ish
court before we can reach London.

_Nov. 11._--Sailed for France in the French frigate.

_Dec. 18._--Reach Rochelle--hear of M. Colbert's death.

_Jan. 30._--Paris--all our furs seized by the French Government in
order to keep M. Radisson powerless--Lord Preston, the English
ambassador, complaining against us on the one hand, and battering our
doors down on the other, with spies offering M. Radisson safe passage
from Paris to London.

I would that I had time to tell you of that hard winter in Paris, M.
Radisson week by week, like a fort resisting siege, forced to take
cheaper and cheaper lodgings, till we were housed between an attic roof
and creaking rat-ridden floor in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But not one
jot did M. Radisson lose of his kingly bearing, though he went to some
fete in Versailles with beaded moccasins and frayed plushes and
tattered laces and hair that one of the pretty wits declared the birds
would be anesting in for hay-coils. In that Faubourg St. Antoine
house, I mind, we took grand apartments on the ground floor, but up and
up we went, till M. Radisson vowed we'd presently be under the
stars--as the French say when they are homeless--unless my Lord
Preston, the English ambassador, came to our terms.

That starving of us for surrender was only another trick of the
gamestering in which we were enmeshed. Had Captain Godey, Lord
Preston's messenger, succeeded in luring us back to England without
terms, what a pretty pickle had ours been! France would have set a
price on us. Then must we have accepted any kick-of-toe England chose
to offer--and thanked our new masters for the same, else back to France
they would have sent us.

But attic dwellers stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout
courage. When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been
stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre
Radisson sat spinning his yarns of captivity with Iroquois to our attic
neighbours, comes a rap at the door, and in walks Captain Godey of the
English Embassy. As soon as our neighbours had gone, he counts out one
hundred gold pieces on the table. Then he hands us a letter signed by
the Duke of York, King Charles's brother, who was Governor of the
Hudson's Bay Company, granting us all that we asked.

Thereupon, Pierre Radisson asks leave of the French court to seek
change of air; but the country air we sought was that of England in
May, not France, as the