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Updated: June 14, 2025
"You must not think, Moray," said he, "that I have been indifferent to your fate, but you can not guess how strong the feeling is against you, how obdurate is the Governor, who, if he should appear lax in dealing with you, would give a weapon into Bigot's hands which might ruin him in France one day. I have but this moment come from the Governor, and there seems no way to move him."
It would be so easy to fetch it across; but Voban, as you see, is not a man of absolute conviction. It will be sport, some day, to put Bigot's valet to bed with a broken leg or a fit of spleen, and send Voban to shave him." "Where is Mathilde?" I asked, as though I knew naught of her whereabouts.
Then shut out forever this English captain from your heart, and open its doors to me. To-morrow I will take Vaudreuil's place, put your father in Bigot's, your brother in Ramesay's they are both perfect and capable; I will strengthen the excellent Montcalm's hands in every way, will inspire the people, and cause the English to raise this siege.
Besides the four soldiers who had brought me out, another squad surrounded me, commanded by a young officer whom I recognized as Captain Lancy, the rough roysterer who had insulted me at Bigot's palace over a year ago. I looked with a spirit absorbed upon the world about me, and a hundred thoughts which had to do with man's life passed through my mind.
The same hitch occurred in Montreal, where the same Friend of Liberty had to pay in silver before the cab-drivers consented to accept a fare either from him or from the commissioners. Even the name of Carroll of Carrollton was conjured with in vain. The French Canadians remembered Bigot's bad French paper. Their worst suspicions were being confirmed about the equally bad American paper.
I learned also that Voban had carried word to the Governor of the deed to be done that night; had for a long time failed to get admittance to him, but was at last permitted to tell his story; and Vaudreuil had gone to Bigot's palace to have me hurried to the citadel, and had come just too late.
Why should anyone raise an issue between Quebec and Paris, and above all at such a time, there at Bigot's ball? He refused to be drawn into a controversy, and shrugging his shoulders a little, he turned away without an answer. He heard Boucher's voice raised again, but de Courcelles laughingly waved him down. "Come! come, my Pierre," he said.
All that seemed far away now, yet the words of the song brought it back, and his extraordinary imagination made the scenes at Bigot's ball pass before his eyes again, almost as vivid as reality. Once more he saw the Intendant, his portly figure swaying in the dance, his red face beaming, and once more he beheld the fiery duel in the garden when the hunter dealt with Boucher, the bully and bravo.
There had been a crack in the hill, the water of the river had sapped its foundations, and it needed only this shock to send it down. "And so, as the woman wished: the same hour for herself and the man! And when at last their prison was opened by the hands of Bigot's men, they were found cheek by cheek, bound in the sacred marriage of Death.
Then shut out forever this English captain from your heart, and open its doors to me. To-morrow I will take Vaudreuil's place, put your father in Bigot's, your brother in Ramesay's they are both perfect and capable; I will strengthen the excellent Montcalm's hands in every way, will inspire the people, and cause the English to raise this siege.
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