The Refugees. Arthur Conan DoyleЧитать онлайн книгу.
but this is a very different rival. This is no slip of a country girl, but the cleverest woman in France.”
“Pshaw, Racine, you know our good master well, or you should, for you seem to have been at his elbow since the days of the Fronde. Is he a man, think you, to be amused forever by sermons, or to spend his days at the feet of a lady of that age, watching her at her tapestry-work, and fondling her poodle, when all the fairest faces and brightest eyes of France are as thick in his salons as the tulips in a Dutch flower-bed? No, no, it will be the Montespan, or if not she, some younger beauty.”
“My dear Boileau, I say again that her sun is setting. Have you not heard the news?”
“Not a word.”
“Her brother, Monsieur de Vivonne, has been refused the entre.”
“Impossible!”
“But it is a fact.”
“And when?”
“This very morning.”
“From whom had you it?”
“From De Catinat, the captain of the guard. He had his orders to bar the way to him.”
“Ha! then the king does indeed mean mischief. That is why his brow is so cloudy this morning, then. By my faith, if the marquise has the spirit with which folk credit her, he may find that it was easier to win her than to slight her.”
“Ay; the Mortemarts are no easy race to handle.”
“Well, heaven send him a safe way out of it! But who is this gentleman? His face is somewhat grimmer than those to which the court is accustomed. Ha! the king catches sight of him, and Louvois beckons to him to advance. By my faith, he is one who would be more at his ease in a tent than under a painted ceiling.”
The stranger who had attracted Racine’s attention was a tall thin man, with a high aquiline nose, stern fierce gray eyes, peeping out from under tufted brows, and a countenance so lined and marked by age, care, and stress of weather that it stood out amid the prim courtier faces which surrounded it as an old hawk might in a cage of birds of gay plumage. He was clad in a sombre-coloured suit which had become usual at court since the king had put aside frivolity and Fontanges, but the sword which hung from his waist was no fancy rapier, but a good brass-hilted blade in a stained leather-sheath, which showed every sign of having seen hard service. He had been standing near the door, his black-feathered beaver in his hand, glancing with a half-amused, half-disdainful expression at the groups of gossips around him, but at the sign from the minister of war he began to elbow his way forward, pushing aside in no very ceremonious fashion all who barred his passage.
Louis possessed in a high degree the royal faculty of recognition. “It is years since I have seen him, but I remember his face well,” said he, turning to his minister. “It is the Comte de Frontenac, is it not?”
“Yes, sire,” answered Louvois; “it is indeed Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, and formerly governor of Canada.”
“We are glad to see you once more at our lever,” said the monarch, as the old nobleman stooped his head, and kissed the white hand which was extended to him. “I hope that the cold of Canada has not chilled the warmth of your loyalty.”
“Only death itself, sire, would be cold enough for that.”
“Then I trust that it may remain to us for many long years. We would thank you for the care and pains which you have spent upon our province, and if we have recalled you, it is chiefly that we would fain hear from your own lips how all things go there. And first, as the affairs of God take precedence of those of France, how does the conversion of the heathen prosper?”
“We cannot complain, sire. The good fathers, both Jesuits and Recollets, have done their best, though indeed they are both rather ready to abandon the affairs of the next world in order to meddle with those of this.”
“What say you to that, father?” asked Louis, glancing, with a twinkle of the eyes, at his Jesuit confessor.
“I say, sire, that when the affairs of this world have a bearing upon those of the next, it is indeed the duty of a good priest, as of every other good Catholic, to guide them right.”
“That is very true, sire,” said De Frontenac, with an angry flush upon his swarthy cheek; “but as long as your Majesty did me the honour to intrust those affairs no my own guidance, I would brook no interference in the performance of my duties, whether the meddler were clad in coat or cassock.”
“Enough, sir, enough!” said Louis sharply. “I had asked you about the missions.”
“They prosper, sire. There are Iroquois at the Sault and the mountain, Hurons at Lorette, and Algonquins along the whole river cotes from Tadousac in the East to Sault la Marie, and even the great plains of the Dakotas, who have all taken the cross as their token. Marquette has passed down the river of the West to preach among the Illinois, and Jesuits have carried the Gospel to the warriors of the Long House in their wigwams at Onondaga.”
“I may add, your Majesty,” said Pere la Chaise, “that in leaving the truth there, they have too often left their lives with it.”
“Yes, sire, it is very true,” cried De Frontenac cordially. “Your Majesty has many brave men within your domains, but none braver than these. They have come back up the Richelieu River from the Iroquois villages with their nails gone, their fingers torn out, a cinder where their eye should be, and the scars of the pine splinters as thick upon their bodies as the fleurs-delis on yonder curtain. Yet, with a month of nursing from the good Ursulines, they have used their remaining eye to guide them back to the Indian country once more, where even the dogs have been frightened at their haggled faces and twisted limbs.”
“And you have suffered this?” cried Louis hotly. “You allow these infamous assassins to live?”
“I have asked for troops, sire.”
“And I have sent some.”
“One regiment.”
“The Carignan–Saliere. I have no better in my service.
“But more is needed, sire.”
“There are the Canadians themselves. Have you not a militia? Could you not raise force enough to punish these rascally murderers of God’s priests? I had always understood that you were a soldier.”
De Frontenac’s eyes flashed, and a quick answer seemed for an instant to tremble upon his lips, but with an effort the fiery old man restrained himself. “Your Majesty will learn best whether I am a soldier or not,” said he, “by asking those who have seen me at Seneffe, Mulhausen, Salzbach, and half a score of other places where I had the honour of upholding your Majesty’s cause.”
“Your services have not been forgotten.”
“It is just because I am a soldier and have seen something of war that I know how hard it is to penetrate into a country much larger than the Lowlands, all thick with forest and bog, with a savage lurking behind every tree, who, if he has not learned to step in time or to form line, can at least bring down the running caribou at two hundred paces, and travel three leagues to your one. And then when you have at last reached their villages, and burned their empty wigwams and a few acres of maize fields, what the better are you then? You can but travel back again to your own land with a cloud of unseen men lurking behind you, and a scalp-yell for every straggler. You are a soldier yourself, sire. I ask you if such a war is an easy task for a handful of soldiers, with a few censitaires straight from the plough, and a troop of coureurs-debois whose hearts are all the time are with their traps and their beaver-skins.”
“No, no; I am sorry if I spoke too hastily,” said Louis. “We shall look into the matter at our council.”
“Then it warms my heart to hear you say so,” cried the old governor. “There will be joy down the long St. Lawrence, in white hearts and in red, when it is known that their great father over