The Golden Dog [269]
There was hope for the country. The iniquitous regime of the Intendant, which had pleaded the war as its justification, must close, the Bourgeois thought, under the new conditions of peace. The hateful monopoly of the Grand Company must be overthrown by the constitutional action of the Honnetes Gens, and its condemnation by the Parliament of Paris, to which an appeal would presently be carried, it was hoped, would be secured.
The King was quarreling with the Jesuits. The Molinists were hated by La Pompadour, and he was certain His Majesty would never hold a lit de justice to command the registration of the decrees issued in his name by the Intendant of New France after they had been in form condemned by the Parliament of Paris.
The Bourgeois still reclined very still on his easy chair. He was not asleep. In the daytime he never slept. His thoughts, like the dame's, reverted to Pierre. He meditated the repurchase of his ancestral home in Normandy and the restoration of its ancient honors for his son.
Personal and political enmity might prevent the reversal of his own unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns. He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his family honors, while the all-potent influence of money, the open sesame of every door in the palace of Versailles, would not be spared to advance his just claims.
The crown of the Bourgeois's ambition would be to see Pierre restored to his ancestral chateau as the Count de Philibert, and Amelie as its noble chatelaine, dispensing happiness among the faithful old servitors and vassals of his family, who in all these long years of his exile never forgot their brave old seigneur who had been banished to New France.
His reflections took a practical turn, and he enumerated in his mind the friends he could count upon in France to support, and the enemies who were sure to oppose the attainment of this great object of his ambition. But the purchase of the chateau and lands of Philibert was in his power. Its present possessor, a needy courtier, was deeply in debt, and would be glad, the Bourgeois had ascertained, to sell the estates for such a price as he could easily offer him.
To sue for simple justice in the restoration of his inheritance would be useless. It would involve a life-long litigation. The Bourgeois preferred buying it back at whatever price, so that he could make a gift of it at once to his son, and he had already instructed his bankers in Paris to pay the price asked by its owner and forward to him the deeds, which he was ambitious to present to Pierre and Amelie on the day of their marriage.
The Bourgeois at last looked up from his reverie. Dame Rochelle closed her book, waiting for her master's commands.
"Has Pierre returned, dame?" asked he.
"No, master; he bade me say he was going to accompany Mademoiselle Amelie to Lorette."
"Ah! Amelie had a vow to Our Lady of St. Foye, and Pierre, I warrant, desired to pay half the debt! What think you, dame, of your godson? Is he not promising?" The Bourgeois laughed quietly, as was his wont sometimes.
Dame Rochelle sat a shade more upright in her chair. "Pierre is worthy of Amelie and Amelie of him," replied she, gravely; "never were two out of heaven more fitly matched. If they make vows to the Lady of St. Foye they will pay them as religiously as if they had made them to the Most High, to whom we are commanded to pay our vows!"
"Well, Dame, some turn to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his eyes as herself!"
"Nor deserves to be, master! Theirs is no ordinary affection. If love be the fulfilling of the law, all law is fulfilled in these two, for never did