eur Doltaire."

"You are bitter in your trouble," said he.

I made haste to answer, "No, no, my own troubles do not weigh so
heavy--but our General's death!"

"You are a patriot, my friend," he added warmly. "I could well have been
content with our success against your English army without this deep
danger to your person."

I put out my hand to him, but I did not speak, for just then Doltaire
entered. He was smiling at something in his thought.

"The fortunes are with the Intendant always," said he. "When things are
at their worst, and the King's storehouse, the dear La Friponne, is to
be ripped by our rebel peasants like a sawdust doll, here comes this
gay news of our success on the Ohio; and in that Braddock's death the
whining beggars will forget their empty bellies, and bless where
they meant to curse. What fools, to be sure! They had better loot La
Friponne. Lord, how we love fighting, we French! And 'tis so much easier
to dance, or drink, or love." He stretched out his shapely legs as he
sat musing.

Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, smiling. "But you, Doltaire--there's no
man out of France that fights more."

He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it does
need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love: blind men's
games!" He smiled cynically into the distance.

I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so
original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at the
pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with him
once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and his fine
penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action to him was a
playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court from which he came,
its scornful endurance of defeat or misery, its flippant look upon the
world, its scoundrel view of women. Then he and Duvarney talked, and I
sat thinking. Perhaps the passion of a cause grows in you as you suffer
for it, and I had suffered, and suffered most by a bitter inaction.
Governor Dinwiddie, Mr. Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment
chapters of my life, among the hills where Montrose my ancestor fought,
George leads the colonists against the realm of England!), and the rest
were suffering, but they were fighting too. Brought to their knees, they
could rise again to battle; and I thought then, How more glorious to
be with my gentlemen in blue from Virginia, holding back death from the
Ge