settlement of the question in every contingency of peace
or war."

"Be sure of one thing," continued Bigot, "the Grand Company will not,
like the eels of Melun, cry out before they are skinned. What says the
proverb, 'Mieux vaut engin que force' (craft beats strength)? The Grand
Company must prosper as the first condition of life in New France.
Perhaps a year or two of repose may not be amiss, to revictual and
reinforce the Colony; and by that time we shall be ready to pick the
lock of Bellona's temple again and cry Vive la guerre! Vive la Grande
Compagnie! more merrily than ever!"

Bigot's far-reaching intellect forecast the course of events, which
remained so much subject to his own direction after the peace of Aix la
Chapelle--a peace which in America was never a peace at all, but only
an armed and troubled truce between the clashing interests and rival
ambitions of the French and English in the New World.

The meeting of the Board of Managers of the Grand Company broke up,
and--a circumstance that rarely happened--without the customary debauch.
Bigot, preoccupied with his own projects, which reached far beyond the
mere interests of the Company, retired to his couch. Cadet, Varin,
and Penisault, forming an interior circle of the Friponne, had certain
matters to shape for the Company's eye. The rings of corruption in the
Grand Company descended, narrower and more black and precipitous, down
to the bottom where Bigot sat, the Demiurgos of all.

The Chevalier des Meloises was rather proud of his sister's beauty and
cleverness, and in truth a little afraid of her. They lived together
harmoniously enough, so long as each allowed the other his or her
own way. Both took it, and followed their own pleasures, and were not
usually disagreeable to one another, except when Angelique commented on
what she called his penuriousness, and he upon her extravagance, in the
financial administration of the family of the Des Meloises.

The Chevalier was highly delighted to-day to be able to inform Angelique
of her good fortune in becoming a partner of the Friponne and that
too by grace of his Excellency the Intendant. The information filled
Angelique with delight, not only because it made her independent of her
brother's mismanagement of money, but it opened a door to her wildest
hopes. In that gift her ambition found a potent ally to enable her to
resist the appeal to her heart which she knew would be made to-night by
Le Gardeur de