The Hunters of the Hills Part 26

"I would," said Robert frankly. "I'm looking forward to the dinner with the Intendant. Will you be there, Captain de Galisonniere?"

"Yes, and I'm glad you've accepted. Mr. Willet was right when he said it was wisdom to go. The Intendant is the most powerful man in Canada.

'Tis said that the Governor General, the Marquis Duquesne, will return to France before long, and hence he lets a part of his authority slip into the hands of Monsieur Bigot. You understand the dual nature of our government in Canada. The Governor General is the immediate personal representative of the King, but the Intendant is supreme over the courts, finance, commerce and all the civil affairs of the country. So a mighty power is lodged in his hands and it's also true here, as well as elsewhere, that he who holds the purse holds more than the sword."

"Will Colonel de Courcelles and Captain de Jumonville be there?"

continued Robert.

"Undoubtedly. They belong to the military arm, of course, but they are both favorites of Bigot, and they neglect no opportunity to strengthen their position with him. Be careful what you say before them."

Robert thanked him for his caution, although it was not needed, as he had already resolved to be very wary in the presence of de Courcelles and Jumonville, and the Onondaga also made a mental note of it, knowing that de Courcelles was willing to plot in the dusk with a savage Ojibway.

De Galisonniere did not stay long, and after his departure Robert and his friends reconsidered their determination, deciding that it was best to brave Quebec and whatever it should have to offer in the full light of day. The hunter's apprehensions that a quarrel might be forced upon them were not justified, as Canadian and French politeness held true, and they were received only with curiosity and interest.

They gazed again at the great stone buildings and also took a brief view of the Intendant's palace, where they expected to dine in the evening.

It was a palace in extent, but not in beauty, a great rambling building of both timber and masonry, with a green lawn and flower gardens near by. It was said that Bigot and his predecessors had spent huge sums on the interior decoration, but that Robert expected soon to see for himself.

Returning to the Inn of the Eagle late in the afternoon, they began to array themselves for Bigot's dinner, not wishing the Bostonnais to appear at a disadvantage before the _n.o.blesse_ of Quebec. Monsieur Berryer sent them a barber, Gaston, who not only shaved the two white faces, but who powdered and arranged their queues, and also manicured their nails and gave their coats and waistcoats a rakish set, which he a.s.sured them was quite the latest mode in Paris. Robert took all his advice. He was very particular about his attire, knowing that however much the jealous might criticize fine dress it always had its effect.

The hunter watched Robert as he and Gaston arranged the new Paris styles with a look that was almost paternal. The fine youth had exceeded Willet's best hopes. Tall, straight, frank and open, he had the sound mind in the sound body which is the sum of excellence, and the hunter was glad to see him particular. It was a part of his heritage, and became him.

They were not to leave the Inn of the Eagle until after dusk, and Willet suggested that they should not start until late, as they could walk to the palace in a few minutes. But Robert said boldly that they would not walk. It was fitting for the messengers of the Governor of New York to ride and he would have Monsieur Berryer to call a caleche. Willet a.s.sented with a laugh.

"You're right, Robert," he said, "but I ride so little in carriages that I didn't think of it."

The night was rather dark, but when the three in the caleche approached the palace they saw many men holding torches, and many people back of them watching. The entertainments of Francois Bigot were famous in Quebec for lavish splendor, and the uninvited usually came in numbers to see the guests go in.

"Be on your guard tonight, Robert," whispered Willet. "This is a society to which you're not used, although I'll not deny that you could soon learn it. But the French think we English, whether English English or American English, are inferior in wit and quickness to themselves, and there may be some attempts at baiting the bear before we leave."

Robert felt his breath coming a little more quickly, and in the dusk, Willet did not see the glow that appeared in his eyes. They might try to "bait the bear" but he would be ready. The new powers that he had found in himself not only accepted the challenge, but craved it. He was conscious that he was not deficient in wit and quickness himself, and if any follower of Francois Bigot, or if the great Bigot himself tried to make sport of him he might find instead that the ruffler was furnishing sport for the Bostonnais. So it was with a beating heart but no apprehension that he alighted from the caleche with his friends, and went into the palace to meet the Intendant.

The interior of the great building was a singular mixture of barbaric and civilized splendor, the American forests and the factories of France alike being drawn upon for its furnishings. The finest of silken tapestries and the rarest of furs often hung close together. Beyond the anterooms was a large hall in which the chosen guests danced while the people might look on from galleries that surrounded it. These people, who were not so good as the guests, could dance as much as they pleased in a second hall set aside exclusively for their use. In another and more secluded but large room all kinds of games of chance to which Bigot and his followers were devoted were in progress. In the huge dining-room the table was set for forty persons, the usual number, until the war came, when it was reduced to twenty, and Bigot gave a dinner there nearly every evening, unless he was absent from Quebec.

Robert felt as soon as he entered the palace that he had come into a strange, new, exotic atmosphere, likely to prove intoxicating to the young, and he remembered the hunter's words of warning. Yet his spirit responded at once to the splendor and the call of a gayer and more gorgeous society than any he had ever known. Wealth and great houses existed even then in New York and upon occasion their owners made full use of both, but there was a restraint about the Americans, the English and the Dutch. Their display was often heavy and always decorous, and in Quebec he felt for the first time the heedless gayety of the French, when the Bourbon monarchy had pa.s.sed its full bloom, and already was in its brilliant decay. Truly, they could have carved over the doorway, "Leave all fear and sorrow behind, ye who enter here."

There were lights everywhere, flaming from tall silver candlesticks, and uniforms, mostly in white and silver, or white with black or violet facings, were thick in the rooms. Ladies, too, were present, in silk or satin billowing in many a fold, their powdered hair rolled high in the style made fashionable by Madame Jeanne Poisson de Pompadour. From an inner room came the music of a band softly playing French songs or airs from the Florentine opera. The air was charged with odors of perfume.

It _was_ intoxicating, and yet it was pleasant. No, "pleasant" was not the word, it was alluring, it played upon the senses, it threw a glow over the rooms and the people, and the youth saw everything through a tawny mist that heightened and deepened the colors. He was glad that he had come. Nor was "glad" the word either. Seeing what he now saw and knowing what he now knew, he would have blamed himself bitterly had he stayed away.

"Welcome, Mr. Lennox, my brave and generous opponent of the morning,"

said a voice, and, looking through the tawny mist, he saw the man whom he had fought and spared, Count Jean de Mezy, in a wonderful coat, waistcoat and knee breeches of white satin, heavily embroidered, white silk stockings, and low white shoes with great silver buckles, and a small gold-hilted sword hanging at his thigh. The cheeks, a trifle too fat, were mottled again, but his manner like his costume was silken. One would have thought that he and not Robert was the victor in that trial of skill by the St. Louis gate.

"Welcome, Mr. Lennox," he said again in a tone that showed no malice.

"The Intendant's ball will be all the more brilliant for the presence of yourself and your friends. What a splendid figure the young Onondaga chief makes!"

Tayoga bowed to the compliment, which was rather broad but true, and de Mezy ran on:

"We are accustomed here to the presence of Indian chiefs. We French have known how to win the trust and friendship of the warriors and we ask them to our parlors and our tables as you English do not do, although I will confess that the Iroquois. .h.i.therto have come into Canada as enemies and not as friends."

"Quebec was once the Stadacona of the Ganeagaono, known to you as the Mohawks," said Tayoga in his deep musical voice, "and there is no record that they ever gave or sold it to Onontio."

De Mezy was embarra.s.sed for a moment, but he recovered himself quickly and laughed.

"You have us there!" he cried, "but it was long, long ago, when Cartier came to Quebec. Times change and ownerships change with them. We can't roll back the past."

Tayoga said no more, content to remind the French at intervals that a brother nation of the Hodenosaunee still a.s.serted its t.i.tle to Quebec.

"You are not the only member of the great red race present," said de Mezy to Tayoga. "We have a chief from the far west, a splendid type of the forest man. What size! What strength! What a mien! By my faith, he would make a stir in Paris!"

"Tandakora, the Ojibway!" said Robert.

"Yes, but how did you know?"

"We have met him--more than once. We have had dealings with him, and we may have more. He seems to be interested in what we're doing, and hence we're never surprised when we see him."

De Mezy looked puzzled, but at that moment de Courcelles and de Jumonville, wearing uniforms of white and silver, came forward to add their greeting to those of the count. They were all courtesy and the words dropped from their lips like honey, but Robert felt that their souls were not like the soul of de Galisonniere, and that they could not be counted among the _honnetes gens_. But the three Frenchmen were ready now to present the three travelers to Monsieur Francois Bigot, Intendant of Canada, great and nearly all powerful, and Robert judged too that they had made no complaint against his friends and himself.

Bigot was standing near the entrance to the private dancing room, and about him was a numerous company, including ladies, among them the wife of Pean, to whom the gossip of the time gave great influence with him, and a certain Madame Marin and her sister, Madame de Rigaud, and others.

As the three approached under the conduct of the three Frenchmen the group opened out, and they were presented in order, Robert first.

The youth was still under the influence of the lights, the gorgeous rooms and the brilliant company, but he gazed with clear eyes and the most eager interest at Bigot, whose reputation had spread far, even in the British colonies. He saw a man of middle years, portly, his red face sprinkled with many pimples, probably from high living, not handsome and perhaps at first repellent, but with an expression of vigor and ease, and an open, frank manner that, at length, attracted. His dress was much like de Mezy's, but finer perhaps.

Such was the singular man who had so much to do with the wrecking of New France, a strange compound of energy and the love of luxury, lavish with hospitality, an untiring worker, a gambler, a profligate, a thief of public funds, he was also kindly, gracious and devoted to his friends. A strange bundle of contradictions and disjointed morals, he represented in the New World the glittering decadence that marked the French monarchy at home. Now he was smiling as de Mezy introduced Robert with smooth words.

"Mr. Robert Lennox of Albany and New York," he said, "the brilliant young swordsman of whom I spoke to you, the one who disarmed me this morning, but who was too generous to take my life."

Bigot's smiling gaze rested upon Robert, who was conscious, however, that there was much penetration behind the smile. The Intendant would seek to read his mind, and perhaps to learn the nature of the letters he brought, before they were delivered to their rightful owner, the Marquis Duquesne. Quebec was the home of intrigue, and the Intendant's palace was the heart of it, but if Robert's pulse beat fast it was with antic.i.p.ation and not with fear.

"It was fortune more than skill," he said. "The Count de Mezy credits me with too much knowledge of the sword."

"No," said Bigot, laughing, "Jean wouldn't do that. He'd credit you with all you have, and no more. Jean, like the rest of us, doesn't relish a defeat, do you, Jean?"

De Mezy reddened, but he forced a laugh.

"I suppose that n.o.body does!" he replied, "but when I suffer one I try to make the best of it."

"That's an honest confession, Jean," said Bigot, "and you'll feel better for making it."

He seemed now to Robert bluff, genial, all good nature, and the youth stood on one side, while Willet and Tayoga were presented in their turn.

Bigot looked very keenly at the Onondaga, and the answering gaze was fierce and challenging. Robert saw that Tayoga was not moved by the splendor, the music and the perfumed air, and that he did not forget for an instant that this gay Quebec of the French was the Stadacona of the Mohawks, a great brother nation of the Hodenosaunee.

Bigot's countenance fell a little as he met the intensely hostile gaze, but in a moment he recovered himself and began to pay compliments to Willet and the Iroquois. Robert felt the charm of his manner and saw why he was so strong with a great body of the French in New France. Then his eyes wandered to the others who stood near like courtiers around a king, and he noticed that foremost among them was a man of mean appearance and presuming manner, none other, he soon learned, than the notorious Joseph Cadet, confederate of Bigot, in time to become Commissary General of New France, the son of a Quebec butcher, who had begun life as a pilot boy, and who was now one of the most powerful men in those regions of the New World that paid allegiance to the House of Bourbon. Near him stood Pean, the Town Mayor of Quebec, a soldier of energy, but deep in corrupt bargains with Cadet, and just beyond Pean was his partner, p.e.n.i.sseault, and near them were their wives, of whom scandal spoke many a true word, and beyond them were the Commissary of Marine, Varin, a Frenchman, small and insignificant of appearance, the Intendant's secretary, Deschenaux, the son of a shoemaker at Quebec, Cadet's trusted clerk, Corp.r.o.n and Maurin, a humpback.

A strange and varied company, one of the strangest ever gathered in any outlying capital of a diseased and dying monarchy. Robert, although he knew that it was corrupt and made a mockery of many things that he had been taught to reverence, did not yet understand how deadly was the poison that flowed in the veins of this society. At present, he saw only the glow and the glitter. All these people were connected closely. The Canadians intermarrying extensively were a great family, and the Frenchmen were bound together by the powerful tie, a common interest.

"Don't believe all you see, Robert," whispered Willet. "You're seeing the surface, and it's hollow, hollow! I tell you!"

"But we have nothing like it at home," said Robert. "We're lucky to come."