ts of gayety; but what would seem such in anybody else
is melancholy for a Languedocian. Burn my letter, and never doubt my
attachment." "I shall always say, Happy he who is free from the proud
yoke to which I am bound. When shall I see my chateau of Candiac, my
plantations, my chestnut grove, my oil-mill, my mulberry-trees? _O bon
Dieu! Bon soir; brulez ma lettre."_[677]

[Footnote 677: The above extracts are from letters of 5 and 27 Nov. and
9 Dec. 1758, and 18 and 23 March, 1759.]

Never was dispute more untimely than that between these ill-matched
colleagues. The position of the colony was desperate. Thus far the
Canadians had never lost heart, but had obeyed with admirable alacrity
the Governor's call to arms, borne with patience the burdens and
privations of the war, and submitted without revolt to the exactions and
oppressions of Cadet and his crew; loyal to their native soil, loyal to
their Church, loyal to the wretched government that crushed and
belittled them. When the able-bodied were ordered to the war, where four
fifths of them were employed in the hard and tedious work of
transportation, the women, boys and old men tilled the fields and raised
a scanty harvest, which always might be, and sometimes was, taken from
them in the name of the King. Yet the least destitute among them were
forced every winter to lodge soldiers in their houses, for each of whom
they were paid fifteen france a month, in return for substance devoured
and wives and daughters debauched.[678]

[Footnote 678: _Memoire sur le moyen d'entretenir 10,000 Hommes de
Troupes dans les Colonies, 1759._]

No pains had been spared to keep up the courage of the people and feed
them with flattering illusions. When the partisan officer Boishebert was
tried for peculation, his counsel met the charge by extolling the manner
in which he had fulfilled the arduous duty of encouraging the Acadians,
"putting on an air of triumph even in defeat; using threats, caresses,
stratagems; painting our victories in vivid colors; hiding the strength
and successes of the enemy; promising succors that did not and could not
come; inventing plausible reasons why they did not come, and making new
promises to set off the failure of the old; persuading a starved people
to forget their misery; taking from some to give to others; and doing
all this continually in the face of a superior enemy, that this country
might be snatched from England and saved to France."[679] What