The Golden Dog [72]
in the New World, she will people the valley of the Ohio and secure forever her supremacy in America!
"But our forts far and near must be preserved in the meantime. We must not withdraw from one foot of French territory. Quebec must be walled, and made safe against all attack by land or water. I therefore will join the Council in a respectful remonstrance to the Count de Maurepas, against the inopportune despatches just received from His Majesty. I trust the Royal Intendant will favor the Council now with his opinion on this important matter, and I shall be happy to have the cooperation of His Excellency in measures of such vital consequence to the Colony and to France."
The Governor sat down, after courteously motioning the Intendant to rise and address the Council.
The Intendant hated the mention of peace. His interests, and the interests of his associates of the Grand Company, were all involved in the prolongation of the war.
War enabled the Grand Company to monopolize the trade and military expenditure of New France. The enormous fortunes its members made, and spent with such reckless prodigality, would by peace be dried up in their source; the yoke would be thrown off the people's neck, trade would again free.
Bigot was far-sighted enough to see that clamors would be raised and listened to in the leisure of peace. Prosecutions for illegal exactions might follow, and all the support of his friends at Court might not be able to save him and his associates from ruin--perhaps punishment.
The parliaments of Paris, Rouen, and Brittany still retained a shadow of independence. It was only a shadow, but the fury of Jansenism supplied the lack of political courage, and men opposed the Court and its policy under pretence of defending the rights of the Gallican Church and the old religion of the nation.
Bigot knew he was safe so long as the Marquise de Pompadour governed the King and the kingdom. But Louis XV. was capricious and unfaithful in his fancies; he had changed his mistresses, and his policy with them, many times, and might change once more, to the ruin of Bigot and all the dependents of La Pompadour.
Bigot's letters by the Fleur-de-Lis were calculated to alarm him. A rival was springing up at Court to challenge La Pompadour's supremacy: the fair and fragile Lange Vaubernier had already attracted the King's eye, and the courtiers versed in his ways read the incipient signs of a future favorite.
Little did the laughing Vaubernier forsee the day when, as Madame du Barry, she would reign as Dame du Palais, after the death of La Pompadour. Still less could she imagine that in her old age, in the next reign, she would be dragged to the guillotine, filling the streets of Paris with her shrieks, heard above the howlings of the mob of the Revolution: "Give me life! life! for my repentance! Life! to devote it to the Republic! Life! for the surrender of all my wealth to the nation!" And death, not life, was given in answer to her passionate pleadings.
These dark days were yet in the womb of the future, however. The giddy Vaubernier was at this time gaily catching at the heart of the King, but her procedure filled the mind of Bigot with anxiety: the fall of La Pompadour would entail swift ruin upon himself and associates. He knew it was the intrigues of this girl which had caused La Pompadour suddenly to declare for peace in order to watch the King more surely in his palace. Therefore the word peace and the name of Vaubernier were equally odious to Bigot, and he was perplexed in no small degree how to act.
Moreover, be it confessed that, although a bad man and a corrupt statesman, Bigot was a Frenchman, proud of the national success and glory. While robbing her treasures with one hand, he was ready with his sword in the other to risk life and all in her defence. Bigot was bitterly opposed to English supremacy in North America. The loss of Louisbourg, though much his fault, stung him to the quick, as a triumph of the national enemy; and in those final days of New France, after the
"But our forts far and near must be preserved in the meantime. We must not withdraw from one foot of French territory. Quebec must be walled, and made safe against all attack by land or water. I therefore will join the Council in a respectful remonstrance to the Count de Maurepas, against the inopportune despatches just received from His Majesty. I trust the Royal Intendant will favor the Council now with his opinion on this important matter, and I shall be happy to have the cooperation of His Excellency in measures of such vital consequence to the Colony and to France."
The Governor sat down, after courteously motioning the Intendant to rise and address the Council.
The Intendant hated the mention of peace. His interests, and the interests of his associates of the Grand Company, were all involved in the prolongation of the war.
War enabled the Grand Company to monopolize the trade and military expenditure of New France. The enormous fortunes its members made, and spent with such reckless prodigality, would by peace be dried up in their source; the yoke would be thrown off the people's neck, trade would again free.
Bigot was far-sighted enough to see that clamors would be raised and listened to in the leisure of peace. Prosecutions for illegal exactions might follow, and all the support of his friends at Court might not be able to save him and his associates from ruin--perhaps punishment.
The parliaments of Paris, Rouen, and Brittany still retained a shadow of independence. It was only a shadow, but the fury of Jansenism supplied the lack of political courage, and men opposed the Court and its policy under pretence of defending the rights of the Gallican Church and the old religion of the nation.
Bigot knew he was safe so long as the Marquise de Pompadour governed the King and the kingdom. But Louis XV. was capricious and unfaithful in his fancies; he had changed his mistresses, and his policy with them, many times, and might change once more, to the ruin of Bigot and all the dependents of La Pompadour.
Bigot's letters by the Fleur-de-Lis were calculated to alarm him. A rival was springing up at Court to challenge La Pompadour's supremacy: the fair and fragile Lange Vaubernier had already attracted the King's eye, and the courtiers versed in his ways read the incipient signs of a future favorite.
Little did the laughing Vaubernier forsee the day when, as Madame du Barry, she would reign as Dame du Palais, after the death of La Pompadour. Still less could she imagine that in her old age, in the next reign, she would be dragged to the guillotine, filling the streets of Paris with her shrieks, heard above the howlings of the mob of the Revolution: "Give me life! life! for my repentance! Life! to devote it to the Republic! Life! for the surrender of all my wealth to the nation!" And death, not life, was given in answer to her passionate pleadings.
These dark days were yet in the womb of the future, however. The giddy Vaubernier was at this time gaily catching at the heart of the King, but her procedure filled the mind of Bigot with anxiety: the fall of La Pompadour would entail swift ruin upon himself and associates. He knew it was the intrigues of this girl which had caused La Pompadour suddenly to declare for peace in order to watch the King more surely in his palace. Therefore the word peace and the name of Vaubernier were equally odious to Bigot, and he was perplexed in no small degree how to act.
Moreover, be it confessed that, although a bad man and a corrupt statesman, Bigot was a Frenchman, proud of the national success and glory. While robbing her treasures with one hand, he was ready with his sword in the other to risk life and all in her defence. Bigot was bitterly opposed to English supremacy in North America. The loss of Louisbourg, though much his fault, stung him to the quick, as a triumph of the national enemy; and in those final days of New France, after the