Читать книгу The Power And The Glory - Gilbert Parker - Страница 9

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The court assembled in the vast suite of apartments decorated by pictures and sculptures, tapestries, mosaics in light and splendor. Throngs feasted, gamed, promenaded, talked, and nowhere else in the world was there such magnificence. The suite was called the “Halls of Abundance”—of Venus, Mars, Diana, Mercury, Apollo; and Louis XIV met in the salon of Apollo with his courtiers, affable, gracious, august, a marvel of hard work and love of country, which under him was growing great and powerful.

Louis was his own Prime Minister and at the head of each department of state. His brain knew every important detail of every court in Europe. He formed his own policy and had an organization throughout France such as no government ever had. He was behind all the amazing progress of France. He had built it up from a series of fighting duchies from the days of the Fronde.

Louis has been traduced as the most arrogant ruler, who, a beardless king of seventeen, after a ride from Vincennes, strode, whip in hand, into the Parliament of Paris when they were discussing coinage, and said, sternly: “I forbid you, M. le Président, to discuss my edicts.” The key to his policy lay in the words, “L'état, C'est moi.” It has been called the sublimity of arrogance; yet his was the most brilliant reign of any modern French king; under him science and art flourished. Could it be that a man, however vain, who was an indefatigable worker, and who by his attitude to the world and to Canada, his new territory, shows his real nature by letters of such discernment and even justice, was so bad as has been painted? At one time he controlled Europe in effect. His army worshiped him.

We must not view the time of Louis XIV as we view life to-day—not in England, America, or in any other country. We must compare it with contemporary days. So doing, life under Louis in his seventy-two years' reign was most creditable to France. Vanity and arrogance are not crimes, else few great men would stand the test of time, and under Louis' powdered periwig and ringlets there was a brain of power; under his lace cravat there were a heart and mind that did honor to France; and behind his broad-skirted velvet coat and gold-headed cane and diamond-mounted stud, and jeweled snuff-box there was the courage of a man and the soul of a statesman. Extravagant he was and he loved display, but he worked like a slave with his Ministers, and no important detail escaped him. The letters he wrote to Frontenac and other Governors and Intendants, and to officials in New France are best tribute to a rare personality. Under the Generals Condé and Turenne, with Louvois as Minister of War; under Gremonville and Lionne as ambassadors, with Generals Vauban and Crequi and D'Enghien to come—France had reached to greater and greater days.

While the salon was full of courtiers awaiting the entrance of the Grand Monarch, things were happening on which depended the future of France in the New World. Were it not for La Salle, the vast territory from Fort Frontenac to the Gulf of Mexico would not have been taken in the name of France. We shall see how things went with La Salle.

It was at the house of the Prince de Conti that a meeting chanced which would influence the future of Canada. Tonty had given the Prince the result of his visit to the Abbé Renaudot, and Conti heard with pleasure that La Salle had asked Tonty to go to Canada. He said:

“I do not hear so well of La Salle's prospects as I had hoped, Tonty. He has bitter, powerful foes. If they influence King Louis and Colbert and Seignelay I shall have anxiety.”

“But, Your Highness's influence is great at court, and you can set back the trio against La Salle.”

The Prince smiled and tossed his fingers. “One never knows one's influence to be small or large till one tries, and I shall try to-day, but on the whole La Salle must fight his own fight, win his own case.”

La Salle had done his best. He had written Colbert an account of his discoveries in modest yet convincing terms; had said that the new country of the far West was so fertile and beautiful that all could be produced that was produced in France; and more, that flocks and herds could be left out to pasture all winter, that the wild cattle had a fine wool for making cloth and hats, that hemp and cotton grew there naturally, that the Indians would adopt French ways and modes of life, and it was the knowledge of the poverty of Quebec, its dense forests, its harsh climate that had led him to plant colonies in the beautiful lands of the far West. He wrote of the dangers from the Iroquois and other tribes, the rapids and cataracts, the cost of men and provisions, and the rivalry of the English—of the Hudson's Bay Company and at Albany. But this last reason only animated La Salle the more and impelled him to confuse them by promptness of action as to settlement and forts.

The simplicity and directness of La Salle's appeal had good effect on Colbert, and he was ready to speak favorably to King Louis concerning his appeal. But meanwhile La Salle's foes were at work, and one of the most capable was the Abbé Potin. But Colbert, clean of mind and not corruptible, waited his opportunity. In the far West he saw a new empire for France, and not one to be a constant drain on the pocket of the King, who gave as freely as he could. Louis gave bounties on early marriages in Canada. Twenty livres were given to each youth who married before the age of twenty, and to each girl before sixteen. This was called the King's Gift, and exclusive of the dowry given every girl brought over by his orders, of whom about a thousand were sent over between 1665 and 1673. The dowry was sometimes a home, provisions for eight months, and often fifty livres and household supplies, and a barrel of salted meat. Also all habitants of Canada who had living ten children each received a pension.

Was all this direct out of King Louis' purse the act of a tyrant and a Nero?

As Prince Conti and Tonty talked in the Prince's house, La Salle and Barbe Ranard met in his anteroom, for both had come to see him. La Salle bowed to her with cold courtesy, and she, the perfect intrigante, came to him with outstretched hand.

“Ah, M. la Salle, we meet in France at last. May all you come to do be as the gods decide!”

La Salle looked at the insincere eyes, the smiling mouth, the powdered hair, with no nerve of assent roused, and with repugnance in his heart, but he said in reply to her equivocal words:

“As King Louis may decide—after such advice as Madame Ranard may give him direct or indirect, right or wrong, just or unjust, good or bad.”

His face was composed as he spoke, but at his lips was a cold, ironical smile. He added:

“I do not forget, madame, what happened long ago, nor what you said at the Sainte Famille. Shall you use the same grotesque falsehood here in France—and to the ministers of the King?”

Her face underwent a sudden change. Her eyes became brilliant and fierce, her lips had a vicious look:

“I have told the minister what is well known in Quebec. I have not the gifts of fiction of the explorer. I think my word counts in France—my husband is in the Government service.”

It was on La Salle's tongue to say that her husband's wife was in the service of the Intendant of Canada, but he forbore. He only said, satirically: “Madame is working for Canada here, Of course. She has the patriot mind and the good of the Church at heart!”

“It is the strife between man and woman, Monsieur de la Salle, and in such contests it is not the man who wins. I have the secret of success in my pocket.”

“Oh, in your pocket, madame! I knew you thought you had it—but not in your pocket! It is a powerful secret, but it does not always win.”

“It wins when those who matter find it, M. de la Salle.”

“We shall know about that soon, madame.”

“Won't that depend on who sees the Minister last?”

“As for me, Madame Ranard, I abide by the customs of the place.”

“Do you know the customs of this place so well, monsieur?” There was biting insult in her tone.

“Not so well as madame, I suppose, but enough to find my way about.”

“The ways are dark, monsieur, and you will lose your path. You are not on the St. Lawrence or Lake Ontario. You are a backwoodsman. You do not know the halls of Versailles.”

“I am a backwoodsman, as you say, yet I came from France and I am not so verdant. My family were of the Caveliers of Rouen, and I was educated for the priesthood of the Jesuits.”

“You were a master in a Jesuit school!”

La Salle flushed slightly, for her tone and manner were contemptuous.

“Madame was never a mistress in a Jesuit school. She is the donnée of the Jesuits now, and what else be the will of God.”

Barbe's anger now was great. Stepping close to La Salle, she slapped his face. “You insult a lady like that! If I were a man I would fight you—low born, low bred, thief of trade, tool of Frontenac, grotesque ape of social life, most in debt of any man of Canada, and most loathed.”

La Salle smiled coldly. “If I am most in debt, it is proof I am not so much loathed, and as for my breeding, it ranks with that of a woman and her husband who stooped to the tricks of the ditch to bring a gentleman into disrepute. If you were a man I would make the world too small to hold you, madame.”

Barbe turned and saw Tonty leaving the Prince de Conti's salon.

“Monsieur de Tonty, behold the man who abused the hospitality of my house, and now insults me at the door of the Prince de Conti.”

Tonty looked at her satirically. “I think Sieur de la Salle never abused the hospitality of any household and never insulted a lady in his life. Madame Ranard, you have lost your temper—why I know not.”

His handsome face had contempt for this brilliant and seductive figure, and he knew La Salle had in her a dangerous foe—one who would lose no chance to hurt him—by falsehood and every vile act of such a woman.

She saw his metal hand, and she now hit him with all malice: “Not only is your hand metal, Henri de Tonty, your mind is also.”

The insult brought a flush to Tonty's face, but he kept himself in hand. If a man had said such a thing—but it did not matter! She was of the most incroyable kind, and she was clever and vicious enough to give La Salle a bad time.

He turned from her slowly. “The Prince will see you now, La Salle.”

La Salle said, with a courteous bow, “But ladies first!”

Madame Ranard moved forward, but Tonty said: “The Prince wished to speak to the Sieur de la Salle, madame. He knew, however, that you were here.”

“I shall prefer to have the last word with the Prince,” she said, with irony at her lips.

Bowing low, La Salle entered the salon and left her alone with Tonty.

“They will be some time. Will you not be seated, madame?” He courteously offered her a chair.

Her urbanity had returned. She smiled and seated herself and parted the ribbons at her throat. He could not fail to see how taking and alluring she was. All passions in her were in good control. She gave, she took away, with perfect measurement; her whole figure was alert, delicate, delicious. Even now her bosom throbbed as she looked sweetly at him. She was making a sudden and last attempt to win his approval.

He understood, and a strange drooping light came into his eyes. But all he said was:

“The roads are bad, madame, and the sky threatens.”

She made no reply at once, then saw the curious look in his eyes and she quoted viciously lines from a song of Bourgoyne:

“Eho! Eho! Eho!

The lambs are on the plains.

Eho! Eho! Eho!

The wolves are in the woods!”