Читать книгу The Power And The Glory - Gilbert Parker - Страница 8

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La Salle lodged in the Rue de la Truanderie at Paris, and he presently came to know the Abbé Renaudot, whom he met at the house of Comtesse Frontenac and with whom he immediately made friendship. The society at the home of Madame Frontenac and Mademoiselle Outrelaise did not appeal to him, for he was shy by nature, but he had from madame assurances that she would do all in her power for him, though her influence with the court was not direct.

The Abbé Renaudot had seen the Abbé Potin, and had accepted the commission to get from Madame Frontenac information, but to get it openly, and he presently told the countess all.

She smiled, for she had been a close friend of Madame de Montpensier—the granddaughter of Henry IV and cousin of King Louis XIV—and she knew Court life well—but she worked for Frontenac from outside, and she gave the Abbé all she could with intelligence and discrimination.

To La Salle she said, before he left her house:

“Here you shall always be welcome, Sieur de la Salle, and we will help you when we can.” She had still great beauty and charm and wit, and he trusted her and liked her much.

The Abbé Renaudot was at once taken to his heart, for he was learned, reliable, a patriot, and superbly honest, and La Salle saw that at once. La Salle had few gifts for ingratiating himself at Court, and could not push his cause like most among his contemporaries.

So it was the Abbé Renaudot came to see him with a rarely aroused interest. He had many talks with La Salle in the rooms in the Rue de la Truanderie, and he learned of La Salle's troubles, ambitions, and enterprises.

La Salle made it clear to the Abbé Renaudot that Frontenac had resource and determination and was to play a big part in the history of New France. His faults were on the surface—a quick temper, a stern will to have his dignity recognized, but a consummate courage where he had to contend against the Church and the Intendant, and the difficult, lawless folk of a new land.

Duchesneau had declared that Frontenac used the coureurs de bois to promote trade, compelled the Indians to pay his guards for protecting them, and he never allowed the inhabitants to trade until the Indians had given him packs of beaver skins, which he called “presents.”

La Salle said to the Abbé Renaudot: “There never was a man who served the King more faithfully than he, and time and history will prove this. The best proof is he has taken the harder course—he has fought the old, powerful body of Jesuits, and they have fought him with the concentrated force of the Church. There was a time when four-fifths of the funds of the Province went to the Church, and there must come an end to that—there must! A lesser man would have sought the easier way. He chose the harder, and he is poor. He has not enough salary to support him. The man who did the most for Canada preceding Frontenac was Talon. That handsome man with his oval face and his shower of curls, his smooth features, the mouth formed for feminine sensibility than for masculine force, did great work; he opened the field for Frontenac. Talon prepared the way for Frontenac, my unconquerable leader.”

Then La Salle told the Abbé of Madame Ranard, of her presence in France now, to spoil his chances of help in his explorations from the King and Colbert, and of her trap with her husband, for himself. He also said she was a member of a Jesuit society called the Sainte Famille, which met every Thursday at the cathedral with closed doors, where they told of all that had happened during the week, and nothing was told against the Jesuits. It was a sort of female inquisition, and the week after the trap had been laid for La Salle, Barbe told the assembled ladies of La Salle's attempt to conquer her virtue and of the opportune arrival of her husband. She told it with tears in her evil, beautiful eyes.

So it was that many left the Sainte Famille believing La Salle guilty of the crime, though there was no supporting evidence from his past history. Yet Barbe had done her work well, and, were it not that her relations with Duchesneau were guessed, there would have been greater effect, but it had set the unthinking against La Salle.

The Abbé shifted in his seat. “If Bishop Laval gives assent to this evil society, it is a dangerous precedent. We have naught like it in France, and the King would not permit it.”

He laid a hand on La Salle's knee: “You were wise to come to France, and all will go well. You have foes, but you can overcome them. I do not fear the end.”

La Salle lifted his head in gratitude. “You are a good friend, Abbé, but I have not met my powerful foes here. Duchesneau, the Intendant, has written, and Madame Ranard is here, and she can bring big guns to bear. An able lying woman is a dangerous foe.” His eyes became darker in anxiety, his face looked troubled. “I can fight men—I know their games—but I cannot fight women. I am at sea till I find what she has done.”

“She has seen the Abbé Potin, who came to me concerning the Comtesse Frontenac, and she has seen Seignelay—this I know—and also the Prince de Conti, who married a daughter of the King, Mademoiselle de Blois, and has tried to influence him.”

“The Prince de Conti, eh, that great man, and twice most kind to me. He is interested in exploration, and I counted on his help. I named a post after him.”

“You think she influenced him? But not at all. No woman, however adroit, can deceive him. He is sending here to-day Henri de Tonty, an Italian officer whose father was Governor of Gaeta and had to flee from Naples to France. In France he has invented the Tontine insurance policy and here his son has come—a young man of powerful intellect and great charm, as you shall see. He has a metal hand, for one was blown off at Libieso in the Sicilian wars. He became a captain. The Prince Conti has sent him, and that shows Madame Ranard has not influenced the great cousin of the King. I see in young De Tonty a comrade of yours. He has tact and skill, and the loyalty and enthusiasm of the Italian. He is poor, but he has what you lack, the great social gift, though he cannot impress people better with his honesty. Your foes are powerful, but the good God is with the right thing, and for you there shall be a secure future. You need one like Tonty with you. You can trust him, and able men in France are few.”

La Salle's figure became more restful. “Dear Abbé, you have helped me much already. I shall be glad to see him.”

“You shall see him now, I think, for there is a knocking at the door.”

Silence a moment, and then a servant entered and said, “Monsieur de Tonty.”

Tonty entered, a tall spare figure with a face of dark color lightened by a pair of brilliant honest eyes with a feeling that comes of the soul within—the soul of a fighter, whose own native land was denied him, and who looked at La Salle after the first greetings with eager eyes. What La Salle saw pleased him. He felt he could trust this man, who was the more appealing because of his metal left hand covered with a glove. He gave his right hand to La Salle, of whom he had heard, not always to his credit. But Tonty was a man who formed his own judgment, and that the Prince de Conti had sent him was sufficient.

La Salle smiled at him, and in the frank smile was a covert invitation, for at once La Salle wished to work with him. Tonty had the prodigious gift—he was a man of character, and he was, as the Abbé has said, unmarried and free for a life of peril and adventure.

“I have come from the Prince de Conti to a valued friend whom all France trusts—the Abbé here. We are fortunate, for men of trust are not plentiful in these days.”

The Abbé's smile was that of content, for he saw these two men had made alliance of the heart already, and the way of success was more possible to La Salle. He knew that La Salle was lacking in those lighter qualities which Tonty had, and with character, too. He had the insight of the perfect priest who sees men as they not always see themselves, for his class are removed from the ambitions that influence others, and see more clearly than the average man.

“Sieur de la Salle has been telling me of life in Canada, and it is thrilling. It is full of danger and anxiety, but it is the upbuilding of an Empire of the West.”

Tonty smiled and nodded. “I cannot return to Naples to build empire there, and France is now my nation. I would help build up New France. There is this drawback, of course”—lifting up his metal hand—“but it would not prevent me, if I got the chance—if I got it.”

He looked La Salle in the eyes, and La Salle said: “There is naught I wish more than to work with you. I need much a man of your caliber, for in Canada most men are out against me, even those I much admire. They are big, and they work against me and with the Intendant and certain old friends now hostile through trade, and others. I have far to go before I can win them to me—far to go.”