“What is amiss with him this morning?” asked Boileau in a whisper, nodding his head in the direction of the royal group. “I fear that his sleep has not improved his temper.”
“He becomes harder and harder to amuse,” said Racine, shaking his head. “I am to be at Madame De Maintenon’s room at three to see whether a page or two of the Phedre may not work a change.”
“My friend,” said the architect, “do you not think that madame herself might be a better consoler than your Phedre?”
“Madame is a wonderful woman. She has brains, she has heart, she has tact — she is admirable.”
“And yet she has one gift too many.”
“And that is?”
“Age.”
“Pooh! What matter her years when she can carry them like thirty? What an eye! What an arm! And besides, my friends, he is not himself a boy any longer.”
“Ah, but that is another thing.”
“A man’s age is an incident, a woman’s a calamity.”
“Very true. But a young man consults his eye, and an older man his ear. Over forty, it is the clever tongue which wins; under it, the pretty face.”
“Ah, you rascal! Then you have made up your mind that five-and-forty years with tact will hold the field against nine-and-thirty with beauty. Well, when your lady has won, she will doubtless remember who were the first to pay court to her.”
“But I think that you are wrong, Racine.”
“Well, we shall see.”
“And if you are wrong—”
“Well, what then?”
“Then it may be a little serious for you.”
“And why?”
“The Marquise de Montespan has a memory.”
“Her influence may soon be nothing more.”
“Do not rely too much upon it, my friend. When the Fontanges came up from Provence, with her blue eyes and her copper hair, it was in every man’s mouth that Montespan had had her day. Yet Fontanges is six feet under a church crypt, and the marquise spent two hours with the king last week. She has won once, and may again.”
“Ah, but this is a very different rival. This is no slip of a country girl, but the cleverest woman in France.”
“Pshaw, Racine, you know our good master well, or you should, for you seem to have been at his elbow since the days of the Fronde. Is he a man, think you, to be amused forever by sermons, or to spend his days at the feet of a lady of that age, watching her at her tapestry-work, and fondling her poodle, when all the fairest faces and brightest eyes of France are as thick in his salons as the tulips in a Dutch flower-bed? No, no, it will be the Montespan, or if not she, some younger beauty.”
“My dear Boileau, I say again that her sun is setting. Have you not heard the news?”
“Not a word.”
“Her brother, Monsieur de Vivonne, has been refused the entre.”
“Impossible!”
“But it is a fact.”
“And when?”
“This very morning.”
“From whom had you it?”
“From De Catinat, the captain of the guard. He had his orders to bar the way to him.”
“Ha! then the king does indeed mean mischief. That is why his brow is so cloudy this morning, then. By my faith, if the marquise has the spirit with which folk credit her, he may find that it was easier to win her than to slight her.”
“Ay; the Mortemarts are no easy race to handle.”
“Well, heaven send him a safe way out of it! But who is this gentleman? His face is somewhat grimmer than those to which the court is accustomed. Ha! the king catches sight of him, and Louvois beckons to him to advance. By my faith, he is one who would be more at his ease in a tent than under a painted ceiling.”
The stranger who had attracted Racine’s attention was a tall thin man, with a high aquiline nose, stern fierce gray eyes, peeping out from under tufted brows, and a countenance so lined and marked by age, care, and stress of weather that it stood out amid the prim courtier faces which surrounded it as an old hawk might in a cage of birds of gay plumage. He was clad in a sombre-coloured suit which had become usual at court since the king had put aside frivolity and Fontanges, but the sword which hung from his waist was no fancy rapier, but a good brass-hilted blade in a stained leather-sheath, which showed every sign of having seen hard service. He had been standing near the door, his black-feathered beaver in his hand, glancing with a half-amused, half-disdainful expression at the groups of gossips around him, but at the sign from the minister of war he began to elbow his way forward, pushing aside in no very ceremonious fashion all who barred his passage.
Louis possessed in a high degree the royal faculty of recognition. “It is years since I have seen him, but I remember his face well,” said he, turning to his minister. “It is the Comte de Frontenac, is it not?”
“Yes, sire,” answered Louvois; “it is indeed Louis de Buade, Comte de
Frontenac, and formerly governor of Canada.”
“We are glad to see you once more at our lever,” said the monarch, as the old nobleman stooped his head, and kissed the white hand which was extended to him. “I hope that the cold of Canada has not chilled the warmth of your loyalty.”
“Only death itself, sire, would be cold enough for that.”
“Then I trust that it may remain to us for many long years. We would thank you for the care and pains which you have spent upon our province, and if we have recalled you, it is chiefly that we would fain hear from your own lips how all things go there. And first, as the affairs of God take precedence of those of France, how does the conversion of the heathen prosper?”
“We cannot complain, sire. The good fathers, both Jesuits and Recollets, have done their best, though indeed they are both rather ready to abandon the affairs of the next world in order to meddle with those of this.”
“What say you to that, father?” asked Louis, glancing, with a twinkle of the eyes, at his Jesuit confessor.
“I say, sire, that when the affairs of this world have a bearing upon those of the next, it is indeed the duty of a good priest, as of every other good Catholic, to guide them right.”
“That is very true, sire,” said De Frontenac, with an angry flush upon his swarthy cheek; “but as long as your Majesty did me the honour to intrust those affairs no my own guidance, I would brook no interference in the performance of my duties, whether the meddler were clad in coat or cassock.”
“Enough, sir, enough!” said Louis sharply. “I had asked you about the missions.”
“They prosper, sire. There are Iroquois at the Sault and the mountain, Hurons at Lorette, and Algonquins along the whole river cotes from Tadousac in the East to Sault la Marie, and even the great plains of the Dakotas, who have all taken the cross as their token. Marquette has passed down the river of the West to preach among the Illinois, and Jesuits have carried the Gospel to the warriors of the Long House in their wigwams at Onondaga.”
“I may add, your Majesty,” said Pere la Chaise, “that in leaving the truth there, they have too often left their lives with it.”
“Yes, sire, it is very true,” cried De Frontenac cordially. “Your Majesty has many brave men within your domains, but none braver than these. They have come back up the Richelieu River from the Iroquois villages with their nails gone, their fingers torn out, a cinder where their eye should be, and the scars of the pine splinters as thick upon their bodies as the fleurs-de-lis on yonder curtain. Yet, with a month of nursing from the good Ursulines, they have used their remaining eye to guide them back to the Indian country once more, where even the dogs have been frightened at their haggled faces and twisted limbs.”
“And you have suffered this?” cried Louis hotly. “You allow these infamous assassins to live?”
“I have asked for troops, sire.”
“And I have sent some.”
“One regiment.”
“The Carignan-Saliere. I have no better in my service.
“But more is needed, s
ire.”
“There are the Canadians themselves. Have you not a militia? Could you not raise force enough to punish these rascally murderers of God’s priests? I had always understood that you were a soldier.”
De Frontenac’s eyes flashed, and a quick answer seemed for an instant to tremble upon his lips, but with an effort the fiery old man restrained himself. “Your Majesty will learn best whether I am a soldier or not,” said he, “by asking those who have seen me at Seneffe, Mulhausen, Salzbach, and half a score of other places where I had the honour of upholding your Majesty’s cause.”
“Your services have not been forgotten.”
“It is just because I am a soldier and have seen something of war that I know how hard it is to penetrate into a country much larger than the Lowlands, all thick with forest and bog, with a savage lurking behind every tree, who, if he has not learned to step in time or to form line, can at least bring down the running caribou at two hundred paces, and travel three leagues to your one. And then when you have at last reached their villages, and burned their empty wigwams and a few acres of maize fields, what the better are you then? You can but travel back again to your own land with a cloud of unseen men lurking behind you, and a scalp-yell for every straggler. You are a soldier yourself, sire. I ask you if such a war is an easy task for a handful of soldiers, with a few censitaires straight from the plough, and a troop of coureurs-de-bois whose hearts are all the time are with their traps and their beaver-skins.”
“No, no; I am sorry if I spoke too hastily,” said Louis. “We shall look into the matter at our council.”
“Then it warms my heart to hear you say so,” cried the old governor. “There will be joy down the long St. Lawrence, in white hearts and in red, when it is known that their great father over the waters has turned his mind towards them.”
“And yet you must not look for too much, for Canada has been a heavy cost to us, and we have many calls in Europe.”
“Ah, sire, I would that you could see that great land. When your Majesty has won a campaign over here, what may come of it? Glory, a few miles of land Luxembourg, Strassburg, one more city in the kingdom; but over there, with a tenth of the cost and a hundredth part of the force, there is a world ready to your hand. It is so vast, sire, so rich, so beautiful! Where are there such hills, such forests, such rivers? And it is all for us if we will but take it. Who is there to stand in our way? A few nations of scattered Indians and a thin strip of English farmers and fishermen. Turn your thoughts there, sire, and in a few years you would be able to stand upon your citadel at Quebec, and to say there is one great empire here from the snows of the North to the warm Southern Gulf, and from the waves of the ocean to the great plains beyond Marquette’s river, and the name of this empire is France, and her king is Louis, and her flag is the fleurs-de-lis.”
Louis’s cheek had flushed at this ambitious picture, and he had leaned forward in his chair, with flashing eyes, but he sank back again as the governor concluded.
“On my word, count,” said he, “you have caught something of this gift of
Indian eloquence of which we have heard. But about these English folk.
They are Huguenots, are they not?”
“For the most part. Especially in the North.”
“Then it might be a service to Holy Church to send them packing. They have a city there, I am told. New — New — How do they call it?”
“New York, sire. They took it from the Dutch.”
“Ah, New York. And have I not heard of another? Bos — Bos—”
“Boston, sire.”
“That is the name. The harbours might be of service to us. Tell me, now, Frontenac,” lowering his voice so that his words might be audible only to the count, Louvois, and the royal circle, “what force would you need to clear these people out? One regiment, two regiments, and perhaps a frigate or two?”
But the ex-governor shook his grizzled head. “You do not know them, sire,” said he. “They are stern folk, these. We in Canada, with all your gracious help, have found it hard to hold our own. Yet these men have had no help, but only hindrance, with cold and disease, and barren lands, and Indian wars, but they have thriven and multiplied until the woods thin away in front of them like ice in the sun, and their church bells are heard where but yesterday the wolves were howling. They are peaceful folk, and slow to war, but when they have set their hands to it, though they may be slack to begin, they are slacker still to cease. To put New England into your Majesty’s hands, I would ask fifteen thousand of your best troops and twenty ships of the line.”
Louis sprang impatiently from his chair, and caught up his cane. “I wish,” said he, “that you would imitate these people who seem to you to be so formidable, in their excellent habit of doing things for themselves. The matter may stand until our council. Reverend father, it has struck the hour of chapel, and all else may wait until we have paid out duties to heaven.” Taking a missal from the hands of an attendant, he walked as fast as his very high heels would permit him, towards the door, the court forming a lane through which he might pass, and then closing up behind to follow him in order of precedence.
CHAPTER III.
THE HOLDING OF THE DOOR.
Whilst Louis had been affording his court that which he had openly stated to be the highest of human pleasures — the sight of the royal face — the young officer of the guard outside had been very busy passing on the titles of the numerous applicants for admission, and exchanging usually a smile or a few words of greeting with them, for his frank, handsome face was a well-known one at the court. With his merry eyes and his brisk bearing, he looked like a man who was on good terms with Fortune. Indeed, he had good cause to be so, for she had used him well. Three years ago he had been an unknown subaltern bush-fighting with Algonquins and Iroquois in the wilds of Canada. An exchange had brought him back to France and into the regiment of Picardy, but the lucky chance of having seized the bridle of the king’s horse one winter’s day in Fontainebleau when the creature was plunging within a few yards of a deep gravel-pit had done for him what ten campaigns might have failed to accomplish. Now as a trusted officer of the king’s guard, young, gallant, and popular, his lot was indeed an enviable one. And yet, with the strange perversity of human nature, he was already surfeited with the dull if magnificent routine of the king’s household, and looked back with regret to the rougher and freer days of his early service. Even there at the royal door his mind had turned away from the frescoed passage and the groups of courtiers to the wild ravines and foaming rivers of the West, when suddenly his eyes lit upon a face which he had last seen among those very scenes.
“Ah, Monsieur de Frontenac!” he cried. “You cannot have forgotten me.”
“What! De Catinat! Ah, it is a joy indeed to see a face from over the water! But there is a long step between a subaltern in the Carignan and a captain in the guards. You have risen rapidly.”
“Yes; and yet I may be none the happier for it. There are times when I would give it all to be dancing down the Lachine Rapids in a birch canoe, or to see the red and the yellow on those hill-sides once more at the fall of the leaf.”
“Ay,” sighed De Frontenac. “You know that my fortunes have sunk as yours have risen. I have been recalled, and De la Barre is in my place. But there will be a storm there which such a man as he can never stand against. With the Iroquois all dancing the scalp-dance, and Dongan behind them in New York to whoop them on, they will need me, and they will find me waiting when they send. I will see the king now, and try if I cannot rouse him to play the great monarch there as well as here. Had I but his power in my hands, I should change the world’s history.”
“Hush! No treason to the captain of the guard,” cried De Catinat, laughing, while the stern old soldier strode past him into the king’s presence.
A gentleman very richly dressed in black and silver had come up during this short conversation, and advanced, as the door opened, with the assured air of a man whose rights are b
eyond dispute. Captain de Catinat, however, took a quick step forward, and barred him off from the door.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 365