"I WILL FEED FAT THE ANCIENT GRUDGE I BEAR HIM."
The Treaty of Aix La Chapelle, so long tossed about on the waves of war, was finally signed in the beginning of October. A swift- sailing goelette of Dieppe brought the tidings to New France, and in the early nights of November, from Quebec to Montreal. Bonfires on every headland blazed over the broad river; churches were decorated with evergreens, and Te Deums sung in gratitude for the return of peace and security to the Colony.
New France came out of the struggle scathed and scorched as by fire, but unshorn of territory or territorial rights; and the glad colonists forgot and forgave the terrible sacrifices they had made in the universal joy that their country, their religion, language, and laws were still safe under the Crown of France, with the white banner still floating over the Castle of St. Louis.
On the day after the arrival of the Dieppe goelette bringing the news of peace, Bigot sat before his desk reading his despatches and letters from France, when the Chevalier de Pean entered the room with a bundle of papers in his hand, brought to the Palace by the chief clerk of the Bourgeois Philibert, for the Intendant's signature.
The Bourgeois, in the course of his great commercial dealings, got possession of innumerable orders upon the royal treasury, which in due course had to be presented to the Intendant for his official signature. The signing of these treasury orders in favor of the Bourgeois never failed to throw Bigot into a fit of ill humor.
On the present occasion he sat down muttering ten thousand curses upon the Bourgeois, as he glanced over the papers with knitted eyebrows and teeth set hard together. He signed the mass of orders and drafts made payable to Nicolas Philibert, and when done, threw into the fire the pen which had performed so unwelcome an office.
Bigot sent for the chief clerk who had brought the bills and orders, and who waited for them in the antechamber. "Tell your master, the Bourgeois," said he, "that for this time, and only to prevent loss to the foolish officers, the Intendant has signed these army bills; but that if he purchase more, in defiance of the sole right of the Grand Company, I shall not sign them. This shall be the last time, tell him!"
The chief clerk, a sturdy, gray-haired Malouin, was nothing daunted by the angry look of the Intendant. "I shall inform the Bourgeois of your Excellency's wishes," said he, "and--"
"Inform him of my commands!" exclaimed Bigot, sharply. "What! have you more to say? But you would not be the chief clerk of the Bourgeois without possessing a good stock of his insolence!"
"Pardon me, your Excellency!" replied the chief clerk, "I was only going to observe that His Excellency the Governor and the Commander of the Forces both have decided that the officers may transfer their warrants to whomsoever they will."
"You are a bold fellow, with your Breton speech; but by all the saints in Saintonge, I will see whether the Royal Intendant or the Bourgeois Philibert shall control this matter! And as for you--"
"Tut! cave canem! let this cur go back to his master," interrupted Cadet, amused at the coolness of the chief clerk. "Hark you, fellow!" said he, "present my compliments--the Sieur Cadet's compliments--to your master, and tell him I hope he will bring his next batch of army bills himself, and remind him that it is soft falling at low tide out of the windows of the Friponne."
"I shall certainly advise my master not to come himself, Sieur Cadet," replied the chief clerk; "and I am very certain of returning in three days with more army bills for the signature of his Excellency the Intendant."
"Get out, you fool!" shouted Cadet, laughing at what he regarded the insolence of the clerk. "You are worthy of your master!" And Cadet pushed him forcibly out of the door, and shut it after him with a bang that resounded through the Palace.
"Don't be angry at him, Bigot, he is not worth it," said Cadet.
"'Like master like man,' as the proverb says. And, after all, I doubt whether the furred law-cats of the Parliament of Paris would not uphold the Bourgeois in an appeal to them from the Golden Dog."
Bigot was excessively irritated, for he was lawyer enough to know that Cadet's fear was well founded. He walked up and down his cabinet, venting curses upon the heads of the whole party of the Honnetes Gens, the Governor and Commander of the Forces included.
The Marquise de Pompadour, too, came in for a full share of his maledictions, for Bigot knew that she had forced the signing of the treaty of Aix la Chapelle,--influenced less by the exhaustion of France than by a feminine dislike to camp life, which she had shared with the King, and a resolution to withdraw him back to the gaieties of the capital, where he would be wholly under her own eye and influence.
"She prefers love to honor, as all women do!" remarked Bigot; "and likes money better than either." The Grand Company pays the fiddler for the royal fetes at Versailles, while the Bourgeois Philibert skims the cream off the trade of the Colony. This peace will increase his power and make his influence double what it is already!"
"Egad, Bigot!" replied Cadet, who sat near him smoking a large pipe of tobacco, "you speak like a preacher in Lent. We have hitherto buttered our bread on both sides, but the Company will soon, I fear, have no bread to butter! I doubt we shall have to eat your decrees, which will be the only things left in the possession of the Friponne."
"My decrees have been hard to digest for some people who think they will now eat us. Look at that pile of orders, Cadet, in favor of the Golden Dog!"
The Intendant had long regarded with indignation the ever increasing trade and influence of the Bourgeois Philibert, who had become the great banker as well as the great merchant of the Colony, able to meet the Grand Company itself upon its own ground, and fairly divide with it the interior as well as the exterior commerce of the Colony.