The Refugees | Page 9

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-de-lis_ 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