he
Indians two thirds are stolen, and the rest sold to them instead of
being given?"[558]

[Footnote 556: _Considerations sur l'Etat present du Canada_.]

[Footnote 557: _Memoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie_.
Bougainville, _Memoire sur l'Etat de la Nouvelle France_.]

[Footnote 558: Bougainville, _Journal_.]

The transportation of military stores gave another opportunity of
plunder. The contractor would procure from the Governor or the local
commandant an order requiring the inhabitants to serve him as boatmen,
drivers, or porters, under a promise of exemption that year from duty as
soldiers. This saved him his chief item of expense, and the profits of
his contract rose in proportion.

A contagion of knavery ran through the official life of the colony; and
to resist it demanded no common share of moral robustness. The officers
of the troops of the line were not much within its influence; but those
of the militia and colony regulars, whether of French or Canadian birth,
shared the corruption of the civil service. Seventeen of them, including
six chevaliers of St. Louis and eight commandants of forts, were
afterwards arraigned for fraud and malversation, though some of the
number were acquitted. Bougainville gives the names of four other
Canadian officers as honorable exceptions to the general
demoralization,--Benoit, Repentigny, Laine, and Le Borgne; "not enough,"
he observes, "to save Sodom."

Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Pean, whose qualities
as a soldier have been questioned, but who nevertheless had shown almost
as much vigor in serving the King during the Ohio campaign of 1753 as
he afterwards displayed effrontery in cheating him. "Le petit Pean" had
married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desmeloizes, Canadian like himself,
well born, and famed for beauty, vivacity, and wit. Bigot, who was near
sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Pean was made. His
first success seems to have taken him by surprise. He had bought as a
speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him
by the Intendant. Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order
raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Pean, who thus
made a profit of fifty thousand crowns.[559] A few years later his
wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs. Madame Pean
became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all
who sought opportunity to rob the K