Montlivet

								

I saw the veins upon his neck begin to swell, and all my childish
irritation vanished.
"Come, monsieur," I hastened; "I was wrong.  But I meant no harm, and
surely here is a jest fit for your laughter, that two grown men should
stand and swell at each other like turkeycocks, all because they are
drunk with the air of a May day.  Come, here is my hand."
"But you said that I"--
"And what if I did?" I interrupted.  I had fallen into step, and was
pacing by his side.  "What is there in the term that we should hold it
in slight esteem?  I swagger.  What does that mean, after all, but my
acknowledgment of the presence of Dame Opportunity, and my admission
that I would like to impress her; to draw her eye in my direction.
Surely that is laudable, monsieur."
Cadillac laughed.  His tempers were the ruffle of a passing breeze upon
deep water.  "So you think that I swagger to meet opportunity?  Well,
if I do, I get but little out of it.  Sometimes I push myself near
enough to pluck at the sleeve of the dame; oftener she passes me by."
"Yet she gave you this key to an empire," I suggested.  I had been
rude, and I repented it, and more than that, there was something in the
man that tempted me to offer him flattery even as I desire to give
sweets to an engaging child.
But this cajolery he swept away with a fling of his heavy arm.  "The
key to an empire!" he echoed contemptuously.  "They are fine words, and
the mischief is that they are true.  Yet food in my stomach, and money
in my pocket, would mean more to me just now.  I must speak to this
Indian.  Will you wait for me, monsieur?  I have business with you."
I bowed, and resumed my walk.  "The key to an empire!" I said my own
words over, and could have blushed for their tone of bombast.  They
were true, but they sounded false, I looked at my surroundings, and
marveled that a situation that was of real dignity could wear so mean a
garb.  The sandy cove where I stood was on the mainland, and sheltered
four settlements.  Behind lay the forest; in front stretched Lake
Huron, a waterway that was our only link with the men and nations we
had left behind.  The settlements were contiguous in body, but even my
twenty-four hours' acquaintance had shown me that they were leagues
apart in mind.  There were a French fort, a Jesuit convent, a village
of Ottawas, and, barred by the aristocracy of a palisade, a village of
Hurons.  The scale of precedence was plain to read.  The huts of the
savages were wattled, interlaced of poles and bark; the French
buildings were of wood, but roofed with rough cedar; the only houses
with board roofs were those of the Jesuits.  In later times when I
found Father Carheil hard to understand, I used to say to myself that
he was not to be held too strictly to account for his contradictions,
for though one learns to think great thoughts in the wilderness, it is
not done easily when there is sawed lumber to shut away the sky.