ing hastened to pay her their court.
Pean, jilted by his own wife, made prosperous love to the wife of his
partner, Penisseault; who, though the daughter of a Montreal tradesman,
had the air of a woman of rank, and presided with dignity and grace at a
hospitable board where were gathered the clerks of Cadet and other
lesser lights of the administrative hierarchy. It was often honored by
the presence of the Chevalier de Levis, who, captivated by the charms of
the hostess, condescended to a society which his friends condemned as
unworthy of his station. He succeeded Pean in the graces of Madame
Penisseault, and after the war took her with him to France; while the
aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small
functionaries under his orders.[560]

[Footnote 559: _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Memoire sur les
Fraudes_, etc. Compare Pouchot, I. 8.]

[Footnote 560: _Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]

Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin,
commissary of marine, and Bigot's deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low
degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited,
arrogant, headstrong, capricious, and dissolute. Worthless as he was, he
found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to
supplant Bigot in the intendancy. To this end, as well as to save
himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare
the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray
his own. Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son
of a shoemaker at Quebec, and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King's
storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be
confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom
several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality, but who was now in the
confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful, and in whose
service he grew rich.

Canada was the prey of official jackals,--true lion's providers, since
they helped to prepare a way for the imperial beast, who, roused at last
from his lethargy, was gathering his strength to seize her for his own.
Honesty could not be expected from a body of men clothed with arbitrary
and ill-defined powers, ruling with absolute sway an unfortunate people
who had no voice in their own destinies, and answerable only to an
apathetic master three thousand miles away. Nor did the Canadian Church,
though supreme, check the corruptions th