glasses on the table. I was never before so charmed with her swift
intelligence, for I never had great nimbleness of thought, nor
power to make nice play with the tongue.

"You have been three years with us," suddenly said her father,
passing me the wine. "How time has flown! How much has happened!"

"Madame Cournal's husband has made three million francs," said
Doltaire, with dry irony and truth.

Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, stiffened; for, oblique as the
suggestion was, he did not care to have his daughter hear it.

"And Vaudreuil has sent bees buzzing to Versailles about Bigot
and Company," added the impish satirist.

Madame Duvarney responded with a look of interest, and the
Seigneur's eyes steadied to his plate. All at once by that I saw
the Seigneur had known of the Governor's action, and maybe had
counseled with him, siding against Bigot. If that were so--as it
proved to be--he was in a nest of scorpions; for who among them
would spare him: Marin, Cournal, Rigaud, the Intendant himself?
Such as he were thwarted right and left in this career of knavery
and public evils.

"And our people have turned beggars; poor and starved, they beg at
the door of the King's storehouse--it is well called La Friponne,"
said Madame Duvarney, with some heat; for she was ever liberal to
the poor, and she had seen manor after manor robbed, and peasant
farmers made to sell their corn for a song, to be sold to them again