ding
the arrangements for the marriage which had been fixed for the
festivities of Christmas.

It was to be celebrated on a scale worthy of the rank of the heiress of
Repentigny and of the wealth of the Philiberts. The rich Bourgeois, in
the gladness of his heart, threw open all his coffers, and blessed with
tears of happiness the money he flung out with both hands to honor the
nuptials of Pierre and Amelie.

The Bourgeois was profoundly happy during those few brief days of Indian
summer. As a Christian, he rejoiced that the long desolating war was
over. As a colonist, he felt a pride that, unequal as had been the
struggle, New France remained unshorn of territory, and by its resolute
defence had forced respect from even its enemies. In his eager hope he
saw commerce revive, and the arts and comforts of peace take the place
of war and destruction. The husbandman would now reap for himself the
harvest he had sown, and no longer be crushed by the exactions of the
Friponne!

There was hope for the country. The iniquitous regime of the Intendant,
which had pleaded the war as its justification, must close, the
Bourgeois thought, under the new conditions of peace. The hateful
monopoly of the Grand Company must be overthrown by the constitutional
action of the Honnetes Gens, and its condemnation by the Parliament
of Paris, to which an appeal would presently be carried, it was hoped,
would be secured.

The King was quarreling with the Jesuits. The Molinists were hated by
La Pompadour, and he was certain His Majesty would never hold a lit de
justice to command the registration of the decrees issued in his name by
the Intendant of New France after they had been in form condemned by the
Parliament of Paris.

The Bourgeois still reclined very still on his easy chair. He was not
asleep. In the daytime he never slept. His thoughts, like the dame's,
reverted to Pierre. He meditated the repurchase of his ancestral home in
Normandy and the restoration of its ancient honors for his son.

Personal and political enmity might prevent the reversal of his own
unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns.
He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages
in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his family
honors, while the all-potent influence of money, the open sesame of
every door in the palace of Versailles, would not be spared to advance
his just claims.

The crown