On the left of the Intendant sat his Secretary, De Pean, crafty and unscrupulous, a parasite, too, who flattered his master and ministered to his pleasures. De Pean was a military man, and not a bad soldier in the field; but he loved gain better than glory, and amassed an enormous fortune out of the impoverishment of his country.
Le Mercier, too, was there, Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the Intendant, swelled the roll of infamy, as partners of the Grand Company of Associates trading in New France, as their charter named them—the “Grand Company of Thieves,” as the people in their plain Norman called them who robbed them in the King's name and, under pretence of maintaining the war, passed the most arbitrary decrees, the only object of which was to enrich themselves and their higher patrons at the Court of Versailles.
The rest of the company seated round the table comprised a number of dissolute seigneurs and gallants of fashion about town—men of great wants and great extravagance, just the class so quaintly described by Charlevoix, a quarter of a century previous, as “gentlemen thoroughly versed in the most elegant and agreeable modes of spending money, but greatly at a loss how to obtain it.”
Among the gay young seigneurs who had been drawn into the vortex of Bigot's splendid dissipation, was the brave, handsome Le Gardeur de Repentigny—a captain of the Royal Marine, a Colonial corps recently embodied at Quebec. In general form and feature Le Gardeur was a manly reflex of his beautiful sister Amélie, but his countenance was marred with traces of debauchery. His face was inflamed, and his dark eyes, so like his sister's, by nature tender and true, were now glittering with the adder tongues of the cursed wine-serpent.
Taking the cue from Bigot, Le Gardeur responded madly to the challenges to drink from all around him. Wine was now flooding every brain, and the table was one scene of riotous debauch.
“Fill up again, Le Gardeur!” exclaimed the Intendant, with a loud and still clear voice; “the lying clock says it is day—broad day, but neither cock crows nor day dawns in the Château of Beaumanoir, save at the will of its master and his merry guests! Fill up, companions all! The lamplight in the wine-cup is brighter than the clearest sun that ever shone!”
“Bravo Bigot! name your toast, and we will pledge it till the seven stars count fourteen!” replied Le Gardeur, looking hazily at the great clock in the hall. “I see four clocks in the room, and every one of them lies if it says it is day!”
“You are mending, Le Gardeur de Repentigny! You are worthy to belong to the Grand Company! But you shall have my toast. We have drank it twenty times already, but it will stand drinking twenty times more. It is the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of man—a woman—”
“And the best epilogue too, Bigot!” interjected Varin, visibly drunk; “but let us have the toast, my cup is waiting.”
“Well, fill up all, then; and we will drink the health, wealth, and love by stealth, of the jolliest dame in sunny France—The Marquise de Pompadour!”
“La Pompadour! La Pompadour!” Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained to the bottoms, and a thunder of applause and clattering of glasses followed the toast of the mistress of Louis XV., who was the special protectress of the Grand Company—a goodly share of whose profits in the monopoly of trade in New France was thrown into the lap of the powerful favorite.
“Come, Varin! your turn now!” cried Bigot, turning to the Commissary; “a toast for Ville Marie! Merry Montreal! where they eat like rats of Poitou, and drink till they ring the fire-bells, as the Bordelais did to welcome the collectors of the gabelle. The Montrealers have not rung the fire-bells yet against you, Varin, but they will by and by!”
Varin filled his cup with an unsteady hand until it ran over, and propping his body against the table as he stood up, replied, “A toast for Ville Marie! and our friends in need!—The blue caps of the Richelieu!” This was in allusion to a recent ordinance of the Intendant, authorizing him to seize all the corn in store at Montreal and in the surrounding country—under pretence of supplying the army, and really to secure the monopoly of it for the Grand Company.
The toast was drunk, amid rapturous applause. “Well said, Varin!” exclaimed Bigot; “that toast implied both business and pleasure: the business was to sweep out the granges of the farmers; the pleasure is to drink in honor of your success.”
“My foragers sweep clean!” said Varin, resuming his seat, and looking under his hand to steady his gaze. “Better brooms were never made in Besançon. The country is swept as clean as a ball-room. Your Excellency and the Marquise might lead the dance over it, and not a straw lie in your way!”
“And did you manage it without a fight, Varin?” asked the Sieur d'Estebe, with a half sneer.
“Fight! Why fight? The habitans will never resist the King's name. We conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels we don't begin at the tail! If we did, the habitans would be like the eels of Mélun—cry out before they were hurt. No! no! D'Estebe! We are more polite in Ville Marie. We tell them the King's troops need the corn. They doff their caps, and with tears in their eyes, say, 'Monsieur le Commissaire, the King can have all we possess, and ourselves too, if he will only save Canada from the Bostonnais.' This is better than stealing the honey and killing the bees that made it, D'Estebe!”
“But what became of the families of the habitans after this swoop of your foragers?” asked the Seigneur de Beauce, a country gentleman who retained a few honorable ideas floating on top of the wine he had swallowed.
“Oh! the families—that is, the women and children, for we took the men for the army. You see, De Beauce,” replied Varin, with a mocking air, as he crossed his thumbs like a peasant of Languedoc when he wishes to inspire belief in his words, “the families have to do what the gentlemen of Beauce practise in times of scarcity—breakfast by gaping! or they can eat wind, like the people of Poitou: it will make them spit clean!”
De Beauce was irritated at the mocking sign and the proverbial allusion to the gaping of the people of Beauce. He started up in wrath, and striking his fist on the table, “Monsieur Varin!” cried he, “do not cross your thumbs at me, or I will cut them off! Let me tell you the gentlemen of Beauce do not breakfast on gaping, but have plenty of corn to stuff even a Commissary of Montreal!”
The Sieur Le Mercier, at a sign from Bigot, interposed to stop the rising quarrel. “Don't mind Varin,” said he, whispering to De Beauce; “he is drunk, and a row will anger the Intendant. Wait, and by and by you shall toast Varin as the chief baker of Pharoah, who got hanged because he stole the King's corn.”
“As he deserves to be, for his insult to the gentlemen of Beauce,” insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. “Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank.” The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring harmony among the company:
“'Amis! dans ma bouteille,
Voilà le vin de France!
C'est le bon vin qui danse ici,
C'est le bon vin qui danse.
Gai lon la!
Vive la lirette!
Des Filettes
Il y en aura!'