, under the impenetrable mail of paladin or crusader, beat a
heart of more intrepid mettle than within the stoic panoply that armed
the breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the marvels of his patient
fortitude, one must follow on his track through the vast scene of his
interminable journeyings, those thousands of weary miles of forest,
marsh, and river, where, again and again, in the bitterness of baffled
striving, the untiring pilgrim pushed onward toward the goal which he
was never to attain. America owes him an enduring memory; for, in this
masculine figure, she sees the pioneer who guided her to the
possession of her richest heritage.

III

THE COMING OF FRONTENAC TO CANADA[50]

(1672)

Count Frontenac came of an ancient and noble race, said to have been of
Basque origin. His father held a high post in the household of Louis XIII,
who became the child's godfather, and gave him his own name. At the age of
fifteen, the young Louis showed an uncontrollable passion for the life of a
soldier. He was sent to the seat of war in Holland, to serve under the
Prince of Orange. At the age of nineteen, he was a volunteer at the siege
of Hesdin; in the next year he was at Arras, where he distinguished himself
during a sortie of the garrison; in the next, he took part in the siege of
Aire; and, in the next, in those of Callioure and Perpignan. At the age of
twenty-three, he was made colonel of the regiment of Normandy, which he
commanded in repeated battles and sieges of the Italian campaign. He was
several times wounded, and in 1646 he had an arm broken at the siege of
Orbitello. In the same year, when twenty-six years old, he was raised to
the rank of marechal de camp, equivalent to that of brigadier-general. A
year or two later we find him at Paris, at the house of his father, on the
Quai des Celestins.

[Footnote 50: From Chapters I and II of "Count Frontenac and New
France Under Louis XIV." Copyright, 1877, by Francis Parkman.
Published by Little, Brown & Company.]

In the same neighborhood lived La Grange-Trianon, Sieur de Neuville, a
widower of fifty, with one child, a daughter of sixteen, whom he had
placed in the charge of his relative, Madame de Bouthillier. Frontenac
fell in love with her. Madam de Bouthillier opposed the match, and
told La Grange that he might do better for his daughter than marry her
to a man who, say what he might, had but twenty thousand francs a
year. La Grange was weak and vacilla