“Did I not know for a certainty that she was present till midnight at the party given by Madame de Grandmaison, I should suspect her, by God!” exclaimed the Intendant, as he paced up and down his private room in the Palace, angry and perplexed to the uttermost over the mysterious assassination at Beaumanoir. “What think you, Cadet?”
“I think that proves an alibi,” replied Cadet, stretching himself lazily in an armchair and smoking with half-shut eyes. There was a cynical, mocking tone in his voice which seemed to imply that although it proved an alibi, it did not prove innocence to the satisfaction of the Sieur Cadet.
“You think more than you say, Cadet. Out with it! Let me hear the worst of your suspicions. I fancy they chime with mine,” said the Intendant, in quick reply.
“As the bells of the Cathedral with the bells of the Recollets,” drawled out Cadet. “I think she did it, Bigot, and you think the same; but I should not like to be called upon to prove it, nor you either,—not for the sake of the pretty witch, but for your own.”
“I could prove nothing, Cadet. She was the gayest and most light-hearted of all the company last night at Madame de Grandmaison's. I have made the most particular inquiries of Varin and Deschenaux. They needed no asking, but burst out at once into praise and admiration of her gaiety and wit. It is certain she was not at Beaumanoir.”
“You often boasted you knew women better than I, and I yielded the point in regard to Angélique,” replied Cadet, refilling his pipe. “I did not profess to fathom the depths of that girl, but I thought you knew her. Egad! she has been too clever for you, Bigot! She has aimed to be the Lady Intendant, and is in a fair way to succeed! That girl has the spirit of a war-horse; she would carry any man round the world. I wish she would carry me. I would rule Versailles in six weeks, with that woman, Bigot!”
“The same thought has occurred to me, Cadet, and I might have been entrapped by it had not this cursed affair happened. La Pompadour is a simpleton beside Angélique des Meloises! My difficulty is to believe her so mad as to have ventured on this bold deed.”
“'Tis not the boldness, only the uselessness of it, would stop Angélique!” answered Cadet, shutting one eye with an air of lazy comfort.
“But the deceitfulness of it, Cadet! A girl like her could not be so gay last night with such a bloody purpose on her soul. Could she, think you?”
“Couldn't she? Tut! Deceit is every woman's nature! Her wardrobe is not complete unless it contains as many lies for her occasions as ribbons for her adornment!”
“You believe she did it then? What makes you think so, Cadet?” asked Bigot eagerly, drawing near his companion.
“Why, she and you are the only persons on earth who had an interest in that girl's death. She to get a dangerous rival out of the way,—you to hide her from the search-warrants sent out by La Pompadour. You did not do it, I know: ergo, she did! Can any logic be plainer? That is the reason I think so, Bigot.”
“But how has it been accomplished, Cadet? Have you any theory? SHE can not have done it with her own hand.”
“Why, there is only one way that I can see. We know she did not do the murder herself, therefore she has done it by the hand of another. Here is proof of a confederate, Bigot,—I picked this up in the secret chamber.” Cadet drew out of his pocket the fragment of the letter torn in pieces by La Corriveau. “Is this the handwriting of Angélique?” asked he.
Bigot seized the scrap of paper, read it, turned it over and scrutinized it, striving to find resemblances between the writing and that of every one known to him. His scrutiny was in vain.
“This writing is not Angélique's,” said he. “It is utterly unknown to me. It is a woman's hand, but certainly not the hand of any woman of my acquaintance, and I have letters and billets from almost every lady in Quebec. It is proof of a confederate, however, for listen, Cadet! It arranges for an interview with Caroline, poor girl! It was thus she was betrayed to her death. It is torn, but enough remains to make the sense clear,—listen: 'At the arched door about midnight—if she pleased to admit her she would learn important matters concerning herself—the Intendant and the Baron de St. Castin—speedily arrive in the Colony.' That throws light upon the mystery, Cadet! A woman was to have an interview with Caroline at midnight! Good God, Cadet! not two hours before we arrived! And we deferred starting in order that we might rook the Signeur de Port Neuf! Too late! too late! Oh cursed word that ever seals our fate when we propose a good deed!” and Bigot felt himself a man injured and neglected by Providence.
“'Important matters relating to herself,'” repeated Bigot, reading again the scrap of writing. “'The Intendant and the Baron de St. Castin—speedily to arrive in the Colony.' No one knew but the sworn Councillors of the Governor that the Baron de St. Castin was coming out to the Colony. A woman has done the deed, and she has been informed of secrets spoken in Council by some Councillor present on that day at the Castle. Who was he? and who was she?” questioned Bigot, excitedly.
“The argument runs like water down hill, Bigot! but, par Dieu! I would not have believed that New France contained two women of such mettle as the one to contrive, the other to execute, a masterpiece of devilment like that!”
“Since we find another hand in the dish, it may not have been Angélique after all,” remarked Bigot. “It is hard to believe one so fair and free-spoken guilty of so dark and damnable a crime.” Bigot would evidently be glad to find himself in error touching his suspicions.
“Fairest without is often foulest within, Bigot,” answered Cadet, doggedly. “Open speech in a woman is often an open trap to catch fools! Angélique des Meloises is free-spoken and open-handed enough to deceive a conclave of cardinals; but she has the lightest heels in the city. Would you not like to see her dance a ballet de triomphe on the broad flagstone I laid over the grave of that poor girl? If you would, you have only to marry her, and she will give a ball in the secret chamber!”
“Be still, Cadet! I could take you by the throat for suggesting it! But I will make her prove herself innocent!” exclaimed Bigot, angry at the cool persistence of Cadet.
“I hope you will not try it to-day, Bigot.” Cadet spoke gravely now. “Let the dead sleep, and let all sleeping dogs and bitches lie still. Zounds! we are in greater danger than she is! you cannot stir in this matter without putting yourself in her power. Angélique has got hold of the secret of Caroline and of the Baron de St. Castin; what if she clear herself by accusing you? The King would put you in the Bastile for the magnificent lie you told the Governor, and La Pompadour would send you to the Place de Grève when the Baron de St. Castin returned with the bones of his daughter, dug up in your Château!”
“It is a cursed dilemma!” Bigot fairly writhed with perplexity. “Dark as the bottomless pit, turn which way we will. Angélique knows too much, that is clear; it were a charity, if it were a safe thing, to kill her too, Cadet!”
“Not to be thought of, Bigot; she is too much in every man's eye, and cannot be stowed away in a secret corner like her poor victim. A dead silence on every point of this cursed business is our only policy, our only safety.” Cadet had plenty of common sense in the rough, and Bigot was able to appreciate it.
The Intendant strode up and down the room, clenching his hands in a fury. “If I were sure! sure! she did it, I would kill her, by God! such a damnable cruel deed as this would justify any measure of vengeance!” exclaimed he, savagely.
“Pshaw! not when it would all rebound upon yourself. Besides, if you want vengeance, take a man's revenge upon a woman; you can do that! It will be better than killing her, much more pleasant, and quite as effectual.”
Bigot looked as Cadet said this and laughed: “You would send her to the Parc aux cerfs, eh, Cadet? Par Dieu! she would sit on the throne in six months!”
“No, I do not mean the Parc aux cerfs, but the Château of Beaumanoir. But you are in too ill humor to joke to-day, Bigot.” Cadet resumed his pipe with an air of nonchalance.
“I never was in a worse humor in my life, Cadet! I feel that I have a padlock upon every one of my five senses; and I cannot move hand or foot in this business.”
“Right, Bigot, do not move hand or foot, eye or tongue, in it. I tell you the slightest whisper of Caroline's life or death in your house, reaching the ears of Philibert or La Corne St. Luc, will bring them to Beaumanoir with warrants to search for her. They will pick the Château to pieces stone by stone. They will drag Caroline out of her grave, and the whole country will swear you murdered her, and that I helped you, and with appearances so strong against us that the mothers who bore us would not believe in our innocence! Damn the women! The burying of that girl was the best deed I did for one of the sex in my life, but it will be the worst if you breath one word of it to Angélique des Meloises, or to any other person living. I am not ready to lose my head yet, Bigot, for the sake of any woman, or even for you!”
The Intendant was staggered by the vehemence of Cadet, and impressed by the force of his remarks. It was hard to sit down quietly and condone such a crime, but he saw clearly the danger of pushing inquiry in any direction without turning suspicion upon himself. He boiled with indignation. He fumed and swore worse than his wont when angry, but Cadet looked on quietly, smoking his pipe, waiting for the storm to calm down.
“You were never in a woman's clutches so tight before, Bigot,” continued Cadet. “If you let La Pompadour suspect one hair of your head in this matter, she will spin a cart-rope out of it that will drag you to the Place de Grève.”
“Reason tells me that what you say is true, Cadet,” replied Bigot, gloomily.
“To be sure; but is not Angélique a clever witch to bind François Bigot neck and heels in that way, after fairly outwitting and running him down?”
Cadet's cool comments drove Bigot beside himself. “I will not stand it; by St. Maur! she shall pay for all this! I, who have caught women all my life, to be caught by one thus! she shall pay for it!”
“Well, make her pay for it by marrying her!” replied Cadet. “Par Dieu! I am mistaken if you have not got to marry her in the end! I would marry her myself, if you do not, only I should be afraid to sleep nights! I might be put under the floor before morning if she liked another man better!”
Cadet gave way to a feeling of hilarity at this idea, shaking his sides so long and heartily that Bigot caught the infection, and joined in with a burst of sardonic laughter.
Bigot's laughter was soon over. He sat down at the table again, and, being now calm, considered the whole matter over, point by point, with Cadet, who, though coarse and unprincipled, was a shrewd counsellor in difficulties.
It was determined between the two men that nothing whatever should be said of the assassination. Bigot should continue his gallantries to Angélique, and avoid all show of suspicion in that quarter. He should tell her of the disappearance of Caroline, who had gone away mysteriously as she came, but profess absolute ignorance as to her fate.
Angélique would be equally cautious in alluding to the murder; she would pretend to accept all his statements as absolute fact. Her tongue, if not her thoughts, would be sealed up in perpetual silence on that bloody topic. Bigot must feed her with hopes of marriage, and if necessary set a day for it, far enough off to cover all the time to be taken up in the search after Caroline.
“I will never marry her, Cadet!” exclaimed Bigot, “but will make her regret all her life she did not marry me!”
“Take care, Bigot! It is dangerous playing with fire. You don't half know Angélique.”
“I mean she shall pull the chestnuts out of the fire for me with her pretty fingers, until she burn them,” remarked Bigot, gruffly.
“I would not trust her too far! In all seriousness, you have but the choice of two things, Bigot: marry her or send her to the Convent.”
“I would not do the one, and I could not do the other, Cadet,” was Bigot's prompt reply to this suggestion.
“Tut! Mère Migeon de la Nativité will respect your lettre de cachet, and provide a close, comfortable cell for this pretty penitent in the Ursulines,” said Cadet.
“Not she! Mère Migeon gave me one of her parlor-lectures once, and I care not for another. Egad, Cadet! she made me the nearest of being ashamed of François Bigot of any one I ever listened to! Could you have seen her, with her veil thrown back, her pale face still paler with indignation, her black eyes looking still blacker beneath the white fillet upon her forehead, and then her tongue, Cadet! Well, I withdrew my proposal and felt myself rather cheapened in the presence of Mère Migeon.”
“Ay, I hear she is a clipper when she gets a sinner by the hair! What was the proposal you made to her, Bigot?” asked Cadet, smiling as if he knew.
“Oh, it was not worth a livre to make such a row about! I only proposed to send a truant damsel to the Convent to repent of MY faults, that was all! But I could never dispose of Angélique in that way,” continued the Intendant, with a shrug.
“Egad! she will fool any man faster than he can make a fool of her! But I would try Mère Migeon, notwithstanding,” replied Cadet. “She is the only one to break in this wild filly and nail her tongue fast to her prayers!”
“It is useless trying. They know Angélique too well. She would turn the Convent out of the windows in the time of a neuvaine. They are all really afraid of her,” replied Bigot.
“Then you must marry her, or do worse, Bigot. I see nothing else for it,” was Cadet's reply.
“Well, I will do worse, if worse can be; for marry her I will not!” said Bigot, stamping his foot upon the floor.
“It is understood, then, Bigot, not a word, a hint, a look is to be given to Angélique regarding your suspicions of her complicity in this murder?”
“Yes, it is understood. The secret is like the devil's tontine,—he catches the last possessor of it.”
“I expect to be the last, then, if I keep in your company, Bigot,” remarked Cadet.
Cadet having settled this point to his mind, reclined back in his easy chair and smoked on in silence, while the Intendant kept walking the floor anxiously, because he saw farther than his companion the shadows of coming events.
Sometimes he stopped impatiently at the window, beating a tattoo with his nails on the polished casement as he gazed out upon the beautiful parterres of autumnal flowers, beginning to shed their petals around the gardens of the Palace. He looked at them without seeing them. All that caught his eye was a bare rose-bush, from which he remembered he had plucked some white roses which he had sent to Caroline to adorn her oratory; and he thought of her face, more pale and delicate than any rose of Provence that ever bloomed. His thoughts ran violently in two parallel streams side by side, neither of them disappearing for a moment amid the crowd of other affairs that pressed upon his attention,—the murder of Caroline and the perquisition that was to be made for her in all quarters of the Colony. His own safety was too deeply involved in any discovery that might be made respecting her to allow him to drop the subject out of his thought for a moment.
By imposing absolute silence upon himself in the presence of Angélique, touching the death of Caroline, he might impose a like silence upon her whom he could not acquit of the suspicion of having prompted the murder. But the certainty that there was a confederate in the deed—a woman, too, judging by the fragment of writing picked up by Cadet—tormented him with endless conjectures.
Still, he felt, for the present, secure from any discovery on that side; but how to escape from the sharp inquisition of two men like La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert? And who knew how far the secret of Beaumanoir was a secret any longer? It was known to two women, at any rate; and no woman, in Bigot's estimation of the sex, would long keep a secret which concerned another and not herself.
“Our greatest danger, Cadet, lies there!” continued the Intendant, stopping in his walk and turning suddenly to his friend. “La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert are commissioned by the Governor to search for that girl. They will not leave a stone unturned, a corner unransacked in New France. They will find out through the Hurons and my own servants that a woman has been concealed in Beaumanoir. They will suspect, if they do not discover who she was. They will not find her on earth,—they will look for her under the earth. And, by St. Maur! it makes me quake to think of it, Cadet, for the discovery will be utter ruin! They may at last dig up her murdered remains in my own Château! As you said, the Bastile and the Place de Grève would be my portion, and ruin yours and that of all our associates.”
Cadet held up his pipe as if appealing to Heaven. “It is a cursed reward for our charitable night's work, Bigot,” said he. “Better you had never lied about the girl. We could have brazened it out or fought it out with the Baron de St. Castin or any man in France! That lie will convict us if found out!”
“Pshaw! the lie was a necessity,” answered Bigot, impatiently. “But who could have dreamed of its leading us such a dance as it has done! Par Dieu! I have not often lied except to women, and such lies do not count! But I had better have stuck to truth in this matter, Cadet. I acknowledge that now.”
“Especially with La Pompadour! She is a woman. It is dangerous to lie to her,—at least about other women.”
“Well, Cadet, it is useless blessing the Pope or banning the Devil! We are in for it, and we must meet La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert as warily as we can. I have been thinking of making safe ground for us to stand upon, as the trappers do on the great prairies, by kindling a fire in front to escape from the fire in the rear!”
“What is that, Bigot? I could fire the Château rather than be tracked out by La Corne and Philibert,” said Cadet, sitting upright in his chair.
“What, burn the Château!” answered Bigot. “You are mad, Cadet! No; but it were well to kindle such a smoke about the eyes of La Corne and Philibert that they will need to rub them to ease their own pain instead of looking for poor Caroline.”
“How, Bigot? Will you challenge and fight them? That will not avert suspicion, but increase it,” remarked Cadet.
“Well, you will see! A man will need as many eyes as Argus to discover our hands in this business.”
Cadet started, without conjecturing what the Intendant contemplated. “You will kill the bird that tells tales on us, Bigot,—is that it?” added he.
“I mean to kill two birds with one stone, Cadet! Hark you; I will tell you a scheme that will put a stop to these perquisitions by La Corne and Philibert—the only two men I fear in the Colony—and at the same time deliver me from the everlasting bark and bite of the Golden Dog!”
Bigot led Cadet to the window, and poured in his ear the burning passions which were fermenting in his own breast. He propounded a scheme of deliverance for himself and of crafty vengeance upon the Philiberts which would turn the thoughts of every one away from the Château of Beaumanoir and the missing Caroline into a new stream of public and private troubles, amid the confusion of which he would escape, and his present dangers be overlooked and forgotten in a great catastrophe that might upset the Colony, but at any rate it would free Bigot from his embarrassments and perhaps inaugurate a new reign of public plunder and the suppression of the whole party of the Honnêtes Gens.
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 Honnêtes 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 fêtes 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.
“Where is this thing going to end?” exclaimed Bigot, sweeping from him the pile of bills of exchange that lay upon the table. “That Philibert is gaining ground upon us every day! He is now buying up army bills, and even the King's officers are flocking to him with their certificates of pay and drafts on France, which he cashes at half the discount charged by the Company!”
“Give the cursed papers to the clerk and send him off, De Pean!” said Bigot.
De Pean obeyed with a grimace, and returned.
“This thing must be stopped, and shall!” continued the Intendant, savagely.
“That is true, your Excellency,” said De Pean. “And we have tried vigorously to stop the evil, but so far in vain. The Governor and the Honnêtes Gens, and too many of the officers themselves, countenance his opposition to the Company. The Bourgeois draws a good bill upon Paris and Bordeaux, and they are fast finding it out.”
“The Golden Dog is drawing half the money of the Colony into his coffers, and he will blow up the credit of the Friponne some fine day when we least expect it, unless he be chained up,” replied Bigot.
“'A méchant chien court lien,' says the proverb, and so say I,” replied Cadet. “The Golden Dog has barked at us for a long time; par Dieu! he bites now!—ere long he will gnaw our bones in reality, as he does in effigy upon that cursed tablet in the Rue Buade.”
“Every dog has his day, and the Golden Dog has nearly had his, Cadet. But what do you advise?” asked Bigot.
“Hang him up with a short rope and a shorter shrift, Bigot! You have warrant enough if your Court friends are worth half a handful of chaff.”
“But they are not worth half a handful of chaff, Cadet. If I hung the Bourgeois there would be such a cry raised among the Honnêtes Gens in the Colony, and the whole tribe of Jansenists in France, that I doubt whether even the power of the Marquise could sustain me.”
Cadet looked quietly truculent. He drew Bigot aside. “There are more ways than one to choke a dog, Bigot,” said he. “You may put a tight collar outside his throat, or a sweetened roll inside of it. Some course must be found, and that promptly. We shall, before many days, have La Corne St. Luc and young Philibert like a couple of staghounds in full cry at our heels about that business at the Château. They must be thrown off that scent, come what will, Bigot!”
The pressure of time and circumstance was drawing a narrower circle around the Intendant. The advent of peace would, he believed, inaugurate a personal war against himself. The murder of Caroline was a hard blow, and the necessity of concealing it irritated him with a sense of fear foreign to his character.
His suspicion of Angélique tormented him day and night. He had loved Angélique in a sensual, admiring way, without one grain of real respect. He worshipped her one moment as the Aphrodite of his fancy; he was ready to strip and scourge her the next as the possible murderess of Caroline. But Bigot had fettered himself with a lie, and had to hide his thoughts under degrading concealments. He knew the Marquise de Pompadour was jealously watching him from afar. The sharpest intellects and most untiring men in the Colony were commissioned to find out the truth regarding the fate of Caroline. Bigot was like a stag brought to bay. An ordinary man would have succumbed in despair, but the very desperation of his position stirred up the Intendant to a greater effort to free himself.
He walked gloomily up and down the room, absorbed in deep thought. Cadet, who guessed what was brooding in his mind, made a sign to De Pean to wait and see what would be the result of his cogitations.
Bigot, gesticulating with his right hand and his left, went on balancing, as in a pair of scales, the chances of success or failure in the blow he meditated against the Golden Dog. A blow which would scatter to the winds the inquisition set on foot to discover the hiding-place of Caroline.
He stopped suddenly in his walk, striking both hands together, as if in sign of some resolution arrived at in his thoughts.
“De Pean!” said he, “has Le Gardeur de Repentigny shown any desire yet to break out of the Palace?”
“None, your Excellency. He is fixed as a bridge to fortune. You can no more break him down than the Pont Neuf at Paris. He lost, last night, a thousand at cards and five hundred at dice; then drank himself dead drunk until three o'clock this afternoon. He has just risen; his valet was washing his head and feet in brandy when I came here.”
“You are a friend that sticks closer than a brother, De Pean. Le Gardeur believes in you as his guardian angel, does he not?” asked Bigot with a sneer.
“When he is drunk he does,” replied De Pean; “when he is sober I care not to approach him too nearly! He is a wild colt that will kick his groom when rubbed the wrong way; and every way is wrong when the wine is out of him.”
“Keep him full then!” exclaimed Bigot; “you have groomed him well, De Pean! but he must now be saddled and ridden to hunt down the biggest stag in New France!”
De Pean looked hard at the Intendant, only half comprehending his allusion.
“You once tried your hand with Mademoiselle de Repentigny, did you not?” continued Bigot.
“I did, your Excellency; but that bunch of grapes was too high for me. They are very sour now.”
“Sly fox that you were! Well, do not call them sour yet, De Pean. Another jump at the vine and you may reach that bunch of perfection!” said Bigot, looking hard at him.
“Your Excellency overrates my ability in that quarter, and if I were permitted to choose—”
“Another and a fairer maid would be your choice. I see, De Pean, you are a connoisseur in women. Be it as you wish! Manage this business of Philibert discreetly, and I will coin the Golden Dog into doubloons for a marriage portion for Angélique des Meloises. You understand me now?”
De Pean started. He hardly guessed yet what was required of him, but he cared not in the dazzling prospect of such a wife and fortune as were thus held out to him.
“Your Excellency will really support my suit with Angélique?” De Pean seemed to mistrust the possibility of such a piece of disinterestedness on the part of the Intendant.
“I will not only commend your suit, but I will give away the bride, and Madame de Pean shall not miss any favor from me which she has deserved as Angélique des Meloises,” was Bigot's reply, without changing a muscle of his face.
“And your Excellency will give her to me?” De Pean could hardly believe his ears.
“Assuredly you shall have her if you like,” cried Bigot, “and with a dowry such as has not been seen in New France!”
“But who would like to have her at any price?” muttered Cadet to himself, with a quiet smile of contempt,—Cadet thought De Pean a fool for jumping at a hook baited with a woman; but he knew what the Intendant was driving at, and admired the skill with which he angled for De Pean.
“But Angélique may not consent to this disposal of her hand,” replied De Pean with an uneasy look; “I should be afraid of your gift unless she believed that she took me, and not I her.”
“Hark you, De Pean! you do not know what women like her are made of, or you would be at no loss how to bait your hook! You have made four millions, they say, out of this war, if not more.”
“I never counted it, your Excellency; but, much or little, I owe it all to your friendship,” replied De Pean with a touch of mock humility.
“My friendship! Well, so be it. It is enough to make Angélique des Meloises Madame de Pean when she finds she cannot be Madame Intendant. Do you see your way now, De Pean?”
“Yes, your Excellency, and I cannot be sufficiently grateful for such a proof of your goodness.”
Bigot laughed a dry, meaning laugh. “I truly hope you will always think so of my friendship, De Pean. If you do not, you are not the man I take you to be. Now for our scheme of deliverance!
“Hearken, De Pean,” continued the Intendant, fixing his dark, fiery eyes upon his secretary; “you have craft and cunning to work out this design and good will to hasten it on. Cadet and I, considering the necessities of the Grand Company, have resolved to put an end to the rivalry and arrogance of the Golden Dog. We will treat the Bourgeois,” Bigot smiled meaningly, “not as a trader with a baton, but as a gentleman with a sword; for, although a merchant, the Bourgeois is noble and wears a sword, which under proper provocation he will draw, and remember he can use it too! He can be tolerated no longer by the gentlemen of the Company. They have often pressed me in vain to take this step, but now I yield. Hark, De Pean! The Bourgeois must be INSULTED, CHALLENGED, and KILLED by some gentleman of the Company with courage and skill enough to champion its rights. But mind you! it must be done fairly and in open day, and without my knowledge or approval! Do you understand?”
Bigot winked at De Pean and smiled furtively, as much as to say, “You know how to interpret my words.”
“I understand your Excellency, and it shall be no fault of mine if your wishes, which chime with my own, be not carried out before many days. A dozen partners of the Company will be proud to fight with the Bourgeois if he will only fight with them.”
“No fear of that, De Pean! give the devil his due. Insult the Bourgeois and he will fight with the seven champions of Christendom! so mind you get a man able for him, for I tell you, De Pean, I doubt if there be over three gentlemen in the Colony who could cross swords fairly and successfully with the Bourgeois.”
“It will be easier to insult and kill him in a chance medley than to risk a duel!” interrupted Cadet, who listened with intense eagerness. “I tell you, Bigot, young Philibert will pink any man of our party. If there be a duel he will insist on fighting it for his father. The old Bourgeois will not be caught, but we shall catch a Tartar instead, in the young one.”
“Well, duel or chance medley be it! I dare not have him assassinated,” replied the Intendant. “He must be fought with in open day, and not killed in a corner. Eh, Cadet, am I not right?”
Bigot looked for approval from Cadet, who saw that he was thinking of the secret chamber at Beaumanoir.
“You are right, Bigot! He must be killed in open day and not in a corner. But who have we among us capable of making sure work of the Bourgeois?”
“Leave it to me,” replied De Pean. “I know one partner of the Company who, if I can get him in harness, will run our chariot wheels in triumph over the Golden Dog.”
“And who is that?” asked Bigot eagerly.
“Le Gardeur de Repentigny!” exclaimed De Pean, with a look of exultation.
“Pshaw! he would draw upon us more readily! Why, he is bewitched with the Philiberts!” replied Bigot.
“I shall find means to break the spell long enough to answer our purpose, your Excellency!” replied De Pean. “Permit me only to take my own way with him.”
“Assuredly, take your own way, De Pean! A bloody scuffle between De Repentigny and the Bourgeois would not only be a victory for the Company, but would breakup the whole party of the Honnêtes Gens!”
The Intendant slapped De Pean on the shoulder and shook him by the hand. “You are more clever than I believed you to be, De Pean. You have hit on a mode of riddance which will entitle you to the best reward in the power of the Company to bestow.”
“My best reward will be the fulfilment of your promise, your Excellency,” answered De Pean.
“I will keep my word, De Pean. By God you shall have Angélique, with such a dowry as the Company can alone give! Or, if you do not want the girl, you shall have the dowry without the wife!”
“I shall claim both, your Excellency! But—”
“But what? Confess all your doubts, De Pean.”
“Le Gardeur may claim her as his own reward!” De Pean guessed correctly enough the true bent of Angélique's fancy.
“No fear! Le Gardeur de Repentigny, drunk or sober, is a gentleman. He would reject the Princess d'Elide were she offered on such conditions as you take her on. He is a romantic fool; he believes in woman's virtue and all that stuff!”
“Besides, if he kill the Bourgeois, he will have to fight Pierre Philibert before his sword is dry!” interjected Cadet. “I would not give a Dutch stiver for Le Gardeur's bones five hours after he has pinked the Bourgeois!”
An open duel in form was not to be thought of, because in that they would have to fight the son and not the father, and the great object would be frustrated. But the Bourgeois might be killed in a sudden fray, when blood was up and swords drawn, when no one, as De Pean remarked, would be able to find an i undotted or a t uncrossed in a fair record of the transaction, which would impose upon the most critical judge as an honorable and justifiable act of self-defence.
This was Cadet's real intent, and perhaps Bigot's, but the Intendant's thoughts lay at unfathomable depths, and were not to be discovered by any traces upon the surface. No divining-rod could tell where the secret spring lay hid which ran under Bigot's motives.
Not so De Pean. He meditated treachery, and it were hard to say whether it was unnoted by the penetrating eye of Bigot. The Intendant, however, did not interfere farther, either by word or sign, but left De Pean to accomplish in his own way the bloody object they all had in view, namely, the death of the Bourgeois and the break-up of the Honnêtes Gens. De Pean, while resolving to make Le Gardeur the tool of his wickedness, did not dare to take him into his confidence. He had to be kept in absolute ignorance of the part he was to play in the bloody tragedy until the moment of its denouement arrived. Meantime he must be plied with drink, maddened with jealousy, made desperate with losses, and at war with himself and all the world, and then the whole fury of his rage should, by the artful contrivance of De Pean, be turned, without a minute's time for reflection, upon the head of the unsuspecting Bourgeois.
To accomplish this successfully, a woman's aid was required, at once to blind Le Gardeur and to sharpen his sword.
In the interests of the Company Angélique des Meloises was at all times a violent partisan. The Golden Dog and all its belongings were objects of her open aversion. But De Pean feared to impart to her his intention to push Le Gardeur blindly into the affair. She might fear for the life of one she loved. De Pean reflected angrily on this, but he determined she should be on the spot. The sight of her and a word from her, which De Pean would prompt at the critical moment, should decide Le Gardeur to attack the Bourgeois and kill him; and then, what would follow? De Pean rubbed his hands with ecstasy at the thought that Le Gardeur would inevitably bite the dust under the avenging hand of Pierre Philibert, and Angélique would be his beyond all fear of rivals.