Part 5 (2/2)
”My uncle the Abbe Cavelier.”
”It is therefore your uncle the Abbe Cavelier who will decide when to turn you out among Indians and traders.”
”You carry too bitter a tongue, my brother Jean,” observed La Salle.
”The child has caught no harm. My own youth was cramped within religious walls.”
”You carry too arrogant a mind now, my brother La Salle. I heard it noted of you to-day that you last night sat apart and deigned no word to them that have been of use to you in Montreal.”
La Salle's face owned the sting. Shy natures have always been made to pay a tax on pride. But next to the slanderer we detest the bearer of his slander to our ears.
”It is too much for any man to expect in this world,--a brother who will defend him against his enemies.”
As soon as this regret had burst from the explorer, he rested his look again on Tonty.
”I do defend you,” a.s.serted Abbe Cavelier; ”and more than that I impoverish myself for you. But now that you come riding back from France on a high tide of the king's favor, I may not lay a correcting word on your haughty spirit. Neither yesterday nor to-day could I bring you to any reasonable state of humility. And all New France in full cry against you!”
Extreme impatience darkened La Salle's face; but without further reply he drew Barbe's hand and turned back with her toward the Hotel Dieu. She had watched her uncle the Abbe wrathfully during his attack upon La Salle, but as he dropped his eyes no more to her level she was obliged to carry away her undischarged anger. This she did with a haughty bearing so like La Salle's that the Abbe grinned at it through his fretfulness.
He grew conscious of alien hair bristling against his neck as a voice mocked in undertone directly below his ear,--
”Yonder struts a great Bashaw that will sometime be laid low!”
The Abbe turned severely upon a person who presumed to tickle a priest's neck with his coa.r.s.e mustache and astound a priest's ear with threats.
He recognized the man known as Jolycoeur, who had been pushed against him in the throng. Jolycoeur, by having his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure of La Salle, had missed the ear of the person he intended to reach. He recoiled from encountering the Abbe, whose wrath with sudden ebb ran back from a brother upon a brother's foes.
”You are the fellow I saw whining yesterday at Sieur de la Salle's heels. What hath the Sieur de la Salle done to any of you worthless woods-rangers, except give you labor and wages, when the bread you eat is a waste of his substance?”
Jolycoeur, not daring to reply to a priest, slunk away in the crowd.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Several historians identify Jolycoeur with the noted coureur de bois and writer, Nicolas Perrot. But considering the deed he attempted, the romancer has seen fit to portray him as a very different person.
Book II.
FORT FRONTENAC.
1683 A. D.
I.
RIVAL MASTERS.
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