able, brimming over with the
gold and ruby vintages of France and Spain; or lay overturned amid pools
of wine that ran down upon the velvet carpet. Dishes of Parmesan cheese,
caviare, and other provocatives to thirst stood upon the table, amid
vases of flowers and baskets of the choicest fruits of the Antilles.

Round this magnificent table sat a score or more of revellers--in the
garb of gentlemen, but all in disorder and soiled with wine; their
countenances were inflamed, their eyes red and fiery, their tongues
loose and loquacious. Here and there a vacant or overturned chair showed
where a guest had fallen in the debauch and been carried off by
the valets, who in gorgeous liveries waited on the table. A band of
musicians sat up in a gallery at the end of the hall, and filled the
pauses of the riotous feast with the ravishing strains of Lulli and
Destouches.

At the head of the table, first in place as in rank, sat Francois Bigot,
Intendant of New France. His low, well-set figure, dark hair, small,
keen black eyes, and swarthy features full of fire and animation,
bespoke his Gascon blood. His countenance was far from comely,--nay,
when in repose, even ugly and repulsive,--but his eyes were magnets that
drew men's looks towards him, for in them lay the force of a powerful
will and a depth and subtlety of intellect that made men fear, if they
could not love him. Yet when he chose--and it was his usual mood--to
exercise his blandishments on men, he rarely failed to captivate them,
while his pleasant wit, courtly ways, and natural gallantry towards
women, exercised with the polished seductiveness he had learned in the
Court of Louis XV., made Francois Bigot the most plausible and dangerous
man in New France.

He was fond of wine and music, passionately addicted to gambling, and
devoted to the pleasant vices that were rampant in the Court of
France, finely educated, able in the conduct of affairs, and fertile in
expedients to accomplish his ends. Francois Bigot might have saved New
France, had he been honest as he was clever; but he was unprincipled and
corrupt: no conscience checked his ambition or his love of pleasure.
He ruined New France for the sake of himself and his patroness and the
crowd of courtiers and frail beauties who surrounded the King, whose
arts and influence kept him in his high office despite all the efforts
of the Honnetes Gens, the good and true men of the Colony, to remove
him.

He had already r