That afternoon of the 12th, while Montcalm and Vaudreuil
were at cross-purposes near the mouth of the St Charles,
Wolfe was only four miles away, on the other side of the
Plains, in a boat on the St Lawrence, where he was taking
his last look at what he then called the Foulon and what
the world now calls Wolfe's Cove. His boat was just
turning to drift up in midstream, off Sillery Point,
which is only half a mile above the Foulon. He wanted to
examine the Cove well through his telescope at dead low
tide, as he intended to land his army there at the next
low tide. Close beside him sat young Robison, who was
not an officer in either the Army or Navy, but who had
come out to Canada as tutor to an admiral's son, and who
had been found so good at maps that he was employed with
Wolfe's engineers in making surveys and sketches of the
ground about Quebec. Shutting up his telescope, Wolfe
sat silent a while. Then, as afterwards recorded by
Robison, he turned towards his officers and repeated
several stanzas of Gray's _Elegy_. 'Gentlemen,' he said
as he ended, 'I would sooner have written that poem than
beat the French to-morrow.' He did not know then that
his own fame would far surpass the poet's, and that he
should win it in the very way described in one of the
lines he had just been quoting--

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

At half-past eight in the evening he was sitting in his
cabin on board Holmes's flagship, the _Sutherland_, above
Cap Rouge, with 'Jacky Jervis'--the future Earl St Vincent,