caroline's concealment at Beaumanoir should become known. The furious letter of La Pompadour repressed the prompting of his audacious spirit to acknowledge the deed openly and defy the consequences, as he would have done at any less price than the loss of the favor of his powerful and jealous patroness.
The broad, black gateway of a lie stood open to receive him, and angry as he was at the words of St. Luc, Bigot took refuge in it—and lied.
“Chevalier La Corne!” said he, with a tremendous effort at self-control, “I do not affect to misunderstand your words, and in time and place will make you account for them! but I will say, for the contentment of His Excellency and of the other gentlemen at the council-table, that whatever in times past have been my relations with the daughter of the Baron de St. Castin, and I do not deny having shown her many courtesies, her abduction was not my work, and if she be lost, I do not know where to find her!”
“Upon your word as a gentleman,” interrogated the Governor, “will you declare you know not where she is to be found?”
“Upon my word as a gentleman!” The Intendant's face was suffused with passion. “You have no right to ask that! Neither shall you, Count de La Galissonière! But I will myself answer the despatch of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour! I know no more, perhaps less, than yourself or the Chevalier La Corne St. Luc, where to look for the daughter of the Baron de St. Castin; and I proclaim here that I am ready to cross swords with the first gentleman who shall dare breathe a syllable of doubt against the word of François Bigot!”
Varin and Penisault exchanged a rapid glance, partly of doubt, partly of surprise. They knew well, for Bigot had not concealed from his intimate associates the fact that a strange lady, whose name they had not heard, was living in the secret chambers of the Château of Beaumanoir. Bigot never told any who she was or whence she came. Whatever suspicion they might entertain in their own minds, they were too wary to express it. On the contrary, Varin, ever more ready with a lie than Bigot, confirmed with a loud oath the statement of the Intendant.
La Corne St. Luc looked like a baffled lion as Rigaud de Vaudreuil, with the familiarity of an old friend, laid his hand over his mouth, and would not let him speak. Rigaud feared the coming challenge, and whispered audibly in the ear of St. Luc,—
“Count a hundred before you speak, La Corne! The Intendant is to be taken on his word just at present, like any other gentleman! Fight for fact, not for fancy! Be prudent, La Corne! we know nothing to the contrary of what Bigot swears to!”
“But I doubt much to the contrary, Rigaud!” replied La Corne, with accent of scorn and incredulity.
The old soldier chafed hard under the bit, but his suspicions were not facts. He felt that he had no solid grounds upon which to accuse the Intendant in the special matter referred to in the letters. He was, moreover, although hot in temperament, soon master of himself, and used to the hardest discipline of self-control.
“I was, perhaps, over hasty, Rigaud!” replied La Corne St. Luc, recovering his composure; “but when I think of Bigot in the past, how can I but mistrust him in the present? However, be the girl above ground or under ground, I will, par Dieu, not leave a stone unturned in New France until I find the lost child of my old friend! La Corne St. Luc pledges himself to that, and he never broke his word!”
He spoke the last words audibly, and looked hard at the Intendant. Bigot cursed him twenty times over between his teeth, for he knew La Corne's indomitable energy and sagacity, that was never at fault in finding or forcing a way to whatever he was in search of. It would not be long before he would discover the presence of a strange lady at Beaumanoir, thought Bigot, and just as certain would he be to find out that she was the lost daughter of the Baron de St. Castin.
The good Bishop rose up when the dispute waxed warmest between the Intendant and La Corne St. Luc. His heart was eager to allay the strife; but his shrewd knowledge of human nature, and manifold experience of human quarrels, taught him that between two such men the intercession of a priest would not, at that moment, be of any avail. Their own notions of honor and self-respect would alone be able to restrain them from rushing into unseemly excesses of language and act; so the good Bishop stood with folded arms looking on, and silently praying for an opportunity to remind them of the seventh holy beatitude, “Beati pacifici!”
Bigot felt acutely the difficulty of the position he had been placed in by the act of La Pompadour, in sending her despatch to the Governor instead of to himself. “Why had she done that?” said he savagely to himself. “Had she suspected him?”
Bigot could not but conclude that La Pompadour suspected him in this matter. He saw clearly that she would not trust the search after this girl to him, because she knew that Caroline de St. Castin had formerly drawn aside his heart, and that he would have married her but for the interference of the royal mistress. Whatever might have been done before in the way of sending Caroline back to Acadia, it could not be done now, after he had boldly lied before the Governor and the honorable Council.
One thing seemed absolutely necessary, however. The presence of Caroline at Beaumanoir must be kept secret at all hazards, until—until,—and even Bigot, for once, was ashamed of the thoughts which rushed into his mind,—until he could send her far into the wilderness, among savage tribes, to remain there until the search for her was over and the affair forgotten.
This was his first thought. But to send her away into the wilderness was not easy. A matter which in France would excite the gossip and curiosity of a league or two of neighborhood would be carried on the tongues of Indians and voyageurs in the wilds of North America for thousands of miles. To send her away without discovery seemed difficult. To retain her at Beaumanoir in face of the search which he knew would be made by the Governor and the indomitable La Corne St. Luc, was impossible. The quandary oppressed him. He saw no escape from the dilemma; but, to the credit of Bigot be it said, that not for a moment did he entertain a thought of doing injury to the hapless Caroline, or of taking advantage of her lonely condition to add to her distress, merely to save himself.
He fell into a train of sober reflections unusual to him at any time, and scarcely paid any attention to the discussion of affairs at the council-table for the rest of the sitting. He rose hastily at last, despairing to find any outlet of escape from the difficulties which surrounded him in this unlucky affair.
With His Excellency's consent, he said, they would do no more business that day. He was tired, and would rise. Dinner was ready at the Palace, where he had some wine of the golden plant of Ay-Ay, which he would match against the best in the Castle of St. Louis, if His Excellency and the other gentlemen would honor him with their company.
The Council, out of respect to the Intendant, rose at once. The despatches were shoved back to the secretaries, and for the present forgotten in a buzz of lively conversation, in which no man shone to greater advantage than Bigot.
“It is but a fast-day, your Reverence,” said he, accosting the Abbé Piquot, “but if you will come and say grace over my graceless table, I will take it kindly of you. You owe me a visit, you know, and I owe you thanks for the way in which you looked reproof, without speaking it, upon my dispute with the Chevalier La Corne. It was better than words, and showed that you know the world we live in as well as the world you teach us to live for hereafter.”
The Abbé was charmed with the affability of Bigot, and nourishing some hope of enlisting him heartily in behalf of his favorite scheme of Indian policy, left the Castle in his company. The Intendant also invited the Procureur du Roi and the other gentlemen of the law, who found it both politic, profitable, and pleasant to dine at the bountiful and splendid table of the Palace.
The Governor, with three or four most intimate friends, the Bishop, La Corne St. Luc, Rigaud de Vaudreuil, and the Chevalier de Beauharnais, remained in the room, conversing earnestly together on the affair of Caroline de St. Castin, which awoke in all of them a feeling of deepest pity for the young lady, and of sympathy for the distress of her father. They were lost in conjectures as to the quarter in which a search for her might be successful.
“There is not a fort, camp, house, or wigwam, there is not a hole or hollow tree in New France where that poor broken-hearted girl may have taken refuge, or been hid by her seducer, but I will find her out,” exclaimed La Corne St. Luc. “Poor girl! poor hapless girl! How can I blame her? Like Magdalene, if she sinned much, it was because she loved much, and cursed be either man or woman who will cast a stone at her!”
“La Corne,” replied the Governor, “the spirit of chivalry will not wholly pass away while you remain to teach by your example the duty of brave men to fair women. Stay and dine with me, and we will consider this matter thoroughly! Nay, I will not have an excuse to-day. My old friend, Peter Kalm, will dine with us too; he is a philosopher as perfectly as you are a soldier! So stay, and we will have something better than tobacco-smoke to our wine to-day!”
“The tobacco-smoke is not bad either, your Excellency!” replied La Corne, who was an inveterate smoker. “I like your Swedish friend. He cracks nuts of wisdom with such a grave air that I feel like a boy sitting at his feet, glad to pick up a kernel now and then. My practical philosophy is sometimes at fault, to be sure, in trying to fit his theories but I feel that I ought to believe many things which I do not understand.”
The Count took his arm familiarly, and, followed by the other gentlemen, proceeded to the dining-hall, where his table was spread in a style which, if less luxurious than the Intendant's, left nothing to be desired by guests who were content with plenty of good cheer, admirable cooking, adroit service, and perfect hospitality.
Dinner at the table of the Count de la Galissonière was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed of a sound mind in a sound body; and both were well feasted at this hospitable table.
The dishes were despatched in a leisurely and orderly manner, as became men who knew the value of both soul and body, and sacrificed neither to the other. When the cloth was drawn, and the wine-flasks glittered ruby and golden upon the polished board, the old butler came in, bearing upon a tray a large silver box of tobacco, with pipes and stoppers and a wax candle burning, ready to light them, as then the fashion was in companies composed exclusively of gentlemen. He placed the materials for smoking upon the table as reverently as a priest places his biretta upon the altar,—for the old butler did himself dearly love the Indian weed, and delighted to smell the perfume of it as it rose in clouds over his master's table.
“This is a bachelors' banquet, gentlemen,” said the Governor, filling a pipe to the brim. “We will take fair advantage of the absence of ladies to-day, and offer incense to the good Manitou who first gave tobacco for the solace of mankind.”
The gentlemen were all, as it chanced, honest smokers. Each one took a pipe from the stand and followed the Governor's example, except Peter Kalm, who, more philosophically, carried his pipe with him—a huge meerschaum, clouded like a sunset on the Baltic. He filled it deliberately with tobacco, pressed it down with his finger and thumb, and leaning back in his easy chair after lighting it, began to blow such a cloud as the portly Burgomaster of Stockholm might have envied on a grand council night in the old Raadhus of the city of the Goths.
They were a goodly group of men, whose frank, loyal eyes looked openly at each other across the hospitable table. None of them but had travelled farther than Ulysses, and, like him, had seen strange cities and observed many minds of men, and was as deeply read in the book of human experience as ever the crafty king of Ithaca.
The event of the afternoon—the reading of the royal despatches—had somewhat dashed the spirits of the councillors, for they saw clearly the drift of events which was sweeping New France out of the lap of her mother country, unless her policy were totally changed and the hour of need brought forth a man capable of saving France herself and her faithful and imperilled colonies.
“Hark!” exclaimed the Bishop, lifting his hand, “the Angelus is ringing from tower and belfry, and thousands of knees are bending with the simplicity of little children in prayer, without one thought of theology or philosophy. Every prayer rising from a sincere heart, asking pardon for the past and grace for the future, is heard by our Father in heaven; think you not it is so, Herr Kalm?”
The sad foreboding of colonists like La Corne St. Luc did not prevent the desperate struggle that was made for the preservation of French dominion in the next war. Like brave and loyal men, they did their duty to God and their country, preferring death and ruin in a lost cause to surrendering the flag which was the symbol of their native land. The spirit, if not the words, of the old English loyalist was in them:
New France, after gathering a harvest of glory such as America had never seen reaped before, fell at last, through the neglect of her mother country. But she dragged down the nation in her fall, and France would now give the apple of her eye for the recovery, never to be, of “the acres of snow” which La Pompadour so scornfully abandoned to the English.
These considerations lay in the lap of the future, however; they troubled not the present time and company. The glasses were again replenished with wine or watered, as the case might be, for the Count de la Galissonière and Herr Kalm kept Horatian time and measure, drinking only three cups to the Graces, while La Corne St. Luc and Rigaud de Vaudreuil drank nine full cups to the Muses, fearing not the enemy that steals away men's brains. Their heads were helmeted with triple brass, and impenetrable to the heaviest blows of the thyrsus of Bacchus. They drank with impunity, as if garlanded with parsley, and while commending the Bishop, who would drink naught save pure water, they rallied gaily Claude Beauharnais, who would not drink at all.
In the midst of a cheerful concert of merriment, the door of the cabinet opened, and the servant in waiting announced the entrance of Colonel Philibert.
All rose to welcome him. Pierre looked anxious and somewhat discomposed, but the warm grasp of the hands of so many true friends made him glad for the moment.
“Why, Pierre!” exclaimed the Count, “I hope no ill wind has blown you to the city so unexpectedly! You are heartily welcome, however, and we will call every wind good that blows our friends back to us again.”
“It is a cursed wind that blows me back to-day,” replied Philibert, sitting down with an air of disquiet.
“Why, what is the matter, Pierre?” asked the Count. “My honored Lady de Tilly and her lovely niece, are they well?”
“Well, your Excellency, but sorely troubled. The devil has tempted Le Gardeur again, and he has fallen. He is back to the city, wild as a savage and beyond all control.”
“Good God! it will break his sister's heart,” said the Governor, sympathizingly. “That girl would give her life for her brother. I feel for her; I feel for you, too, Pierre.” Philibert felt the tight clasp of the Governor's hand as he said this. He understood well its meaning. “And not less do I pity the unhappy youth who is the cause of such grief to his friends,” continued he.
“Yes, your Excellency, Le Gardeur is to be pitied, as well as blamed. He has been tried and tempted beyond human strength.”
La Corne St. Luc had risen, and was pacing the floor with impatient strides. “Pierre Philibert!” exclaimed he, “where is the poor lad? He must be sought for and saved yet. What demons have assailed him now? Was it the serpent of strong drink, that bites men mad, or the legion of fiends that rattle the dice-box in their ears? Or was it the last temptation, which never fails when all else has been tried in vain—a woman?”
“It was all three combined. The Chevalier de Pean visited Tilly on business of the Intendant—in reality, I suspect, to open a communication with Le Gardeur, for he brought him a message from a lady you wot of, which drove him wild with excitement. A hundred men could not have restrained Le Gardeur after that. He became infatuated with De Pean, and drank and gambled all night and all day with him at the village inn, threatening annihilation to all who interfered with him. Today he suddenly left Tilly, and has come with De Pean to the city.”
“De Pean!” exclaimed La Corne, “the spotted snake! A fit tool for the Intendant's lies and villainy! I am convinced he went not on his own errand to Tilly. Bigot is at the bottom of this foul conspiracy to ruin the noblest lad in the Colony.”
“It may be,” replied Philibert, “but the Intendant alone would have had no power to lure him back. It was the message of that artful siren which has drawn Le Gardeur de Repentigny again into the whirlpool of destruction.”
“Aye, but Bigot set her on him, like a retriever, to bring back the game!” replied La Corne, fully convinced of the truth of his opinion.
“It may be,” answered Philibert; “but my impression is that she has influenced the Intendant, rather than he her, in this matter.”
The Bishop listened with warm interest to the account of Philibert. He looked a gentle reproof, but did not utter it, at La Corne St. Luc and Philibert, for their outspoken denunciation of the Intendant. He knew—none knew better—how deserved it was; but his ecclesiastical rank placed him at the apex of all parties in the Colony, and taught him prudence in expressing or hearing opinions of the King's representatives in the Colony.
“But what have you done, Pierre Philibert,” asked the Bishop, “since your arrival? Have you seen Le Gardeur?”
“No, my Lord; I followed him and the Chevalier to the city. They have gone to the Palace, whither I went and got admittance to the cabinet of the Intendant. He received me in his politest and blandest manner. I asked an interview with Le Gardeur. Bigot told me that my friend unfortunately at that moment was unfit to be seen, and had refused himself to all his city friends. I partly believed him, for I heard the voice of Le Gardeur in a distant room, amid a babble of tongues and the rattle of dice. I sent him a card with a few kind words, and received it back with an insult—deep and damning—scrawled upon it. It was not written, however, in the hand of Le Gardeur, although signed by his name. Read that, your Excellency,” said he, throwing a card to the Count. “I will not repeat the foul expressions it contains. Tell Pierre Philibert what he should do to save his honor and save his friend. Poor, wild, infatuated Le Gardeur never wrote that—never! They have made him sign his name to he knew not what.”
“And, by St. Martin!” exclaimed La Corne, who looked at the card, “some of them shall bite dust for that! As for Le Gardeur, poor boy, overlook his fault—pity him, forgive him. He is not so much to blame, Pierre, as those plundering thieves of the Friponne, who shall find that La Corne St. Luc's sword is longer by half an ell than is good for some of their stomachs!”
“Forbear, dear friends,” said the Bishop; “it is not the way of Christians to talk thus.”
“But it is the way of gentlemen!” replied La Corne, impatiently, “and I always hold that a true gentleman is a true Christian. But you do your duty, my Lord Bishop, in reproving us, and I honor you for it, although I may not promise obedience. David fought a duel with Goliath, and was honored by God and man for it, was he not?”
“But he fought it not in his own quarrel, La Corne,” replied the Bishop gently; “Goliath had defied the armies of the living God, and David fought for his king, not for himself.”
“Confiteor! my Lord Bishop, but the logic of the heart is often truer than the logic of the head, and the sword has no raison d'être, except in purging the world of scoundrels.”
“I will go home now; I will see your Excellency again on this matter,” said Pierre, rising to depart.
“Do, Pierre! my utmost services are at your command,” said the Governor, as the guests all rose too. It was very late.
The hour of departure had arrived; the company all rose, and courteously bidding their host good-night, proceeded to their several homes, leaving him alone with his friend Kalm.
They two at once passed into a little museum of minerals, plants, birds, and animals, where they sat down, eager as two boy-students. The world, its battles, and its politics were utterly forgotten, as they conversed far into the night and examined, with the delight of new discoverers, the beauty and variety of nature's forms that exist in the New World.