Le Chien dOr | Page 7

that take from life the sweet
reward of labor! They cannot do the impossible that France requires of
them--fight her battles, till her fields, and see their bread taken from
them by these new ordinances of the Intendant."
"Well, my Lord," replied the Governor, affecting a jocularity he did not
feel, for he knew how true were the words of the Bishop, "we must all
do our duty, nevertheless: if France requires impossibilities of us, we
must perform them! That is the old spirit! If the skies fall upon our
heads, we must, like true Gauls, hold them up on the points of our
lances! What say you, Rigaud de Vaudreuil? Cannot one Canadian
surround ten New Englanders?" The Governor alluded to an exploit of
the gallant officer whom he turned to address.

"Probatum est, your Excellency! I once with six hundred Canadians
surrounded all New England. Prayers were put up in all the churches of
Boston for deliverance when we swept the Connecticut from end to end
with a broom of fire."
"Brave Rigaud! France has too few like you!" remarked the Governor
with a look of admiration.
Rigaud bowed, and shook his head modestly. "I trust she has ten
thousand better;" but added, pointing at his fellow-officers who stood
conversing at a short distance, "Marshal de Saxe has few the equals of
these in his camp, my Lord Count!" And well was the compliment
deserved: they were gallant men, intelligent in looks, polished in
manners, and brave to a fault, and all full of that natural gaiety that sits
so gracefully on a French soldier.
Most of them wore the laced coat and waistcoat, chapeau, boots, lace
ruffles, sash, and rapier of the period--a martial costume befitting brave
and handsome men. Their names were household words in every
cottage in New France, and many of them as frequently spoken of in
the English Colonies as in the streets of Quebec.
There stood the Chevalier de Beaujeu, a gentleman of Norman family,
who was already famed upon the frontier, and who, seven years later, in
the forests of the Monongahela, crowned a life of honor by a soldier's
death on the bloody field won from the unfortunate Braddock,
defeating an army ten times more numerous than his own.
Talking gayly with De Beaujeu were two gallant-looking young men of
a Canadian family which, out of seven brothers, lost six slain in the
service of their King--Jumonville de Villiers, who was afterwards, in
defiance of a flag of truce, shot down by order of Colonel Washington,
in the far-off forests of the Alleghenies, and his brother, Coulon de
Villiers, who received the sword of Washington when he surrendered
himself and garrison prisoners of war, at Fort Necessity, in 1754.
Coulon de Villiers imposed ignominious conditions of surrender upon
Washington, but scorned to take other revenge for the death of his

brother. He spared the life of Washington, who lived to become the
leader and idol of his nation, which, but for the magnanimity of the
noble Canadian, might have never struggled into independence.
There stood also the Sieur de Lery, the King's engineer, charged with
the fortification of the Colony, a man of Vauban's genius in the art of
defence. Had the schemes which he projected, and vainly urged upon
the heedless Court of Versailles, been carried into effect, the conquest
of New France would have been an impossibility.
Arm in arm with De Lery, in earnest conversation, walked the
handsome Claude de Beauharnais,--brother of a former Governor of the
Colony,--a graceful, gallant-looking soldier. De Beauharnais was the
ancestor of a vigorous and beautiful race, among whose posterity was
the fair Hortense de Beauharnais, who in her son, Napoleon III., seated
an offshoot of Canada upon the imperial throne of France long after the
abandonment of their ancient colony by the corrupt House of Bourbon.
Conspicuous among the distinguished officers by his tall, straight
figure and quick movements, was the Chevalier La Corne St. Luc,
supple as an Indian, and almost as dark, from exposure to the weather
and incessant campaigning. He was fresh from the blood and desolation
of Acadia, where France, indeed, lost her ancient colony, but St. Luc
reaped a full sheaf of glory at Grand Pré, in the Bay of Minas, by the
capture of an army of New Englanders. The rough old soldier was just
now all smiles and gaiety, as he conversed with Monseigneur de
Pontbriant, the venerable Bishop of Quebec, and Father de Berey, the
Superior of the Recollets.
The Bishop, a wise ruler of his Church, was also a passionate lover of
his country: the surrender of Quebec to the English broke his heart, and
he died a few months after the announcement of the final cession of the
Colony.
Father de Berey, a