Angelique in a sensual, admiring way, without one grain of real respect.
He worshipped her one moment as the Aphrodite of his fancy; he was ready
to strip and scourge her the next as the possible murderess of Caroline.
But Bigot had fettered himself with a lie, and had to hide his thoughts
under degrading concealments. He knew the Marquise de Pompadour was
jealously watching him from afar. The sharpest intellects and most
untiring men in the Colony were commissioned to find out the truth
regarding the fate of Caroline. Bigot was like a stag brought to bay. An
ordinary man would have succumbed in despair, but the very desperation
of his position stirred up the Intendant to a greater effort to free
himself.

He walked gloomily up and down the room, absorbed in deep thought.
Cadet, who guessed what was brooding in his mind, made a sign to De Pean
to wait and see what would be the result of his cogitations.

Bigot, gesticulating with his right hand and his left, went on
balancing, as in a pair of scales, the chances of success or failure in
the blow he meditated against the Golden Dog. A blow which would scatter
to the winds the inquisition set on foot to discover the hiding-place of
Caroline.

He stopped suddenly in his walk, striking both hands together, as if in
sign of some resolution arrived at in his thoughts.

"De Pean!" said he, "has Le Gardeur de Repentigny shown any desire yet
to break out of the Palace?"

"None, your Excellency. He is fixed as a bridge to fortune. You can no
more break him down than the Pont Neuf at Paris. He lost, last night,
a thousand at cards and five hundred at dice; then drank himself dead
drunk until three o'clock this afternoon. He has just risen; his valet
was washing his head and feet in brandy when I came here."

"You are a friend that sticks closer than a brother, De Pean. Le Gardeur
believes in you as his guardian angel, does he not?" asked Bigot with a
sneer.

"When he is drunk he does," replied De Pean; "when he is sober I care
not to approach him too nearly! He is a wild colt that will kick his
groom when rubbed the wrong way; and every way is wrong when the wine is
out of him."

"Keep him full then!" exclaimed Bigot; "you have groomed him well, De
Pean! but he must now be saddled and ridden to hunt down the biggest
stag in New France!"

De Pean looked hard at the Intendant, only half comprehending his
allusion.

"You once tried your hand with Mademoiselle de Repent