"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 fetes 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 Honnetes 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 mechant 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 Honnetes 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 Chateau. 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 Angelique tormented him day and night. He had loved Angelique 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 Angelique 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 Angelique?" 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 Angelique 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 Angelique 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 Angelique 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 Honnetes 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 Angelique, 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 Angelique'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 Honnetes 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 Angelique 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 Angelique would be his beyond all fear of rivals.



CHAPTER XLVI. THE BOURGEOIS PHILIBERT.

The Bourgeois Philibert, after an arduous day's work, was enjoying in his armchair a quiet siesta in the old comfortable parlor of his city home.

The sudden advent of peace had opened the seas to commerce, and a fleet of long-shut-up merchantmen were rapidly loading at the quays of the Friponne as well as at those of the Bourgeois, with the products of the Colony for shipment to France before the closing in of the St. Lawrence by ice. The summer of St. Martin was lingering soft and warm on the edge of winter, and every available man, including the soldiers of the garrison, were busy loading the ships to get them off in time to escape the hard nip of winter.

Dame Rochelle sat near the window, which to-day was open to the balmy air. She was occupied in knitting, and occasionally glancing at a volume of Jurieu's hard Calvinistic divinity, which lay upon the table beside her. Her spectacles reposed upon the open page, where she had laid them down while she meditated, as was her custom, upon knotty points of doctrine, touching free will, necessity, and election by grace; regarding works as a garment of filthy rags, in which publicans and sinners who trusted in them were damned, while in practice the good soul was as earnest in performing them as if she believed her salvation depended exclusively thereupon.

Dame Rochelle had received a new lease of life by the return home of Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his betrothal to Amelie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride completed her happiness.

In her anxiety to discover the tastes and preferences of her young mistress, as she already called her, Dame Rochelle consulted Amelie on every point of her arrangements, finding her own innate sense of the beautiful quickened by contact with that fresh young nature. She was already drawn by that infallible attraction which every one felt in the presence of Amelie.

"Amelie was too good and too fair," the dame said, "to become any man's portion but Pierre Philibert's!"

The dame's Huguenot prejudices melted like wax in her presence, until Amelie almost divided with Grande Marie, the saint of the Cevennes, the homage and blessing of Dame Rochelle.

Those were days of unalloyed delight which she spent in superintending the arrangements for the marriage which had been fixed for the festivities of Christmas.

It was to be celebrated on a scale worthy of the rank of the heiress of Repentigny and of the wealth of the Philiberts. The rich Bourgeois, in the gladness of his heart, threw open all his coffers, and blessed with tears of happiness the money he flung out with both hands to honor the nuptials of Pierre and Amelie.

The Bourgeois was profoundly happy during those few brief days of Indian summer. As a Christian, he rejoiced that the long desolating war was over. As a colonist, he felt a pride that, unequal as had been the struggle, New France remained unshorn of territory, and by its resolute defence had forced respect from even its enemies. In his eager hope he saw commerce revive, and the arts and comforts of peace take the place of war and destruction. The husbandman would now reap for himself the harvest he had sown, and no longer be crushed by the exactions of the Friponne!

There was hope for the country. The iniquitous regime of the Intendant, which had pleaded the war as its justification, must close, the Bourgeois thought, under the new conditions of peace. The hateful monopoly of the Grand Company must be overthrown by the constitutional action of the Honnetes Gens, and its condemnation by the Parliament of Paris, to which an appeal would presently be carried, it was hoped, would be secured.

The King was quarreling with the Jesuits. The Molinists were hated by La Pompadour, and he was certain His Majesty would never hold a lit de justice to command the registration of the decrees issued in his name by the Intendant of New France after they had been in form condemned by the Parliament of Paris.

The Bourgeois still reclined very still on his easy chair. He was not asleep. In the daytime he never slept. His thoughts, like the dame's, reverted to Pierre. He meditated the repurchase of his ancestral home in Normandy and the restoration of its ancient honors for his son.

Personal and political enmity might prevent the reversal of his own unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns. He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his family honors, while the all-potent influence of money, the open sesame of every door in the palace of Versailles, would not be spared to advance his just claims.

The crown of the Bourgeois's ambition would be to see Pierre restored to his ancestral chateau as the Count de Philibert, and Amelie as its noble chatelaine, dispensing happiness among the faithful old servitors and vassals of his family, who in all these long years of his exile never forgot their brave old seigneur who had been banished to New France.

His reflections took a practical turn, and he enumerated in his mind the friends he could count upon in France to support, and the enemies who were sure to oppose the attainment of this great object of his ambition. But the purchase of the chateau and lands of Philibert was in his power. Its present possessor, a needy courtier, was deeply in debt, and would be glad, the Bourgeois had ascertained, to sell the estates for such a price as he could easily offer him.

To sue for simple justice in the restoration of his inheritance would be useless. It would involve a life-long litigation. The Bourgeois preferred buying it back at whatever price, so that he could make a gift of it at once to his son, and he had already instructed his bankers in Paris to pay the price asked by its owner and forward to him the deeds, which he was ambitious to present to Pierre and Amelie on the day of their marriage.

The Bourgeois at last looked up from his reverie. Dame Rochelle closed her book, waiting for her master's commands.

"Has Pierre returned, dame?" asked he.

"No, master; he bade me say he was going to accompany Mademoiselle Amelie to Lorette."

"Ah! Amelie had a vow to Our Lady of St. Foye, and Pierre, I warrant, desired to pay half the debt! What think you, dame, of your godson? Is he not promising?" The Bourgeois laughed quietly, as was his wont sometimes.

Dame Rochelle sat a shade more upright in her chair. "Pierre is worthy of Amelie and Amelie of him," replied she, gravely; "never were two out of heaven more fitly matched. If they make vows to the Lady of St. Foye they will pay them as religiously as if they had made them to the Most High, to whom we are commanded to pay our vows!"

"Well, Dame, some turn to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his eyes as herself!"

"Nor deserves to be, master! Theirs is no ordinary affection. If love be the fulfilling of the law, all law is fulfilled in these two, for never did the elements of happiness mingle more sweetly in the soul of a man and a woman than in Pierre and Amelie!"

"It will restore your youth, dame, to live with Pierre and Amelie," replied the Bourgeois. "Amelie insists on it, not because of Pierre, she says, but for your own sake. She was moved to tears one day, dame, when she made me relate your story."

Dame Rochelle put on her spectacles to cover her eyes, which were fast filling, as she glanced down on the black robe she wore, remembering for whom she wore it.

"Thanks, master. It would be a blessed thing to end the remaining days of my mourning in the house of Pierre and Amelie, but my quiet mood suits better the house of my master, who has also had his heart saddened by a long, long day of darkness and regret."

"Yes, dame, but a bright sunset, I trust, awaits it now. The descending shadow of the dial goes back a pace on the fortunes of my house! I hope to welcome my few remaining years with a gayer aspect and a lighter heart than I have felt since we were driven from France. What would you say to see us all reunited once more in our old Norman home?"

The dame gave a great start, and clasped her thin hands.

"What would I say, master? Oh, to return to France, and be buried in the green valley of the Cote d'Or by the side of him, were next to rising in the resurrection of the just at the last day."

The Bourgeois knew well whom she meant by "him." He reverenced her feeling, but continued the topic of a return to France.

"Well, dame, I will do for Pierre what I would not do for myself. I shall repurchase the old chateau, and use every influence at my command to prevail on the King to restore to Pierre the honors of his ancestors. Will not that be a glorious end to the career of the Bourgeois Philibert?"

"Yes, master, but it may not end there for you. I hear from my quiet window many things spoken in the street below. Men love you so, and need you so, that they will not spare any supplication to bid you stay in the Colony; and you will stay and die where you have lived so many years, under the shadow of the Golden Dog. Some men hate you, too, because you love justice and stand up for the right. I have a request to make, dear master."

"What is that, dame?" asked he kindly, prepared to grant any request of hers.

"Do not go to the market to-morrow," replied she earnestly.

The Bourgeois glanced sharply at the dame, who continued to ply her needles. Her eyes were half closed in a semi-trance, their lids trembling with nervous excitement. One of her moods, rare of late, was upon her, and she continued:

"Oh, my dear master! you will never go to France; but Pierre shall inherit the honors of the house of Philibert!"

The Bourgeois looked up contentedly. He respected, without putting entire faith in Dame Rochelle's inspirations. "I shall be resigned," he said, "not to see France again, if the King's Majesty makes it a condition that he restore to Pierre the dignity, while I give him back the domain of his fathers."

Dame Rochelle clasped her hands hard together and sighed. She spake not, but her lips moved in prayer as if deprecating some danger, or combating some presentiment of evil.

The Bourgeois watched her narrowly. Her moods of devout contemplation sometimes perplexed his clear worldly wisdom. He could scarcely believe that her intuitions were other than the natural result of a wonderfully sensitive and apprehensive nature; still, in his experience he had found that her fancies, if not supernatural, were not unworthy of regard as the sublimation of reason by intellectual processes of which the possessor was unconscious.

"You again see trouble in store for me, dame," said he smiling; "but a merchant of New France setting at defiance the decrees of the Royal Intendant, an exile seeking from the King the restoration of the lordship of Philibert, may well have trouble on his hands."

"Yes, master, but as yet I only see trouble like a misty cloud which as yet has neither form nor color of its own, but only reflects red rays as of a setting sun. No voice from its midst tells me its meaning; I thank God for that. I like not to anticipate evil that may not be averted!"

"Whom does it touch, Pierre or Amelie, me, or all of us?" asked the Bourgeois.

"All of us, master? How could any misfortune do other than concern us all? What it means, I know not. It is now like the wheel seen by the Prophet, full of eyes within and without, like God's providence looking for his elect."

"And finding them?"

"Not yet, master, but ere long,—finding all ere long," replied she in a dreamy manner. "But go not to the market to-morrow."

"These are strange fancies of yours, Dame Rochelle. Why caution me against the market to-morrow? It is the day of St. Martin; the poor will expect me; if I go not, many will return empty away."

"They are not wholly fancies, master. Two gentlemen of the Palace passed to-day, and looking up at the tablet, one wagered the other on the battle to-morrow between Cerberus and the Golden Dog. I have not forgotten wholly my early lessons in classical lore," added the dame.

"Nor I, dame. I comprehend the allusion, but it will not keep me from the market! I will be watchful, however, for I know that the malice of my enemies is at this time greater than ever before."

"Let Pierre go with you, and you will be safe," said the dame half imploringly.

The Bourgeois laughed at the suggestion and began good-humoredly to rally her on her curious gift and on the inconvenience of having a prophetess in his house to anticipate the evil day.

Dame Rochelle would not say more. She knew that to express her fears more distinctly would only harden the resolution of the Bourgeois. His natural courage would make him court the special danger he ought to avoid.

"Master," said she, suddenly casting her eyes in the street, "there rides past one of the gentlemen who wagered on the battle between Cerberus and the Golden Dog."

The Bourgeois had sufficient curiosity to look out. He recognized the Chevalier de Pean, and tranquilly resumed his seat with the remark that "that was truly one of the heads of Cerberus which guards the Friponne, a fellow who wore the collar of the Intendant and was worthy of it. The Golden Dog had nothing to fear from him."

Dame Rochelle, full of her own thoughts, followed with her eyes the retreating figure of the Chevalier de Pean, whom she lost sight of at the first turn, as he rode rapidly to the house of Angelique des Meloises. Since the fatal eve of St. Michael, Angelique had been tossing in a sea of conflicting emotions, sometimes brightened by a wild hope of the Intendant, sometimes darkened with fear of the discovery of her dealings with La Corriveau.

It was in vain she tried every artifice of female blandishment and cunning to discover what was really in the heart and mind of Bigot. She had sounded his soul to try if he entertained a suspicion of herself, but its depth was beyond her power to reach its bottomless darkness, and to the last she could not resolve whether he suspected her or not of complicity with the death of the unfortunate Caroline.

She never ceased to curse La Corriveau for that felon stroke of her mad stiletto which changed what might have passed for a simple death by heartbreak into a foul assassination.

The Intendant she knew must be well aware that Caroline had been murdered; but he had never named it or given the least token of consciousness that such a crime had been committed in his house.

It was in vain that she repeated, with a steadiness of face which sometimes imposed even on Bigot, her request for a lettre de cachet, or urged the banishment of her rival, until the Intendant one day, with a look which for a moment annihilated her, told her that her rival had gone from Beaumanoir and would never trouble her any more.

What did he mean? Angelique had noted every change of muscle, every curve of lip and eyelash as he spake, and she felt more puzzled than before.

She replied, however, with the assurance she could so well assume, "Thanks, Bigot; I did not speak from jealousy. I only asked for justice and the fulfilment of your promise to send her away."

"But I did not send her away. She has gone away, I know not whither,—gone, do you mind me, Angelique? I would give half my possessions to know who helped her to ESCAPE—yes, that is the word—from Beaumanoir."

Angelique had expected a burst of passion from Bigot; she had prepared herself for it by diligent rehearsal of how she would demean herself under every possible form of charge, from bare innuendo to direct impeachment of herself.

Keenly as Bigot watched Angelique, he could detect no sign of confusion in her. She trembled in her heart, but her lips wore their old practised smile. Her eyes opened widely, looking surprise, not guilt, as she shook him by the sleeve or coquettishly pulled his hair, asking if he thought that "she had stolen away his lady-love!"

Bigot though only half deceived, tried to persuade himself of her innocence, and left her after an hour's dalliance with the half belief that she did not really merit the grave suspicions he had entertained of her.

Angelique feared, however, that he was only acting a part. What part? It was still a mystery to her, and likely to be; she had but one criterion to discover his real thoughts. The offer of his hand in marriage was the only test she relied upon to prove her acquittal in the mind of Bigot of all complicity with the death of Caroline.

But Bigot was far from making the desired offer of his hand. That terrible night in the secret chamber of Beaumanoir was not absent from his mind an hour. It could never be forgotten, least of all in the company of Angelique, whom he was judging incessantly, either convicting or acquitting her in his mind as he was alternately impressed by her well-acted innocent gaiety or stung by a sudden perception of her power of deceit and unrivalled assurance.

So they went on from day to day, fencing like two adepts in the art of dissimulation, Bigot never glancing at the murder, and speaking of Caroline as gone away to parts unknown, but, as Angelique observed with bitterness, never making that a reason for pressing his suit; while she, assuming the role of innocence and ignorance of all that had happened at Beaumanoir, put on an appearance of satisfaction, or pretending still to fits of jealousy, grew fonder in her demeanor and acted as though she assumed as a matter of course that Bigot would now fulfill her hopes of speedily making her his bride.

The Intendant had come and gone every day, unchanged in his manner, full of spirits and gallantry, and as warm in his admiration as before; but her womanly instinct told her there was something hidden under that gay exterior.

Bigot accepted every challenge of flirtation, and ought to have declared himself twenty times over, but he did not. He seemed to bring himself to the brink of an avowal only to break into her confidence and surprise the secret she kept so desperately concealed.

Angelique met craft by craft, duplicity by duplicity, but it began to be clear to herself that she had met with her match, and although the Intendant grew more pressing as a lover, she had daily less hope of winning him as a husband.

The thought was maddening. Such a result admitted of a twofold meaning: either he suspected her of the death of Caroline, or her charms, which had never failed before with any man, failed now to entangle the one man she had resolved to marry.

She cursed him in her heart while she flattered him with her tongue, but by no art she was mistress of, neither by fondness nor by coyness, could she extract the declaration she regarded as her due and was indignant at not receiving. She had fairly earned it by her great crime. She had still more fully earned it, she thought, by her condescensions. She regarded Providence as unjust in withholding her reward, and for punishing as a sin that which for her sake ought to be considered a virtue.

She often reflected with regretful looking back upon the joy which Le Gardeur de Repentigny would have manifested over the least of the favors which she had lavished in vain upon the inscrutable Intendant. At such moments she cursed her evil star, which had led her astray to listen to the promptings of ambition and to ask fatal counsel of La Corriveau.

Le Gardeur was now in the swift downward road of destruction. This was the one thing that caused Angelique a human pang. She might yet fail in all her ambitious prospects, and have to fall back upon her first love,—when even that would be too late to save Le Gardeur or to save her.

De Pean rode fast up the Rue St. Louis, not unobservant of the dark looks of the Honnetes Gens or the familiar nods and knowing smiles of the partisans of the Friponne whom he met on the way.

Before the door of the mansion of the Chevalier des Meloises he saw a valet of the Intendant holding his master's horse, and at the broad window, half hid behind the thick curtains, sat Bigot and Angelique engaged in badinage and mutual deceiving, as De Pean well knew.

Her silvery laugh struck his ear as he drew up. He cursed them both; but fear of the Intendant, and a due regard to his own interests, two feelings never absent from the Chevalier De Pean, caused him to ride on, not stopping as he had intended.

He would ride to the end of the Grande Allee and return. By that time the Intendant would be gone, and she would be at liberty to receive his invitation for a ride to-morrow, when they would visit the Cathedral and the market.

De Pean knew enough of the ways of Angelique to see that she aimed at the hand of the Intendant. She had slighted and vilipended himself even, while accepting his gifts and gallantries. But with a true appreciation of her character, he had faith in the ultimate power of money, which represented to her, as to most women, position, dress, jewels, stately houses, carriages, and above all, the envy and jealousy of her own sex.

These things De Pean had wagered on the head of Angelique against the wild love of Le Gardeur, the empty admiration of Bigot, and the flatteries of the troop of idle gentlemen who dawdled around her.

He felt confident that in the end victory would be his, and the fair Angelique would one day lay her hand in his as the wife of Hugues de Pean.

De Pean knew that in her heart she had no love for the Intendant, and the Intendant no respect for her. Moreover, Bigot would not venture to marry the Queen of Sheba without the sanction of his jealous patroness at Court. He might possess a hundred mistresses if he liked, and be congratulated on his bonnes fortunes, but not one wife, under the penalty of losing the favor of La Pompadour, who had chosen a future wife for him out of the crowd of intriguantes who fluttered round her, basking like butterflies in the sunshine of her semi-regal splendor.

Bigot had passed a wild night at the Palace among the partners of the Grand Company, who had met to curse the peace and drink a speedy renewal of the war. Before sitting down to their debauch, however, they had discussed, with more regard to their peculiar interests than to the principles of the Decalogue, the condition and prospects of the Company.

The prospect was so little encouraging to the associates that they were glad when the Intendant bade them cheer up and remember that all was not lost that was in danger. "Philibert would yet undergo the fate of Actaeon, and be torn in pieces by his own dog." Bigot, as he said this, glanced from Le Gardeur to De Pean, with a look and a smile which caused Cadet, who knew its meaning, to shrug his shoulders and inquire of De Pean privately, "Is the trap set?"

"It is set!" replied De Pean in a whisper. "It will spring to-morrow and catch our game, I hope."

"You must have a crowd and a row, mind! this thing, to be safe, must be done openly," whispered Cadet in reply.

"We will have both a crowd and a row, never fear! The new preacher of the Jesuits, who is fresh from Italy and knows nothing about our plot, is to inveigh in the market against the Jansenists and the Honnetes Gens. If that does not make both a crowd and a row, I do not know what will."

"You are a deep devil, De Pean! So deep that I doubt you will cheat yourself yet," answered Cadet gruffly.

"Never fear, Cadet! To-morrow night shall see the Palace gay with illumination, and the Golden Dog in darkness and despair."



CHAPTER XLVII. A DRAWN GAME.

Le Gardeur was too drunk to catch the full drift of the Intendant's reference to the Bourgeois under the metaphor of Actaeon torn in pieces by his own dog. He only comprehended enough to know that something was intended to the disparagement of the Philiberts, and firing up at the idea, swore loudly that "neither the Intendant nor all the Grand Company in mass should harm a hair of the Bourgeois's head!"

"It is the dog!" exclaimed De Pean, "which the Company will hang, not his master, nor your friend his son, nor your friend's friend the old Huguenot witch! We will let them hang themselves when their time comes; but it is the Golden Dog we mean to hang at present, Le Gardeur!"

"Yes! I see!" replied Le Gardeur, looking very hazy. "Hang the Golden Dog as much as you will, but as to the man that touches his master, I say he will have to fight ME, that is all." Le Gardeur, after one or two vain attempts, succeeded in drawing his sword, and laid it upon the table.

"Do you see that, De Pean? That is the sword of a gentleman, and I will run it through the heart of any man who says he will hurt a hair of the head of Pierre Philibert, or the Bourgeois, or even the old Huguenot witch, as you call Dame Rochelle, who is a lady, and too good to be either your mother, aunt, or cater cousin, in any way, De Pean!"

"By St. Picot! You have mistaken your man, De Pean!" whispered Cadet. "Why the deuce did you pitch upon Le Gardeur to carry out your bright idea?"

"I pitched upon him because he is the best man for our turn. But I am right. You will see I am right. Le Gardeur is the pink of morality when he is sober. He would kill the devil when he is half drunk, but when wholly drunk he would storm paradise, and sack and slay like a German ritter. He would kill his own grandfather. I have not erred in choosing him."

Bigot watched this by-play with intense interest. He saw that Le Gardeur was a two-edged weapon just as likely to cut his friends as his enemies, unless skilfully held in hand, and blinded as to when and whom he should strike.

"Come, Le Gardeur, put up your sword!" exclaimed Bigot, coaxingly; "we have better game to bring down to-night than the Golden Dog. Hark! They are coming! Open wide the doors, and let the blessed peacemakers enter!"

"The peacemakers!" ejaculated Cadet; "the cause of every quarrel among men since the creation of the world! What made you send for the women, Bigot?"

"Oh, not to say their prayers, you may be sure, old misogynist, but this being a gala-night at the Palace, the girls and fiddlers were ordered up by De Pean, and we will see you dance fandangoes with them until morning, Cadet."

"No you won't! Damn the women! I wish you had kept them away, that is all. It spoils my fun, Bigot!"

"But it helps the Company's! Here they come!"

Their appearance at the door caused a hubbub of excitement among the gentlemen, who hurried forward to salute a dozen or more women dressed in the extreme of fashion, who came forward with plentiful lack of modesty, and a superabundance of gaiety and laughter.

Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats. Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the women to the Palace.

These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow, which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fetes of the Parc aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of the Intendant.

In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present visit to Angelique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande Allee and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and Angelique still seated at the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of his horse, "with the air of a man in love," as Angelique laughingly remarked to Bigot.

Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her, and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to enter,—that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought. He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in conversation.

Angelique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and became the most faithful of wives.

De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.

"Fellow!" said he to Bigot's groom, "how long has the Intendant been here?"

"All the afternoon, Chevalier," replied the man, respectfully uncovering his head.

"Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?"

"I have no eyes to watch my master," replied the groom; "I do not know."

"Oh!" was the reply of De Pean, as he suddenly reflected that it were best for himself also not to be seen watching his master too closely. He uttered a spurt of ill humor, and continued pulling the mane of his horse through his fingers.

"The Chevalier de Pean is practising patience to-day, Bigot," said she; "and you give him enough time to exercise it."

"You wish me gone, Angelique!" said he, rising; "the Chevalier de Pean is naturally waxing impatient, and you too!"

"Pshaw!" exclaimed she; "he shall wait as long as I please to keep him there."

"Or as long as I stay. He is an accommodating lover, and will make an equally accommodating husband for his wife's friend some day!" remarked Bigot laughingly.

Angelique's eyes flashed out fire, but she little knew how true a word Bigot had spoken in jest. She could have choked him for mentioning her in connection with De Pean, but remembering she was now at his mercy, it was necessary to cheat and cozen this man by trying to please him.

"Well, if you must go, you must, Chevalier! Let me tie that string," continued she, approaching him in her easy manner. The knot of his cravat was loose. Bigot glanced admiringly at her slightly flushed cheek and dainty fingers as she tied the loose ends of his rich steinkirk together.

"'Tis like love," said she, laughingly; "a slip-knot that looks tied until it is tried."

She glanced at Bigot, expecting him to thank her, which he did with a simple word. The thought of Caroline flashed over his mind like lightning at that moment. She, too, as they walked on the shore of the Bay of Minas had once tied the string of his cravat, when for the first time he read in her flushed cheek and trembling fingers that she loved him. Bigot, hardy as he was and reckless, refrained from touching the hand or even looking at Angelique at this moment.

With the quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angelique more than he had done.

"Thanks for tying the knot, Angelique," said he at length. "It is a hard knot, mine, is it not, both to tie and to untie?"

She looked at him, not pretending to understand any meaning he might attach to his words. "Yes, it is a hard knot to tie, yours, Bigot, and you do not seem particularly to thank me for my service. Have you discovered the hidden place of your fair fugitive yet?" She said this just as he turned to depart. It was the feminine postscript to their interview.

Bigot's avoidance of any allusion to the death of Caroline was a terrible mark of suspicion; less in reality, however, than it seemed.

Bigot, although suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators of the murder. He knew it had not been Angelique herself in person. He had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light penetrated the dark mystery.

"I do not believe she has left Beaumanoir, Bigot," continued Angelique; "or if she has, you know her hiding-place. Will you swear on my book of hours that you know not where she is to be found?"

He looked fixedly at Angelique for a moment, trying to read her thoughts, but she had rehearsed her part too often and too well to look pale or confused. She felt her eyebrow twitch, but she pressed it with her fingers, believing Bigot did not observe it, but he did.

"I will swear and curse both, if you wish it, Angelique," replied he. "Which shall it be?"

"Well, do both,—swear at me and curse the day that I banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny for your sake, Francois Bigot! If the lady be gone, where is your promise?"

Bigot burst into a wild laugh, as was his wont when hard-pressed. He had not, to be sure, made any definite promise to Angelique, but he had flattered her with hopes of marriage never intended to be realized.

"I keep my promises to ladies as if I had sworn by St. Dorothy," replied he.

"But your promise to me, Bigot! Will you keep it, or do worse?" asked she, impatiently.

"Keep it or do worse! What mean you, Angelique?" He looked up in genuine surprise. This was not the usual tone of women towards him.

"I mean that nothing will be better for Francois Bigot than to keep his promise, nor worse than to break it, to Angelique des Meloises!" replied she, with a stamp of her foot, as was her manner when excited.

She thought it safe to use an implied threat, which at any rate might reach the thought that lay under his heart like a centipede under a stone which some chance foot turns over.

But Bigot minded not the implied threat. He was immovable in the direction she wished him to move. He understood her allusion, but would not appear to understand it, lest worse than she meant should come of it.

"Forgive me, Angelique!" said he, with a sudden change from frigidity to fondness. "I am not unmindful of my promises; there is nothing better to myself than to keep them, nothing worse than to break them. Beaumanoir is now without reproach, and you can visit it without fear of aught but the ghosts in the gallery."

Angelique feared no ghosts, but she did fear that the Intendant's words implied a suggestion of one which might haunt it for the future, if there were any truth in tales.

"How can you warrant that, Bigot?" asked she dubiously.

"Because Pierre Philibert and La Corne St. Luc have been with the King's warrant and searched the chateau from crypt to attic, without finding a trace of your rival."

"What, Chevalier, searched the Chateau of the Intendant?"

"Par bleu! yes, I insisted upon their doing so; not, however, till they had gone through the Castle of St. Louis. They apologized to me for finding nothing. What did they expect to find, think you?"

"The lady, to be sure! Oh, Bigot," continued she, tapping him with her fan, "if they would send a commission of women to search for her, the secret could not remain hid."

"No, truly, Angelique! If you were on such a commission to search for the secret of her."

"Well, Bigot, I would never betray it, if I knew it," answered she, promptly.

"You swear to that, Angelique?" asked he, looking full in her eyes, which did not flinch under his gaze.

"Yes; on my book of hours, as you did!" said she.

"Well, there is my hand upon it, Angelique. I have no secret to tell respecting her. She has gone, I cannot tell WHITHER."

Angelique gave him her hand on the lie. She knew he was playing with her, as she with him, a game of mutual deception, which both knew to be such. And yet they must, circumstanced as they were, play it out to the end, which end, she hoped, would be her marriage with this arch-deceiver. A breach of their alliance was as dangerous as it would be unprofitable to both.

Bigot rose to depart with an air of gay regret at leaving the company of Angelique to make room for De Pean, "who," he said, "would pull every hair out of his horse's mane if he waited much longer."

"Your visit is no pleasure to you, Bigot," said she, looking hard at him. "You are discontented with me, and would rather go than stay!"

"Well, Angelique, I am a dissatisfied man to-day. The mysterious disappearance of that girl from Beaumanoir is the cause of my discontent. The defiant boldness of the Bourgeois Philibert is another. I have heard to-day that the Bourgeois has chartered every ship that is to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go helter-skelter to the devil."

"You only flatter me and do not mean it!" said she, as he took her hand with an over-empressement as perceptible to her as was his occasional coldness.

"By all the saints! I mean it," said he. But he did not deceive her. His professions were not all true, but how far they were true was a question that again and again tormented her, and set her bosom palpitating as he left her room with his usual courteous salute.

"He suspects me! He more than suspects me!" said she to herself as Bigot passed out of the mansion and mounted his horse to ride off. "He would speak out plainer if he dared avow that that woman was in truth the missing Caroline de St. Castin!" thought she with savage bitterness.

"I have a bit in your mouth there, Francois Bigot, that will forever hold you in check. That missing demoiselle, no one knows as you do where she is. I would give away every jewel I own to know what you did with the pretty piece of mortality left on your hands by La Corriveau."

Thus soliloquized Angelique for a few moments, looking gloomy and beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.

With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, Angelique sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.

The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely noticed among the crowd of Angelique's admirers. "He was only food for powder," she had laughingly remarked upon one occasion, when a duel on her account seemed to be impending between De Pean and the young Captain de Tours; and beyond doubt Angelique would have been far prouder of him shot for her sake in a duel than she was of his living attentions.

She was not sorry, however, that he came in to-day after the departure of the Intendant. It kept her from her own thoughts, which were bitter enough when alone. Moreover, she never tired of any amount of homage and admiration, come from what quarter it would.

De Pean stayed long with Angelique. How far he opened the details of the plot to create a riot in the market-place that afternoon can only be conjectured by the fact of her agreeing to ride out at the hour designated, which she warmly consented to do as soon as De Pean informed her that Le Gardeur would be there and might be expected to have a hand in the tumult raised against the Golden Dog. The conference over, Angelique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it.



CHAPTER XLVIII. "IN GOLD CLASPS LOCKS IN THE GOLDEN STORY."

Love is like a bright river when it springs from the fresh fountains of the heart. It flows on between fair and ever-widening banks until it reaches the ocean of eternity and happiness.

The days illuminated with the brightest sunshine are those which smile over the heads of a loving pair who have found each other, and with tender confessions and mutual avowals plighted their troth and prepared their little bark for sailing together down the changeful stream of time.

So it had been through the long Indian summer days with Pierre Philibert and Amelie de Repentigny. Since the blessed hour they plighted their troth in the evening twilight upon the shore of the little lake of Tilly, they had showed to each other, in the heart's confessional, the treasures of true human affection, holy in the eyes of God and man.

When Amelie gave her love to Pierre, she gave it utterly and without a scruple of reservation. It was so easy to love Pierre, so impossible not to love him; nay, she remembered not the time it was otherwise, or when he had not been first and last in her secret thoughts as he was now in her chaste confessions, although whispered so low that her approving angel hardly caught the sound as it passed into the ear of Pierre Philibert.

A warm, soft wind blew gently down the little valley of the Lairet, which wound and rippled over its glossy brown pebbles, murmuring a quiet song down in its hollow bed. Tufts of spiry grass clung to its steep banks, and a few wild flowers peeped out of nooks among the sere fallen leaves that lay upon the still greensward on each shore of the little rivulet.

Pierre and Amelie had been tempted by the beauty of the Indian summer to dismount and send their horses forward to the city in charge of a servant while they walked home by way of the fields to gather the last flowers of autumn, which Amelie said lingered longest in the deep swales of the Lairet.

A walk in the golden sunshine with Amelie alone amid the quiet fields, free to speak his love, and she to hear him and be glad, was a pleasure Pierre had dreamt of but never enjoyed since the blessed night when they plighted their troth to each other by the lake of Tilly.

The betrothal of Pierre and Amelie had been accepted by their friends on both sides as a most fitting and desirable match, but the manners of the age with respect to the unmarried did not admit of that freedom in society which prevails at the present day.

They had seldom met save in the presence of others, and except for a few chance but blissful moments, Pierre had not been favored with the company all to himself of his betrothed.

Amelie was not unmindful of that when she gave a willing consent to-day to walk with him along the banks of the Lairet, under the shady elms, birches, and old thorns that overhung the path by the little stream.

"Pierre," said she smiling, "our horses are gone and I must now walk home with you, right or wrong. My old mistress in the Convent would shake her head if she heard of it, but I care not who blames me to-day, if you do not, Pierre!"

"Who can blame you, darling? What you do is ever wisest and best in my eyes, except one thing, which I will confess now that you are my own, I cannot account for—"

"I had hoped, Pierre, there was no exception to your admiration; you are taking off my angel's wings already, and leaving me a mere woman!" replied she merrily.

"It is a woman I want you to be, darling, a woman not faultless, but human as myself, a wife to hold to me and love me despite my faults, not an angel too bright and too perfect to be my other self."

"Dear Pierre," said she, pressing his arm, "I will be that woman to you, full enough of faults to satisfy you. An angel I am not and cannot be, nor wish to be until we go together to the spirit-land. I am so glad I have a fault for which you can blame me, if it makes you love me better. Indeed I own to many, but what is that one fault, Pierre, which you cannot account for?"

"That you should have taken a rough soldier like me, Amelie! That one so fair and perfect in all the graces of womanhood, with the world to choose from, should have permitted Pierre Philibert to win her loving heart of hearts."

Amelie looked at him with a fond expression of reproach. "Does that surprise you, Pierre? You rough soldier, you little know, and I will not tell you, the way to a woman's heart; but for one blindfolded by so much diffidence to his own merits, you have found the way very easily! Was it for loving you that you blamed me? What if I should recall the fault?" added she, laughing.

Pierre raised her hand to his lips, kissing devotedly the ring he had placed upon her finger. "I have no fear of that, Amelie! The wonder to me is that you could think me worthy of the priceless trust of your happiness."

"And the wonder to me," replied she, "is that your dear heart ever burdened itself with my happiness. I am weak in myself, and only strong in my resolution to be all a loving wife should be to you, my Pierre! You wonder how you gained my love? Shall I tell you? You never gained it; it was always yours, before you formed a thought to win it! You are now my betrothed, Pierre Philibert, soon to be my husband; I would not exchange my fortune to become the proudest queen that ever sat on the throne of France."

Amelie was very happy to-day. The half-stolen delight of walking by the side of Pierre Philibert was enhanced by the hope that the fatal spell that bound Le Gardeur to the Palace had been broken, and he would yet return home, a new man.

Le Gardeur had only yesterday, in a moment of recollection of himself and of his sister, addressed a note to Amelie, asking pardon for his recent neglect of home, and promising to come and see them on St. Martin's day.

He had heard of her betrothal to Pierre. It was the gladdest news, he said, that had ever come to him in his life. He sent a brother's blessing upon them both, and claimed the privilege of giving away her hand to the noblest man in New France, Pierre Philibert.

Amelie showed the precious note to Pierre. It only needed that to complete their happiness for the day. The one cloud that had overshadowed their joy in their approaching nuptials was passing away, and Amelie was prouder in the anticipation that Le Gardeur, restored to himself, sober, and in his right mind, was to be present at her wedding and give her away, than if the whole Court of France, with thousands of admiring spectators, were to pay her royal honors.

They sauntered on towards a turn of the stream where a little pool lay embayed like a smooth mirror reflecting the grassy bank. Amelie sat down under a tree while Pierre crossed over the brook to gather on the opposite side some flowers which had caught her eye.

"Tell me which, Amelie!" exclaimed he, "for they are all yours; you are Flora's heiress, with right to enter into possession of her whole kingdom!"

"The water-lilies, Pierre, those, and those, and those; they are to deck the shrine of Notre Dame des Victoires. Aunt has a vow there, and to-morrow it must be paid; I too."

He looked up at her with eyes of admiration. "A vow! Let me share in its payment, Amelie," said he.

"You may, but you shall not ask me what it is. There now, do not wet yourself further! You have gathered more lilies than we can carry home."

"But I have my own thank-offering to make to Notre Dame des Victoires, for I think I love God even better for your sake, Amelie."

"Fie, Pierre, say not that! and yet I know what you mean. I ought to reprove you, but for your penance you shall gather more lilies, for I fear you need many prayers and offerings to expiate,—" she hesitated to finish the sentence.

"My idolatry, Amelie," said he, completing her meaning.

"I doubt it is little better, Pierre, if you love me as you say. But you shall join in my offering, and that will do for both. Please pull that one bunch of lilies and no more, or Our Lady of Victory will judge you harder than I do."

Pierre stepped from stone to stone over the gentle brook, gathering the golden lilies, while Amelie clasped her hands and silently thanked God for this happy hour of her life.

She hardly dared trust herself to look at Pierre except by furtive glances of pride and affection; but as his form and features were reflected in a shadow of manly beauty in the still pool, she withdrew not her loving gaze from his shadow, and leaning forward towards his image,

"A thousand times she kissed him in the brook, Across the flowers with bashful eyelids down!"

Amelie had royally given her love to Pierre Philibert. She had given it without stint or measure, and with a depth and strength of devotion of which more facile natures know nothing.

Pierre, with his burden of golden lilies, came back over the brook and seated himself beside her; his arm encircled her, and she held his hand firmly clasped in both of hers.

"Amelie," said he, "I believe now in the power of fate to remove mountains of difficulty and cast them into the sea. How often, while watching the stars wheel silently over my head as I lay pillowed on a stone, while my comrades slumbered round the campfires, have I repeated my prayer for Amelie de Repentigny! I had no right to indulge a hope of winning your love; I was but a rough soldier, very practical, and not at all imaginative. 'She would see nothing in me,' I said; and still I would not have given up my hope for a kingdom."

"It was not so hard, after all, to win what was already yours, Pierre, was it?" said she with a smile and a look of unutterable sweetness; "but it was well you asked, for without asking you would be like one possessing a treasure of gold in his field without knowing it, although it was all the while there and all his own. But not a grain of it would you have found without asking me, Pierre!"

"But having found it I shall never lose it again, darling!" replied he, pressing her to his bosom.

"Never, Pierre, it is yours forever!" replied she, her voice trembling with emotion. "Love is, I think, the treasure in heaven which rusts not, and which no thief can steal."

"Amelie," said he after a few minutes' silence, "some say men's lives are counted not by hours but by the succession of ideas and emotions. If it be so, I have lived a century of happiness with you this afternoon. I am old in love, Amelie!"

"Nay, I would not have you old in love, Pierre! Love is the perennial youth of the soul. Grand'mere St. Pierre, who has been fifty years an Ursuline, and has now the visions which are promised to the old in the latter days, tells me that in heaven those who love God and one another grow ever more youthful; the older the more beautiful! Is not that better than the philosophers teach, Pierre?"

He drew her closer, and Amelie permitted him to impress a kiss on each eyelid as she closed it; suddenly she started up.

"Pierre," said she, "you said you were a soldier and so practical. I feel shame to myself for being so imaginative and so silly. I too would be practical if I knew how. This was to be a day of business with us, was it not, Pierre?"

"And is it not a day of business, Amelie? or are we spending it like holiday children, wholly on pleasure? But after all, love is the business of life, and life is the business of eternity,—we are transacting it to-day, Amelie! I never was so seriously engaged as at this moment, nor you either, darling; tell the truth!"

Amelie pressed her hands in his. "Never, Pierre, and yet I cannot see the old brown woods of Belmont rising yonder upon the slopes of St. Foye without remembering my promise, not two hours old, to talk with you to-day about the dear old mansion."

"That is to be the nest of as happy a pair of lovers as ever went to housekeeping; and I promised to keep soberly by your side as I am doing," said he, mischievously twitching a stray lock of her dark hair, "and talk with you on the pretty banks of the Lairet about the old mansion."

"Yes, Pierre, that was your promise, if I would walk this way with you. Where shall we begin?"

"Here, Amelie," replied he, kissing her fondly; "now the congress is opened! I am your slave of the wonderful lamp, ready to set up and pull down the world at your bidding. The old mansion is your own. It shall have no rest until it becomes, within and without, a mirror of the perfect taste and fancy of its lawful mistress."

"Not yet, Pierre. I will not let you divert me from my purpose by your flatteries. The dear old home is perfect, but I must have the best suite of rooms in it for your noble father, and the next best for good Dame Rochelle. I will fit them up on a plan of my own, and none shall say me nay; that is all the change I shall make."

"Is that all? and you tried to frighten the slave of the lamp with the weight of your commands. A suite of rooms for my father, and one for good Dame Rochelle! Really, and what do you devote to me, Amelie?"

"Oh, all the rest, with its mistress included, for the reason that what is good enough for me is good enough for you, Pierre," said she gaily.

"You little economist! Why, one would say you had studied housekeeping under Madame Painchaud."

"And so I have. You do not know what a treasure I am, Pierre," said she, laughing merrily. "I graduated under mes tantes in the kitchen of the Ursulines, and received an accessit as bonne menagere which in secret I prize more than the crown of honor they gave me."

"My fortune is made, and I am a rich man for life," exclaimed Pierre, clapping his hands; "why, I shall have to marry you like the girls of Acadia, with a silver thimble on your finger and a pair of scissors at your girdle, emblems of industrious habits and proofs of a good housewife!"

"Yes, Pierre, and I will comb your hair to my own liking. Your valet is a rough groom," said she, taking off his hat and passing her finger through his thick, fair locks.

Pierre, although always dressed and trimmed like a gentleman, really cared little for the petit maitre fashions of the day. Never had he felt a thrill of such exquisite pleasure as when Amelie's hands arranged his rough hair to her fancy.

"My blessed Amelie!" said he with emotion, pressing her finger to his lips, "never since my mother combed my boyish locks has a woman's hand touched my hair until now."

Leaning her head fondly against the shoulder of Pierre, she bade him repeat to her again, to her who had not forgotten one word or syllable of the tale he had told her before, the story of his love.

She listened with moistened eyelids and heaving bosom as he told her again of his faithfulness in the past, his joys in the present, and his hopes in the future. She feared to look up lest she should break the charm, but when he had ended she turned to him passionately and kissed his lips and his hands, murmuring, "Thanks, my Pierre, I will be a true and loving wife to you!"

He strained her to his bosom, and held her fast, as if fearful to let her go.

"Her image at that last embrace, Ah! little thought he 'twas the last!"

Dim twilight crept into the valley. It was time to return home. Pierre and Amelie, full of joy in each other, grateful for the happiest day in their lives, hopeful of to-morrow and many to-morrows after it, and mercifully blinded to what was really before them, rose from their seat under the great spreading elm. They slowly retraced the path through the meadow leading to the bridge, and reentered the highway which ran to the city, where Pierre conducted Amelie home.



CHAPTER XLIX. THE MARKET-PLACE ON ST. MARTIN'S DAY.

The market-place then as now occupied the open square lying between the great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. The latter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through its wide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues of ancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of the reverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule of their order, which rarely permitted them to go singly.

The market-place itself was lively this morning with the number of carts and stalls ranged on either side of the bright little rivulet which ran under the old elms that intersected the square, the trees affording shade and the rivulet drink for man and beast.

A bustling, loquacious crowd of habitans and citizens, wives and maid-servants, were buying, selling, exchanging compliments, or complaining of hard times. The marketplace was full, and all were glad at the termination of the terrible war, and hopeful of the happy effect of peace in bringing plenty back again to the old market.

The people bustled up and down, testing their weak purses against their strong desires to fill their baskets with the ripe autumnal fruits and the products of field and garden, river and basse cour, which lay temptingly exposed in the little carts of the marketmen and women who on every side extolled the quality and cheapness of their wares.

There were apples from the Cote de Beaupre, small in size but impregnated with the flavor of honey; pears grown in the old orchards about Ange Gardien, and grapes worthy of Bacchus, from the Isle of Orleans, with baskets of the delicious bilberries that cover the wild hills of the north shore from the first wane of summer until late in the autumn.

The drain of the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but Indians and hunters took their places for the nonce with an abundance of game of all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly during the years that men had taken to killing Bostonnais and English instead of deer and wild turkeys.

Fish was in especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits still rested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed metaphorically with money in their mouths.

There were piles of speckled trout fit to be eaten by popes and kings, taken in the little pure lakes and streams tributary to the Montmorency; lordly salmon that swarmed in the tidal weirs along the shores of the St. Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the fisher who drew them up from their rich river-beds.

There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the seigniories for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the pride of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eat tartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cry of their frugal mother as she spread it thin as if it were gold-leaf: "Mes enfants, take care of the butter!"

The Commissaries of the Army, in other words the agents of the Grand Company, had swept the settlements far and near of their herds, and the habitans soon discovered that the exposure for sale in the market of the products of the dairy was speedily followed by a visit from the purveyors of the army, and the seizure of their remaining cattle.

Roots and other esculents of field and garden were more plentiful in the market, among which might have been seen the newly introduced potato,—a vegetable long despised in New France, then endured, and now beginning to be liked and widely cultivated as a prime article of sustenance.

At the upper angle of the square stood a lofty cross or Holy Rood, overtopping the low roofs of the shops and booths in its neighborhood. About the foot of the cross was a platform of timber raised a few feet from the ground, giving a commanding view of the whole market-place.

A crowd of habitans were gathered round this platform listening, some with exclamations of approval, not unmingled on the part of others with sounds of dissent, to the fervent address of one of the Jesuit Fathers from the College, who with crucifix in hand was preaching to the people upon the vices and backslidings of the times.

Father Glapion, the Superior of the order in New France, a grave, saturnine man, and several other fathers in close black cassocks and square caps, stood behind the preacher, watching with keen eyes the faces of the auditory as if to discover who were for and who were against the sentiments and opinions promulgated by the preacher.

The storm of the great Jansenist controversy, which rent the Church of France from top to bottom, had not spared the Colony, where it had early caused trouble; for that controversy grew out of the Gallican liberties of the national Church and the right of national participation in its administrations and appointments. The Jesuits ever fiercely contested these liberties; they boldly set the tiara above the crown, and strove to subordinate all opinions of faith, morals, education, and ecclesiastical government to the infallible judgment of the Pope alone.

The Bishop and clergy of New France had labored hard to prevent the introduction of that mischievous controversy into the Colony, and had for the most part succeeded in reserving their flocks, if not themselves, from its malign influence. The growing agitation in France, however, made it more difficult to keep down troublesome spirits in the Colony, and the idea got abroad, not without some foundation, that the Society of Jesus had secret commercial relations with the Friponne. This report fanned the smouldering fires of Jansenism into a flame visible enough and threatening enough to the peace of the Church.

The failure and bankruptcy of Father Vallette's enormous speculations in the West Indies had filled France with bad debts and protested obligations which the Society of Jesus repudiated, but which the Parliament of Paris ordered them to pay. The excitement was intense all over the Kingdom and the Colonies. On the part of the order it became a fight for existence.

They were envied for their wealth, and feared for their ability and their power. The secular clergy were for the most part against them. The Parliament of Paris, in a violent decree, had declared the Jesuits to have no legal standing in France. Voltaire and his followers, a growing host, thundered at them from the one side. The Vatican, in a moment of inconsistency and ingratitude, thundered at them from the other. They were in the midst of fire, and still their ability and influence over individual consciences, and especially over the female sex, prolonged their power for fifteen years longer, when Louis XV., driven to the wall by the Jansenists, issued his memorable decree declaring the Jesuits to be rebels, traitors, and stirrers up of mischief. The King confiscated their possessions, proscribed their persons, and banished them from the kingdom as enemies of the State.

Padre Monti, an Italian newly arrived in the Colony, was a man very different from the venerable Vimont and the Jogues and the Lallements, who had preached the Evangel to the wild tribes of the forest, and rejoiced when they won the crown of martyrdom for themselves.

Monti was a bold man in his way, and ready to dare any bold deed in the interests of religion, which he could not dissociate from the interests of his order. He stood up, erect and commanding, upon the platform under the Holy Rood, while he addressed with fiery eloquence and Italian gesticulation the crowd of people gathered round him.

The subject he chose was an exciting one. He enlarged upon the coming of Antichrist and upon the new philosophy of the age, the growth of Gallicanism in the Colony, with its schismatic progeny of Jansenists and Honnetes Gens, to the discouragement of true religion and the endangering of immortal souls.

His covert allusions and sharp innuendoes were perfectly understood by his hearers, and signs of dissentient feeling were rife among the crowd. Still, the people continued to listen, on the whole respectfully; for, whatever might be the sentiment of Old France with respect to the Jesuits, they had in New France inherited the profound respect of the colonists, and deserved it.

A few gentlemen, some in military, some in fashionable civil attire, strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outside of it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform, listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it away in their retentive memories, which would reproduce every word of it when they sat round the fireside in the coming winter evenings.

One or two Recollets stood at a modest distance from the crowd, still as statues, with their hands hid in the sleeves of their gray gowns, shaking their heads at the arguments, and still more at the invectives of the preacher; for the Recollets were accused, wrongfully perhaps, of studying the five propositions of Port Royal more than beseemed the humble followers of St. Francis to do, and they either could not or would not repel the accusation.

"Padre Monti deserves the best thanks of the Intendant for this sermon," remarked the Sieur d'Estebe to Le Mercier, who accompanied him.

"And the worst thanks of His Excellency the Count! It was bold of the Italian to beard the Governor in that manner! But La Galissoniere is too great a philosopher to mind a priest!" was the half-scoffing reply of Le Mercier.

"Is he? I do not think so, Le Mercier. I hate them myself, but egad! I am not philosophic enough to let them know it. One may do so in Paris, but not in New France. Besides, the Jesuits are just now our fast friends, and it does not do to quarrel with your supporters."

"True, D'Estebe! We get no help from the Recollets. Look yonder at Brothers Ambrose and Daniel! They would like to tie Padre Monti neck and heels with the cords of St. Francis, and bind him over to keep the peace towards Port Royal; but the gray gowns are afraid of the black robes. Padre Monti knew they would not catch the ball when he threw it. The Recollets are all afraid to hurl it back."

"Not all," was the reply; "the Reverend Father de Berey would have thrown it back with a vengeance. But I confess, Le Mercier, the Padre is a bold fellow to pitch into the Honnetes Gens the way he does. I did not think he would have ventured upon it here in the market, in face of so many habitans, who swear by the Bourgeois Philibert."

The bold denunciations by the preacher against the Honnetes Gens and against the people's friend and protector, the Bourgeois Philibert, caused a commotion in the crowd of habitans, who began to utter louder and louder exclamations of dissent and remonstrance. A close observer would have noticed angry looks and clenched fists in many parts of the crowd, pressing closer and closer round the platform.

The signs of increasing tumult in the crowd did not escape the sharp eyes of Father Glapion, who, seeing that the hot-blooded Italian was overstepping the bounds of prudence in his harangue, called him by name, and with a half angry sign brought his sermon suddenly to a close. Padre Monti obeyed with the unquestioning promptness of an automaton. He stopped instantly, without rounding the period or finishing the sentence that was in his mouth.

His flushed and ardent manner changed to the calmness of marble as, lifting up his hands with a devout oremus, he uttered a brief prayer and left the puzzled people to finish his speech and digest at leisure his singular sermon.



CHAPTER L. "BLESSED THEY WHO DIE DOING THY WILL."

It was the practice of the Bourgeois Philibert to leave his counting-room to walk through the market-place, not for the sake of the greetings he met, although he received them from every side, nor to buy or sell on his own account, but to note with quick, sympathizing eye the poor and needy and to relieve their wants.

Especially did he love to meet the old, the feeble, the widow, and the orphan, so numerous from the devastation of the long and bloody war.

The Bourgeois had another daily custom which he observed with unfailing regularity. His table in the House of the Golden Dog was set every day with twelve covers and dishes for twelve guests, "the twelve apostles," as he gayly used to say, "whom I love to have dine with me, and who come to my door in the guise of poor, hungry, and thirsty men, needing meat and drink. Strangers to be taken in, and sick wanting a friend." If no other guests came he was always sure of the "apostles" to empty his table, and, while some simple dish sufficed for himself, he ordered the whole banquet to be given away to the poor. His choice wines, which he scarcely permitted himself to taste, were removed from his table and sent to the Hotel Dieu, the great convent of the Nuns Hospitalieres, for the use of the sick in their charge, while the Bourgeois returned thanks with a heart more content than if kings had dined at his table.