"But your own opinion, Chevalier Bigot; what think you of it?"

"Amen! amen! Quod fiat fiatur! Seigny John, the fool of Paris, could enlighten you as well as I could as to what the women at Versailles may decide to do," replied Bigot in a tone of impatience.

"I fear peace will be made. What will you do in that case, Bigot?" asked Des Meloises, not noticing Bigot's aversion to the topic.

"If the King makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew." Bigot laughed mockingly. "We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves whichever way it turns."

"But what will become of the Company should the war expenditure stop?"

The Chevalier was thinking of his dividend of five figures.

"Oh! you should have been here sooner, Des Meloises: you would have heard our grand settlement of the question in every contingency of peace or war."

"Be sure of one thing," continued Bigot, "the Grand Company will not, like the eels of Melun, cry out before they are skinned. What says the proverb, 'Mieux vaut engin que force' (craft beats strength)? The Grand Company must prosper as the first condition of life in New France.

Perhaps a year or two of repose may not be amiss, to revictual and reinforce the Colony; and by that time we shall be ready to pick the lock of Bellona's temple again and cry Vive la guerre! Vive la Grande Compagnie! more merrily than ever!"

Bigot's far-reaching intellect forecast the course of events, which remained so much subject to his own direction after the peace of Aix la Chapelle--a peace which in America was never a peace at all, but only an armed and troubled truce between the clashing interests and rival ambitions of the French and English in the New World.

The meeting of the Board of Managers of the Grand Company broke up, and--a circumstance that rarely happened--without the customary debauch.

Bigot, preoccupied with his own projects, which reached far beyond the mere interests of the Company, retired to his couch. Cadet, Varin, and Penisault, forming an interior circle of the Friponne, had certain matters to shape for the Company's eye. The rings of corruption in the Grand Company descended, narrower and more black and precipitous, down to the bottom where Bigot sat, the Demiurgos of all.

The Chevalier des Meloises was rather proud of his sister's beauty and cleverness, and in truth a little afraid of her. They lived together harmoniously enough, so long as each allowed the other his or her own way. Both took it, and followed their own pleasures, and were not usually disagreeable to one another, except when Angelique commented on what she called his penuriousness, and he upon her extravagance, in the financial administration of the family of the Des Meloises.

The Chevalier was highly delighted to-day to be able to inform Angelique of her good fortune in becoming a partner of the Friponne and that too by grace of his Excellency the Intendant. The information filled Angelique with delight, not only because it made her independent of her brother's mismanagement of money, but it opened a door to her wildest hopes. In that gift her ambition found a potent ally to enable her to resist the appeal to her heart which she knew would be made to-night by Le Gardeur de Repentigny.

The Chevalier des Meloises had no idea of his sister's own aims. He had long nourished a foolish fancy that, if he had not obtained the hand of the wealthy and beautiful heiress of Repentigny, it was because he had not proposed. Something to-day had suggested the thought that unless he did propose soon his chances would be nil, and another might secure the prize which he had in his vain fancy set down as his own.

He hinted to Angelique to-day that he had almost resolved to marry, and that his projected alliance with the noble and wealthy house of Tilly could be easily accomplished if Angelique would only do her share, as a sister ought, in securing her brother's fortune and happiness.

"How?" asked she, looking up savagely, for she knew well at what her brother was driving.

"By your accepting Le Gardeur without more delay! All the city knows he is mad in love, and would marry you any day you choose if you wore only the hair on your head. He would ask no better fortune!"

"It is useless to advise me, Renaud!" said she, "and whether I take Le Gardeur or no it would not help your chance with Amelie! I am sorry for it, for Amelie is a prize, Renaud! but not for you at any price. Let me tell you, that desirable young lady will become the bride of Pierre Philibert, and the bride of no other man living."

"You give one cold encouragement, sister! But I am sure, if you would only marry Le Gardeur, you could easily, with your tact and cleverness, induce Amelie to let me share the Tilly fortune. There are chests full of gold in the old Manor House, and a crow could hardly fly in a day over their broad lands!"

"Perfectly useless, brother! Amelie is not like most girls. She would refuse the hand of a king for the sake of the man she loves, and she loves Pierre Philibert to his finger-ends. She has married him in her heart a thousand times. I hate paragons of women, and would scorn to be one, but I tell you, brother, Amelie is a paragon of a girl, without knowing it!"

"Hum, I never tried my hand on a paragon: I should like to do so,"

replied he, with a smile of decided confidence in his powers. "I fancy they are just like other women when you can catch them with their armor off."

"Yes, but women like Amelie never lay off their armor! They seem born in it, like Minerva. But your vanity will not let you believe me, Renaud!

So go try her, and tell me your luck! She won't scratch you, nor scold.

Amelie is a lady, and will talk to you like a queen. But she will give you a polite reply to your proposal that will improve your opinions of our sex."

"You are mocking me, Angelique, as you always do! One never knows when you are in jest or when in earnest. Even when you get angry, it is often unreal and for a purpose! I want you to be serious for once. The fortune of the Tillys and De Repentignys is the best in New France, and we can make it ours if you will help me."

"I am serious enough in wishing you those chests full of gold, and those broad lands that a crow cannot fly over in a day; but I must forego my share of them, and so must you yours, brother!" Angelique leaned back in her chair, desiring to stop further discussion of a topic she did not like to hear.

"Why must you forego your share of the De Repentigny fortune, Angelique?

You could call it your own any day you chose by giving your little finger to Le Gardeur! you do really puzzle me."

The Chevalier did look perplexed at his inscrutable sister, who only smiled over the table at him, as she nonchalantly cracked nuts and sipped her wine by drops.

"Of course I puzzle you, Renaud!" said she at last. "I am a puzzle to myself sometimes. But you see there are so many men in the world,--poor ones are so plenty, rich ones so scarce, and sensible ones hardly to be found at all,--that a woman may be excused for selling herself to the highest bidder. Love is a commodity only spoken of in romances or in the patois of milkmaids now-a-days!"

"Zounds, Angelique! you would try the patience of all the saints in the calendar! I shall pity the fellow you take in! Here is the fairest fortune in the Colony about to fall into the hands of Pierre Philibert--whom Satan confound for his assurance! A fortune which I always regarded as my own!"

"It shows the folly and vanity of your sex! You never spoke a word to Amelie de Repentigny in the way of wooing in your life! Girls like her don't drop into men's arms just for the asking."

"Pshaw! as if she would refuse me if you only acted a sister's part! But you are impenetrable as a rock, and the whole of your fickle sex could not match your vanity and caprice, Angelique."

She rose quickly with a provoked air.

"You are getting so complimentary to my poor sex, Renaud," said she, "that I must really leave you to yourself, and I could scarcely leave you in worse company."

"You are so bitter and sarcastic upon one!" replied he, tartly; "my only desire was to secure a good fortune for you, and another for myself.

I don't see, for my part, what women are made for, except to mar everything a man wants to do for himself and for them!"

"Certainly everything should be done for us, brother; but I have no defence to make for my sex, none! I dare say we women deserve all that men think of us, but then it is impolite to tell us so to our faces.

Now, as I advised you, Renaud, I would counsel you to study gardening, and you may one day arrive at as great distinction as the Marquis de Vandriere--you may cultivate chou chou if you cannot raise a bride like Amelie de Repentigny."

Angelique knew her brother's genius was not penetrating, or she would scarcely have ventured this broad allusion to the brother of La Pompadour, who, by virtue of his relationship to the Court favorite, had recently been created Director of the Royal Gardens. What fancy was working in the brain of Angelique when she alluded to him may be only surmised.

The Chevalier was indignant, however, at an implied comparison between himself and the plebeian Marquis de Vandriere. He replied, with some heat,--

"The Marquis de Vandriere! How dare you mention him and me together!

There's not an officer's mess in the army that receives the son of the fishmonger! Why do you mention him, Angelique? You are a perfect riddle!"

"I only thought something might happen, brother, if I should ever go to Paris! I was acting a charade in my fancy, and that was the solution of it!"

"What was? You would drive the whole Sorbonne mad with your charades and fancies! But I must leave you."

"Good-by, brother,--if you will go. Think of it!--if you want to rise in the world you may yet become a royal gardener like the Marquis de Vandriere!" Her silvery laugh rang out good-humoredly as he descended the stairs and passed out of the house.

She sat down in her fauteuil. "Pity Renaud is such a fool!" said she; "yet I am not sure but he is wiser in his folly than I with all my tact and cleverness, which I suspect are going to make a greater fool of me than ever he is!"

She leaned back in her chair in a deep thinking mood. "It is growing dark," murmured she. "Le Gardeur will assuredly be here soon, in spite of all the attractions of Belmont. How to deal with him when he comes is more than I know: he will renew his suit, I am sure."

For a moment the heart of Angelique softened in her bosom. "Accept him I must not!" said she; "affront him I will not! cease to love him is out of my power as much as is my ability to love the Intendant, whom I cordially detest, and shall marry all the same!" She pressed her hands over her eyes, and sat silent for a few minutes. "But I am not sure of it! That woman remains still at Beaumanoir! Will my scheming to remove her be all in vain or no?" Angelique recollected with a shudder a thought that had leaped in her bosom, like a young Satan, engendered of evil desires. "I dare hardly look in the honest eyes of Le Gardeur after nursing such a monstrous fancy as that," said she; "but my fate is fixed all the same. Le Gardeur will vainly try to undo this knot in my life, but he must leave me to my own devices." To what devices she left him was a thought that sprang not up in her purely selfish nature.

In her perplexity Angelique tied knot upon knot hard as pebbles in her handkerchief. Those knots of her destiny, as she regarded them, she left untied, and they remain untied to this day--a memento of her character and of those knots in her life which posterity has puzzled itself over to no purpose to explain.

CHAPTER XX. BELMONT.

A short drive from the gate of St. John stood the old mansion of Belmont, the country-seat of the Bourgeois Philibert--a stately park, the remains of the primeval forest of oak, maple, and pine; trees of gigantic growth and ample shade surrounded the high-roofed, many-gabled house that stood on the heights of St. Foye overlooking the broad valley of the St. Charles. The bright river wound like a silver serpent through the flat meadows in the bottom of the valley, while the opposite slopes of alternate field and forest stretched away to the distant range of the Laurentian hills, whose pale blue summits mingled with the blue sky at midday or, wrapped in mist at morn and eve, were hardly distinguishable from the clouds behind them.