"The fortunes are with the Intendant always," said he. "When
things are at their worst, and the King's storehouse, the dear
La Friponne, is to be ripped by our rebel peasants like a sawdust
doll, here comes this gay news of our success on the Ohio; and in
that Braddock's death the whining beggars will forget their empty
bellies, and bless where they meant to curse. What fools, to be
sure! They had better loot La Friponne. Lord, how we love fighting,
we French! And 'tis so much easier to dance, or drink, or love."
He stretched out his shapely legs as he sat musing.

Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, smiling. "But you, Doltaire--there's
no man out of France that fights more."

He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it
does need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love:
blind men's games!" He smiled cynically into the distance.

I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so
original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at
the pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with
him once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and
his fine penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action
to him was a playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court
from which he came, its scornful endurance of defeat or misery,
its flippant look upon the world, its scoundrel view of women. Then
he and Duvarney talked, and I sat thinking. Perhaps the passion
of a cause grows in you as you suffer for it, and I had suffered,
and suffered most by a bitter inaction. Governor Dinwiddie, Mr.
Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment chapters of my life,