at once two great facts were brought to me.

"Your Excellency, then, was at Ticonderoga?" said I.

"I sent Montcalm to defend it," he replied pompously. "I told
him how he must act; I was explicit, and it came out as I had said:
we were victorious. Yet he would have done better had he obeyed me
in everything. If I had been at Louisburg--"

I could not at first bring myself to flatter the vice-regal peacock;
for it had been my mind to fight these Frenchmen always; to yield in
nothing; to defeat them like a soldier, not like a juggler. But I
brought myself to say half ironically, "If all great men had capable
instruments, they would seldom fail."

"You have touched the heart of the matter," he said credulously.
"It is a pity," he added, with complacent severity, "that you
have been so misguided and criminal; you have, in some things,
more sense than folly."

I bowed as to a compliment from a great man. Then, all at once,
I spoke to him with an air of apparent frankness, and said that if
I must die, I cared to do so like a gentleman, with some sort of
health, and not like an invalid. He must admit that at least I was
no coward. He might fence me about with what guards he chose, but
I prayed him to let me walk upon the ramparts, when I was strong
enough to be abroad, under all due espionage. I had already
suffered many deaths, I said, and I would go to the final one
looking like a man, and not like an outcast of humanity.