'Now, there you have put your
finger on the point--my point, the choice weapon I had reserved to prick
the little bubble of Bigot's hate and the Governor's conceit, if I so
chose, even at the last. And here is a girl, a young girl just freed
from pinafores, who teaches them the law of nations! If it pleased me I
should not speak, for Vaudreuil's and Bigot's affairs are none of mine;
but, in truth, why should you kill your enemy? It is the sport to keep
him living; you can get no change for your money from a dead man. He has
had one cheerful year; why not another, and another, and another? And so
watch him fretting to the slow-coming end, while now and again you give
him a taste of hope, to drop him back again into the pit which has no
sides for climbing.' He paused a minute, and then added, 'A year ago
I thought he had touched you, this Britisher, with his raw humour and
manners; but, my faith, how swiftly does a woman's fancy veer!' At that
I said calmly to him, 'You must remember that then he was not thought so
base.' 'Yes, yes,' he replied; 'and a woman loves to pity the captive,
whatever his fault, if he be presentable and of some notice or talent.
And Moray has gifts,' he went on. I appeared all at once to be offended.
'Veering, indeed! a woman's fancy! I think you might judge women better.
You come from high places, Monsieur Doltaire, and they say this and that
of your great talents and of your power at Versailles, but what proof
have we had of it? You set a girl down with a fine patronage, and you
hint at weapons to cut off my cousin the Governor and the Intendant from
their purposes; but how do we know you can use them, that you have power
with either the unnoticeable woman or the great men?' I knew very
well it was a bold move. He suddenly turned to me, in his cruel eyes
a glittering kind of light, and said, 'I suggest no more than I can
do with those "great men"; and as for the woman, the slave can not be
patron--I am the slave. I thought not of power before; but now that I
do, I will live up to my thinking. I seem idle, I am not; purposeless,
I am not; a gamester, I am none. I am a sportsman, and I will not
leave the field till all the hunt be over. I seem a trifler, yet I have
persistency. I am no romanticist, I have no great admiration for myself,
and yet when I set out to hunt a woman honestly, be sure I shall never
back to kennel till she is mine or I am done for utterly. Not by worth
nor by deserving, but