at famine prices by La Friponne. Even now Quebec was full of pilgrim
poor begging against the hard winter, and execrating their spoilers.

Doltaire was too fond of digging at the heart of things not to
admit she spoke truth.

"La Pompadour et La Friponne!
Qu'est que cela, mon petit homme?"
"Les deux terribles, ma chere mignonne,
Mais, c'est cela--
La Pompadour et La Friponne!"

He said this with cool drollery and point, in the patois of the
native, so that he set us all laughing, in spite of our mutual
apprehensions.

Then he continued, "And the King has sent a chorus to the play, with
eyes for the preposterous make-believe, and more, no purse to fill."

We all knew he meant himself, and we knew also that so far as
money went he spoke true; that though hand-in-glove with Bigot, he
was poor, save for what he made at the gaming-table and got from
France. There was the thing that might have clinched me to him, had
matters been other than they were; for all my life I have loathed
the sordid soul, and I would rather, in these my ripe years, eat
with a highwayman who takes his life in his hands than with the
civilian who robs his king and the king's poor, and has no better
trick than false accounts, nor better friend than the pettifogging
knave. Doltaire had no burning love for France, and little faith in
anything; for he was of those Versailles water-flies who recked not