or fall with the colony. He never showed aught but a hold and
confident face to the public, and was in all regards the most
conspicuous figure in New France. When, two years before, Montcalm
took Oswego from the English, Bigot threw open his palace to the
populace for two days' feasting, and every night during the war he
entertained lavishly, though the people went hungry, and their own
corn, bought for the King, was sold back to them at famine prices.

As the Governor amid the Intendant grew together in friendship,
Vaudreuil sinking past disapproval in present selfish necessity,
they quietly combined against Doltaire as against Montcalm. Yet at
this very time Doltaire was living in the Intendance, and, as he
had told Alixe, not without some personal danger. He had before
been offered rooms at the Chateau St. Louis; but these he would
not take, for he could not bear to be within touch of the Governor's
vanity and timidity. He would of preference have stayed in the
Intendance had he known that pitfalls and traps were at every
footstep. Danger gave a piquancy to his existence. I think he did
not greatly value Madame Cournal's admiration of himself; but when
it drove Bigot to retaliation, his imagination got an impulse, and
he entered upon a conflict which ran parallel with the war, and
with that delicate antagonism which Alixe waged against him, long
undiscovered by himself.

At my wits' end for news, at last I begged my jailer to convey a
message for me to the Governor, asking that the barber be let
come to me. The next day an answer arrived in the person of Voban
himself, accompanied by the jailer. For a time there was little
speech between us, but as he tended me we talked. We could do
so with safety, for Voban knew English; and though he spoke it