become engineer-in-chief under Montcalm. Yet from the point of view of
the Versailles nobility--the standard he himself was most ambitious to
apply--he was but an obscure colonel, and his title a questionable
affair. He acquired it in this wise.

At the fall of New France the last French Governor, Vaudreuil, passed
over to Europe and sold out his Canadian properties. De Lotbiniere, who
remained, bought them for a song, including the chateau in Montreal and
several large seigniories, chiefly wild lands, but growing in value. In
the original grant of one of them to the Marquis de Vaudreuil, he found
that it had been intended as a Canadian marquisate, an honorary
appellation, however, which the Vaudreuils never pursued any further.
This lapsed marquisate of the former proprietors gave Lotbiniere his
idea; proprietor of a marquisate, he ought to be a marquis. He
determined to find some way of procuring the title for himself. He
visited Paris as much and long as possible, and, by various devices,
kept his name and services before the War Office. During the American
Revolution he conceived the project of secretly negotiating with the
Revolutionists for the re-transfer of Canada to the French. He persuaded
the War Office to permit him to try his hand in the matter without
publicly compromising Versailles, and received, on pressing his request,
an equivocal grant of the coveted title, to be attached to his Canadian
seigniory, _but only if held of the Crown of France, and not of any
foreign power_. His secret negotiations at Washington failed and were
never heard of. He nevertheless called himself Marquis.

The two gentlemen were united by relationship, for besides the
inextricable genealogical links which bound together the chief families
of the colony, each had espoused a daughter of the Chevalier Chaussegros
de Lery, king's engineer, an excellent gentleman, who, like de
Lotbiniere, had returned to Canada after its cession and become a
subject, a truly loyal one, of the English Crown.

"I expect our good nephew, Louis de Lery, here in a few minutes," said
Repentigny. "He is in the Bodyguard, his father wrote."

"Yes, the company de Villeroy--a fine position."

"I wonder what the boy is like. Has he grown up tall like the de Lerys?"

"Yes, he does them credit, is very distinguished looking, with an air
which does not allow everybody to be familiar. Some call Louis cold, but
we _noblesse_ ought to have a little of that."