The Chevalier des Meloises, passing through the Porte du Palais, was hailed by two or three young officers of the Regiment of Bearn, who invited him into the Guard House to take a glass of wine before descending the steep hill. The Chevalier stopped willingly, and entered the well-furnished quarters of the officers of the guard, where a cool flask of Burgundy presently restored him to good humor with himself, and consequently with the world.

"What is up to-day at the Palace?" asked Captain Monredin, a vivacious Navarrois. "All the Gros Bonnets of the Grand Company have gone down this afternoon! I suppose you are going too, Des Meloises?"

"Yes! They have sent for me, you see, on affairs of State--what Penisault calls 'business.' Not a drop of wine on the board! Nothing but books and papers, bills and shipments, money paid, money received! Doit et avoir and all the cursed lingo of the Friponne! I damn the Friponne, but bless her money! It pays, Monredin! It pays better than fur-trading at a lonely outpost in the northwest." The Chevalier jingled a handful of coin in his pocket. The sound was a sedative to his disgust at the idea of trade, and quite reconciled him to the Friponne.

"You are a lucky dog nevertheless, to be able to make it jingle!" said Monredin, "not one of us Bearnois can play an accompaniment to your air of money in both pockets. Here is our famous Regiment of Bearn, second to none in the King's service, a whole year in arrears without pay! Gad!

I wish I could go into 'business,' as you call it, and woo that jolly dame, La Friponne!

"For six months we have lived on trust. Those leeches of Jews, who call themselves Christians, down in the Sault au Matelot, won't cash the best orders in the regiment for less than forty per cent. discount!"

"That is true!" broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,--good wine and good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ask me fifty per cent. discount upon my drafts on Bourdeaux! I agree with Des Meloises there: business may be a good thing for those who handle it, but devil touch their dirty fingers for me!"

"Don't condemn all of them, Emeric," said Captain Poulariez, a quiet, resolute-looking officer. "There is one merchant in the city who carries the principles of a gentleman into the usages of commerce. The Bourgeois Philibert gives cent. per cent. for good orders of the King's officers, just to show his sympathy with the army and his love for France."

"Well, I wish he were paymaster of the forces, that is all, and then I could go to him if I wanted to," replied Monredin.

"Why do you not go to him?" asked Poulariez.

"Why, for the same reason, I suppose, so many others of us do not,"

replied Monredin. "Colonel Dalquier endorses my orders, and he hates the Bourgeois cordially, as a hot friend of the Intendant ought to do. So you see I have to submit to be plucked of my best pen-feathers by that old fesse-mathieu Penisault at the Friponne!"

"How many of yours have gone out to the great spread at Belmont?" asked Des Meloises, quite weary of commercial topics.

"Par Dieu!" replied Monredin, "except the colonel and adjutant, who stayed away on principle, I think every officer in the regiment, present company excepted--who being on duty could not go, much to their chagrin.

Such a glorious crush of handsome girls has not been seen, they say, since our regiment came to Quebec."

"And not likely to have been seen before your distinguished arrival--eh, Monredin?" ejaculated Des Meloises, holding his glass to be refilled.

"That is delicious Burgundy," added he, "I did not think any one beside the Intendant had wine like that."

"That is some of La Martiniere's cargo," replied Poulariex. "It was kind of him, was it not, to remember us poor Bearnois here on the wrong side of the Atlantic?"

"And how earnestly we were praying for that same Burgundy," ejaculated Monredin, "when it came, as if dropped upon us by Providence! Health and wealth to Captain La Martiniere and the good frigate Fleur-de-Lis!"

Another round followed.

"They talk about those Jansenist convulsionnaires at the tomb of Master Paris, which are setting all France by the ears," exclaimed Monredin, "but I say there is nothing so contagious as the drinking of a glass of wine like that."

"And the glass gives us convulsions too, Monredin, if we try it too often, and no miracle about it either," remarked Poulariez.

Monredin looked up, red and puffy, as if needing a bridle to check his fast gait.

"But they say we are to have peace soon. Is that true, Des Meloises?"

asked Poulariez. "You ought to know what is under the cards before they are played."

"No, I don't know; and I hope the report is not true. Who wants peace yet? It would ruin the King's friends in the Colony." Des Meloises looked as statesmanlike as he could when delivering this dictum.

"Ruin the King's friends! Who are they, Des Meloises?" asked Poulariez, with a look of well-assumed surprise.

"Why, the associates of the Grand Company, to be sure! What other friends has the King got in New France?"

"Really! I thought he had the Regiment of Bearn for a number of them--to say nothing of the honest people of the Colony," replied Poulariez, impatiently.

"The Honnetes Gens, you mean!" exclaimed Des Meloises. "Well, Poulariez, all I have to say is that if this Colony is to be kept up for the sake of a lot of shopkeepers, wood-choppers, cobblers, and farmers, the sooner the King hands it over to the devil or the English the better!"

Poulariex looked indignant enough; but from the others a loud laugh followed this sally.

The Chevalier des Meloises pulled out his watch. "I must be gone to the Palace," said he. "I dare say Cadet, Varin, and Penisault will have balanced the ledgers by this time, and the Intendant, who is the devil for business on such occasions, will have settled the dividends for the quarter--the only part of the business I care about."

"But don't you help them with the work a little?" asked Poulariez.

"Not I; I leave business to them that have a vocation for it. Besides, I think Cadet, Vargin, and Penisault like to keep the inner ring of the company to themselves." He turned to Emeric: "I hope there will be a good dividend to-night, Emeric," said he. "I owe you some revenge at piquet, do I not?"

"You capoted me last night at the Taverne de Menut, and I had three aces and three kings."

"But I had a quatorze, and took the fishes," replied Des Meloises.

"Well, Chevalier, I shall win them back to-night. I hope the dividend will be good: in that way I too may share in the 'business' of the Grand Company."

"Good-by, Chevalier; remember me to St. Blague!" (This was a familiar sobriquet of Bigot.) "Tis the best name going. If I had an heir for the old chateau on the Adour, I would christen him Bigot for luck."

The Chevalier des Meloises left the officers and proceeded down the steep road that led to the Palace. The gardens were quiet to-day--a few loungers might be seen in the magnificent alleys, pleached walks, and terraces; beyond these gardens, however, stretched the King's wharves and the magazines of the Friponne. These fairly swarmed with men loading and unloading ships and bateaux, and piling and unpiling goods.

The Chevalier glanced with disdain at the magazines, and flourishing his cane, mounted leisurely the broad steps of the Palace, and was at once admitted to the council-room.

"Better late than never, Chevalier des Meloises!" exclaimed Bigot, carelessly glancing at him as he took a seat at the board, where sat Cadet, Varin, Penisault, and the leading spirits of the Grand Company.

"You are in double luck to-day. The business is over, and Dame Friponne has laid a golden egg worth a Jew's tooth for each partner of the Company."

The Chevalier did not notice, or did not care for, the slight touch of sarcasm in the Intendant's tone. "Thanks, Bigot!" drawled he. "My eggs shall be hatched to-night down at Menut's. I expect to have little more left than the shell of it to-morrow."

"Well, never mind! We have considered all that, Chevalier. What one loses another gets. It is all in the family. Look here," continued he, laying his finger upon a page of the ledger that lay open before him, "Mademoiselle Angelique des Meloises is now a shareholder in the Grand Company. The list of high, fair, and noble ladies of the Court who are members of the Company will be honored by the addition of the name of your charming sister."

The Chevalier's eyes sparkled with delight as he read Angelique's name on the book. A handsome sum of five digits stood to her credit. He bowed his thanks with many warm expressions of his sense of the honor done his sister by "placing her name on the roll of the ladies of the Court who honor the Company by accepting a share of its dividends."

"I hope Mademoiselle des Meloises will not refuse this small mark of our respect," observed Bigot, feeling well assured she would not deem it a small one.

"Little fear of that!" muttered Cadet, whose bad opinion of the sex was incorrigible. "The game fowls of Versailles scratch jewels out of every dung-hill, and Angelique des Meloises has longer claws than any of them!"

Cadet's ill-natured remark was either unheard or unheeded; besides, he was privileged to say anything. Des Meloises bowed with an air of perfect complaisance to the Intendant as he answered,--"I guarantee the perfect satisfaction of Angelique with this marked compliment of the Grand Company. She will, I am sure, appreciate the kindness of the Intendant as it deserves."

Cadet and Varin exchanged smiles, not unnoticed by Bigot, who smiled too. "Yes, Chevalier," said he, "the Company gives this token of its admiration for the fairest lady in New France. We have bestowed premiums upon fine flax and fat cattle: why not upon beauty, grace, and wit embodied in handsome women?"

"Angelique will be highly flattered, Chevalier," replied he, "at the distinction. She must thank you herself, as I am sure she will."

"I am happy to try to deserve her thanks," replied Bigot; and, not caring to talk further on the subject,--"what news in the city this afternoon, Chevalier?" asked he; "how does that affair at Belmont go off?"

"Don't know. Half the city has gone, I think. At the Church door, however, the talk among the merchants is that peace is going to be made soon. Is it so very threatening, Bigot?"

"If the King wills it, it is." Bigot spoke carelessly.