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The fire of the English redoubled; but there was laughter in Pondicherry, for the balls did not carry so far; and on the 20th of October, after forty days' siege, Admiral Boscawen put to sea again, driven far away from the coasts by the same tempests which, two years before, had compelled La Bourdonnais to quit Madras. Twice had Dupleix been served in his designs by the winds of autumn.
His head spun with his computations, and he took the lively activity of its emptiness for the substantial work of real talent. He was so preoccupied that he passed the turn leading to his uncle's house in the Rue des Bourdonnais, and had to return upon his steps.
The report of this unhappy conflict, and the color put upon it by the representations of Dupleix, were about to ruin at Paris the rival whom he had vanquished in India. On arriving at Ile de France, amidst that colony which he had found exhausted, ruined, and had endowed with hospitals, arsenals, quays, and fortifications, La Bourdonnais learned that a new governor was already installed there.
He declared that La Bourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that terms to the vanquished on Indian soil could be made by the Governor of Pondicherry and the Governor of Pondicherry alone.
But all at once, recollecting that he had left Florent behind him, he hastily came back. "I live at the end of the Impasse des Bourdonnais," he said rapidly. "My name's written in chalk on the door, Claude Lantier. Come and see the etching of the Rue Pirouette." Then he vanished.
Whilst the French power in India, after having for an instant had the dominion over nearly the whole peninsula, was dying out beneath the incapacity and feebleness of its government, at the moment when the heroic efforts of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Lally were passing into the domain of history, a people decimated by war and famine, exhausted by a twenty years' unequal struggle, was slowly expiring, preserving to the very last its hopes and its patriotic devotion.
When his innocence was at last acknowledged and his liberty restored to him, his health was destroyed, his fortune exhausted by the expenses of the trial. La Bourdonnais died before long, employing the last remnants of his life and of his strength in pouring forth his anger against Dupleix, to whom he attributed all his woes.
He thought the best way not to seem to watch them was to pass them; so he ran on, and passed them at the corner of the Rue Tirechappe, and then hid himself at the end of the Rue des Bourdonnais. The two men went on, their hats slouched over their eyes, and their cloaks drawn up over their faces, with a quick and military step, until they reached the Rue de la Ferronnerie.
Paul mixed his tears with theirs; and nature having thus found relief, a long stupor succeeded the convulsive pangs they had suffered, and gave them a lethargic repose like that of death. "Monsieur de la Bourdonnais sent to apprise me secretly that the corpse of Virginia had been borne to the town by his order, from whence it was to be transferred to the church of the Shaddock Grove.
He had suffered something of the same hard measure that he had himself meted out to his colleague La Bourdonnais; he had been recalled in comparative disgrace to France, with ruined fortunes and ruined hopes, to die, a defeated and degraded man, the shadow of his own great name.
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