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"What man have I killed?" "The Bourgeois Philibert, who else?" shouted De Pean with a tone of exultation. Le Gardeur uttered a wailing cry, "The Bourgeois Philibert! have I slain the Bourgeois Philibert? De Pean lies, Angelique," said he, suddenly turning to her. "I would not kill a sparrow belonging to the Bourgeois Philibert! Oh, tell me De Pean lies."
"He is ours now!" said De Pean to Cadet. "He will not again put his head under the wing of the Philiberts!" The two men looked at him, and laughed brutally. "A fair lady whom you know, Cadet, has given him liberty to drink himself to death, and he will do it." "Who is that? Angelique?" asked Cadet.
Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Péan, who thus made a profit of fifty thousand crowns. A few years later his wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs. Madame Péan became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all who sought opportunity to rob the King hastened to pay her their court.
Péan is gone to establish himself at La Chine, and will come back with La Barolon, who goes thither with a husband of hers, bound to the Ohio with Villejoin and Louvigny. The Chevalier de Lévis amuses himself very much here. He and his friends spend all their time with Madame de Lenisse." Under these gayeties and gallantries there were bitter heart-burnings.
"How soon, think you, will brandy kill a man, De Pean?" asked he abruptly, after a pause of silence. "It will never kill you, Le Gardeur, if you take it neat at Master Menut's. It will restore you to life, vigor, and independence of man and woman. I take mine there when I am hipped as you are, Le Gardeur. It is a specific for every kind of ill-fortune, I warrant it will cure and never kill you."
His place was taken by Péan, of whose private character there is little good to be said, but whose conduct as an officer was such that Duquesne calls him a prodigy of talents, resources, and zeal. The subalterns deserve no such praise. They disliked the service, and made no secret of their discontent.
He brooded long and malignantly how to hatch the plot which he fancied was his own, but which had really been conceived in the deeper brain of Bigot, whose few seemingly harmless words had dropped into the ear of De Pean, casually as it were, but which Bigot knew would take root and grow in the congenial soul of his secretary and one day bring forth terrible fruit.
"Le petit Péan" had married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desméloizes, Canadian like himself, well born, and famed for beauty, vivacity, and wit. Bigot, who was near sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Péan was made. His first success seems to have taken him by surprise. He had bought as a speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him by the Intendant.
The ghosts of the untrained boy, Gaston Lafitte, of the sick man, Raoul de Bassempierre, and of Raymond de Neville, who had been murdered at dice, guided his hand, and it was they who had struck the blow. Robert helped him to put on the waistcoat and coat, as a group of men, Bigot, Cadet, and Pean at their head, invaded the garden. "What's this!
"How know you that, Fanchon?" asked Angelique, recovering her usual careless tone. "I overheard them speaking together, my Lady. The Chevalier de Pean said that the Intendant was sick, and would see no one this morning." "Yes, what then?" Angelique was struck with a sudden consciousness of danger in the wind. "Are you sure they said the Intendant was sick?" asked she.
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