ritish army as a whole: it caught
the French before they could reform, and thus the issue was already
decided.

"Now here was a change on the message, my Comte Frontenac, in earlier
years, returned to a British admiral who demanded his surrender. 'The
only answer,' he swore, 'I will give will be from the mouth of my
cannon and musketry, that he may learn that it is not in such a style
that a man of my rank may be summoned.' It was a change, too, from the
ill-success of General Wolfe's assault on Montmorency, over beside the
little river falling into the big one, where the very elements were
unfavourable.

"Montcalm won then, very fairly won, for his fire upon the British was
of a nature which none could overcome. Monsieur Vaudreuil, the
Governor, who, like the Intendant Bigot, had an eternal desire to reap
where he had not sown, was so patronizing as to say after the
Montmorency fight, 'I have no more anxiety about Quebec. Monsieur
Wolfe, I am sure, will make no progress.' 'La, la,' as Madame
Angelique would say when she teases me, what a poor prophet was his
excellency Vaudreuil, but, indeed, prophecy has a trick of falling into
incapable hands and I, being, I trust, capable, have rarely tried it.

"You needed my broad account of events in Quebec to do me justice, and
that is why I have lingered over it. I have given you hints enough for
the proper fitting of me into those events, as when, most casually, I
hope, I mentioned my advising of General Wolfe precisely where to make
his ascent to the Plains of Abraham. However, there are small personal
items you cannot know, without they are told you, and very chiefly that
refers to the ingenuity with which, my mission, as compacted, being
done, I passed from the ranks of the vanquished French to those of the
conquering British, where I had been expected.

"There was such confusion everywhere, such a tearing up of things, that
I could do what I wished, and have it go unchallenged. Moreover, there
was a want of bitterness between the contending parties, for one
reason, possibly, because the deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm had softened
enmity: and nobody has yet hurled the words 'traitor,' 'spy,' at me,
and I feel I am not truly open to them, my task having been that of an
intelligence officer on the highest scale. As much is recognized in
the affability which I have continued to find among the French since
the close of the siege, but they are by nature surprisingly a