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When La Salle, who had been obliged by disasters to go back to Fort Frontenac during the building of the ship, again appeared above the falls in midsummer, the Griffin was warped up into the placid lake, and on the 7th of August anchor was lifted and the fateful voyage was begun. Nor did a throng of proud Thessalians or of "transported demi-gods" stand round to cheer them off.
As soon as the fleet came to an anchorage, just below the town, Phipps sent a messenger to present a letter to Frontenac, asking him to surrender the fort. This envoy was led blindfolded up the heights and brought into the presence of the governor, who was awaiting him in the fort, surrounded by a number of officers dressed in the brilliant uniform of the French army.
"Frontenac was a great man," he said, "but he has been gathered long since to his fathers. Great men themselves make mistakes. There was bad blood between Onontio and the Hodenosaunee, but if the blood is bad must it remain bad forever? The evil was gone before you and I were born, Tayoga, and now the blood flows pure and clean in the veins of both the French and the Hodenosaunee."
Marquette was too ill to go farther; and he remained at Green Bay to recruit his strength, while Jolliet hastened to Quebec to report to Frontenac the results of his expedition.
At seven o'clock the French troops, accoutred at their best, were all on parade, drawn up in files before the governor's tent, where the conference was to take place. Outside the tent itself large canopies of canvas had been erected to shelter the Iroquois from the sun, while Frontenac, in his most brilliant military costume, assumed all the state he could.
Schuyler parried the question by a grotesque exaggeration, and answered that the earl could bring about a hundred thousand men into the field. Frontenac pretended to believe him, and returned with careless gravity that he had always heard so.
It was an exploit which resembles Denonville's attack upon the Senecas, with the added interest that Frontenac was in his seventy-seventh year when he thus carried the war into the heart of the enemy's country.
Frontenac had grown to manhood in the age of Richelieu, a period when fierceness was a special badge of the aristocracy. Thus duelling became so great a menace to the public welfare that it was made punishable with death; despite which it flourished to such an extent that one nobleman, the Chevalier d'Andrieux, enjoyed the reputation of having slain seventy-two antagonists.
'After taking Fort Duquesne, said he, 'I am to proceed to Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days: and then I can see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.
Madame de Sevigne's son-in-law, the Comte de Grignan, was an unsuccessful candidate for it in competition with Frontenac. For some years both the king and Colbert had been giving real attention to the affairs of Canada. The Far West was opening up; and since 1665 the population of the colony had more than doubled. To Frontenac the governorship of Canada meant promotion.
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