ent
campaign. After conducting Isidore to Chambly he was to have his
discharge, and would be at liberty to return home; but it was plain
that the last few months had revived in him a love for his old
independent way of life, which doubtless contrasted strongly with his
new position. It galled him to work for wages, however high, however
certain, and his servitude brought him into contact with much at which
his disposition revolted. So, as he told his story, he gradually grew
more and more excited, declaiming hotly against the evils he had seen
and heard of since he had quitted his log hut in the forest. For some
little time Isidore listened with patience, or rather indifference, to
his guide's indignant invectives against the various misdoings and
iniquities of the creatures and underlings of the Government, and
especially of those employed by Bigot, the king's intendant. At last,
however, in his excitement, Boulanger began to launch out against
Monsieur Bigot himself, whereupon he was somewhat sternly called to
order by his aristocratic young companion, who bade him remember that
it was not for such low-born fellows as he to open their mouths against
the seigneurs and nobles, and least of all against the officers of His
Most Christian Majesty. Had the guide been a New England colonist,
rejoicing in the name of John Smith, he would probably have retorted
boldly enough and held his ground, but what could be expected from Jean
Baptiste the Canadian woodsman? He might have sense enough to
understand the wrong-doing, and in the honest zeal of the moment he
might inveigh against it, but it was not for him to set himself up
against monseigneur the young Marquis de Beaujardin. There was a
murmured apology, mingled with some kind of protest that it was all
true, nevertheless, and then our travellers continued their journey for
a while in the same unsatisfactory silence with which they had
commenced it.

This state of things, however, did not continue very long. The young
marquis, though he had considered it incumbent on him to rebuke a
person who ventured to speak in such a way of the nobility, was not one
to persist in assailing an adversary who had succumbed to him.
Moreover, even his short experience of affairs in Canada told him that
Boulanger had good grounds for what he said. The courtly magnificence
of Versailles and the Tuileries might dazzle his understanding so far
as to blind him to the existence of many c