I will not conceal from you that the slightest suspicion on your
part against me would cut the thread of my days."[58]

[Footnote 56: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1750.]

[Footnote 57: _Ibid., 6 Juin_, 1751.]

[Footnote 58: _La Jonquiere au Ministre, 19 Oct_. 1751.]

Perplexities increased; affairs in the West grew worse and worse. La
Jonquiere ordered Celoron to attack the English at Pickawillany; and
Celoron could not or would not obey. "I cannot express," writes the
Governor, "how much this business troubles me; it robs me of sleep; it
makes me ill." Another letter of rebuke presently came from Versailles.
"Last year you wrote that you would soon drive the English from the
Ohio; but private letters say that you have done nothing. This is
deplorable. If not expelled, they will seem to acquire a right against
us. Send force enough at once to drive them off, and cure them of all
wish to return."[59] La Jonquiere answered with bitter complaints
against Celoron, and then begged to be recalled. His health, already
shattered, was ruined by fatigue and vexation; and he took to his bed.
Before spring he was near his end.[60] It is said that, though very
rich, his habits of thrift so possessed his last hours that, seeing
wax-candles burning in his chamber, he ordered others of tallow to be
brought instead, as being good enough to die by. Thus frugally lighted
on its way, his spirit fled; and the Baron de Longueuil took his place
till a new governor should arrive.

[Footnote 59: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1751.]

[Footnote 60: He died on the sixth of March, 1752 (_Bigot au Ministre, 6
Mai_); not on the seventeeth of May, as stated in the _Memoires sur le
Canada_, 1749-1760.]

Sinister tidings came thick from the West. Raymond, commandant at the
French fort on the Maumee, close to the centre of intrigue, wrote: "My
people are leaving me for Detroit. Nobody wants to stay here and have
his throat cut. All the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany
come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead
of twenty men, I need five hundred.... We have made peace with the
English, yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the
Indians; they intend to be masters of all this upper country. The tribes
here are leaguing together to kill all the French, that they may have
nobody on their lands but their English brothers. This I am told by
Coldfoot, a great Miami chief, w