being the worse." To his wife he says: "The price of everything
is rising. I am ruining myself; I owe the treasurer twelve thousand
francs. I long for peace and for you. In spite of the public distress,
we have balls and furious gambling." In February he returned to Montreal
in a sleigh on the ice of the St. Lawrence,--a mode of travelling which
he describes as cold but delicious. Montreal pleased him less than ever,
especially as he was not in favor at what he calls the Court, meaning
the circle of the Governor-General. "I find this place so amusing," he
writes ironically to Bourlamaque, "that I wish Holy Week could be
lengthened, to give me a pretext for neither making nor receiving
visits, staying at home, and dining there almost alone. Burn all my
letters, as I do yours." And in the next week: "Lent and devotion have
upset my stomach and given me a cold; which does not prevent me from
having the Governor-General at dinner to-day to end his lenten fast,
according to custom here." Two days after he announces: "To-day a grand
dinner at Martel's; twenty-three persons, all big-wigs (_les grosses
perruques_); no ladies. We still have got to undergo those of Pean,
Deschambault, and the Chevalier de Levis. I spend almost every evening
in my chamber, the place I like best, and where I am least bored."

With the opening spring there were changes in the modes of amusement.
Picnics began, Vaudreuil and his wife being often of the party, as too
was Levis. The Governor also made visits of compliment at the houses of
the seigniorial proprietors along the river; "very much," says Montcalm,
as "Henri IV. did to the bourgeois notables of Paris. I live as usual,
fencing in the morning, dining, and passing the evening at home or at
the Governor's. Pean has gone up to La Chine to spend six days with the
reigning sultana [_Pean's wife, mistress of Bigot_]. As for me, my
_ennui_ increases. I don't know what to do, or say, or read, or where to
go; and I think that at the end of the next campaign I shall ask
bluntly, blindly, for my recall, only because I am bored."[537]

[Footnote 537: _Montcalm a Bourlamaque_, 22 _Mai_, 1758.]

His relations with Vaudreuil were a constant annoyance to him,
notwithstanding the mask of mutual civility. "I never," he tells his
mother, "ask for a place in the colony troops for anybody. You need not
be an Oedipus to guess this riddle. Here are four lines from
Corneille:--

"'Mon crime veritable est d'av