Part 37 (1/2)

PART III

CHAPTER XXIII

A CHANGE OF PARTNERS

Old folks are wont to repeat themselves, but that is because they would impress those garnered lessons which age no longer has strength to drive home at one blow.

Royalist and Puritan, each had his lesson to learn, as I said before.

Each marked the pendulum swing to a wrong extreme, and the pendulum was beating time for your younger generations to march by. And so I say to you who are wiser by the follies of your fathers, look not back too scornfully; for he who is ever watching to mock at the tripping of other men's feet is like to fall over a very small stumbling-block himself.

Already have I told you of holy men who would gouge a man's eye out for the extraction of one small bean, and counted burnings life's highest joy, and held the body accursed as a necessary evil for the tabernacling of the soul. Now must I tell you of those who wantoned ”in the l.u.s.t of the flesh and the l.u.s.t of the eye and the pride of life,” who burned their lives out at a shrine of folly, and who held that the soul and all things spiritual had gone out of fas.h.i.+on except for the making of vows and pretty conceits in verse by a lover to his lady.

For Pierre Radisson's fears of France playing false proved true. Bare had our keels b.u.mped through that forest of sailing craft, which ever swung to the tide below Quebec fort, when a company of young cadets marches down from the Castle St. Louis to escort us up to M. de la Barre, the new governor.

”Hm,” says M. Radisson, looking in his half-savage buckskins a wild enough figure among all those young jacks-in-a-box with their gold lace and steel breastplates. ”Hm--let the governor come to us! An you will not go to a man, a man must come to you!”

”I am indisposed,” says he to the cadets. ”Let the governor come to me.”

And come he did, with a company of troops fresh out from France and a roar of cannon from the ramparts that was more for the frightening than welcoming of us.

M. de Radisson bade us answer the salute by a firing of muskets in mid-air. Then we all let go a cheer for the Governor of New France.

”I must thank Your Excellency for the welcome sent down by your cadets,” says M. de Radisson, meeting the governor half-way across the gang-plank.

M. de la Barre, an iron-gray man past the prime of life, gave spare smile in answer to that.

”I bade my cadets request you to _report_ at the castle,” says he, with a hard wrinkling of the lines round his lips.

”I bade your fellows report that I was indisposed!”

”Did the north not agree with Sieur Radisson?” asks the governor dryly.

”Pardieu!--yes--better than the air of Quebec,” retorts M. Radisson.

By this the eyes of the listeners were agape, M. Radisson not budging a pace to go ash.o.r.e, the governor scarce courting rebuff in sight of his soldiers.

”Radisson,” says M. de la Barre, motioning his soldiers back and following to our captain's cabin, ”a fellow was haltered and whipped for disrespect to the bishop yesterday!”

”Fortunately,” says M. Radisson, touching the hilt of his rapier, ”gentlemen settle differences in a simpler way!”

They had entered the cabin, where Radisson bade me stand guard at the door, and at our leader's bravado M. de la Barre saw fit to throw off all disguise.

”Radisson,” he said, ”those who trade without license are sent to the galleys----”

”And those who go to the galleys get no more furs to divide with the Governor of New France, and the governor who gets no furs goes home a poor man.”

M. de la Barre's sallow face wrinkled again in a dry laugh.