Lettre de La Barre, au Ministre, 5 Juin, 1684; Ibid., 9 Juillet, 1684,
MSS.]

Meanwhile, La Salle had sailed for France, and thither we will follow him.




CHAPTER XXIII.
1684.
A NEW ENTERPRISE.

LA SALLE AT COURT.--HIS PROPOSALS.--OCCUPATION OF LOUISIANA.--INVASION
OF MEXICO--ROYAL FAVOR.--PREPARATION.--THE NAVAL COMMANDER.--HIS
JEALOUSY OF LA SALLE.--DISSENSIONS.


From the wilds of the Illinois,--crag, forest, and prairie, squalid
wigwams, and naked savages,--La Salle crossed the sea; and before him rose
the sculptured wonders of Versailles, that world of gorgeous illusion and
hollow splendor, where Louis the Magnificent held his court. Amid its pomp
of weary ceremonial, its glittering masquerade of vice and folly, its
carnival of vanity and pride, stood the man whose home for sixteen years
had been the wilderness, his bed the earth, his roof the sky, and his
companions a rude nature and ruder men. In all that throng of hereditary
nobles, there was none of a prouder spirit than the son of the burgher of
Rouen.

He announced what he had achieved in words of energetic simplicity, more
impressive than all the tinsel of rhetoric. [Footnote: Witness the