til it ran over, and
propping his body against the table as he stood up, replied, "A
toast for Ville Marie! and our friends in need!--The blue caps of the
Richelieu!" This was in allusion to a recent ordinance of the Intendant,
authorizing him to seize all the corn in store at Montreal and in the
surrounding country--under pretence of supplying the army, and really to
secure the monopoly of it for the Grand Company.

The toast was drunk, amid rapturous applause. "Well said, Varin!"
exclaimed Bigot; "that toast implied both business and pleasure: the
business was to sweep out the granges of the farmers; the pleasure is to
drink in honor of your success."

"My foragers sweep clean!" said Varin, resuming his seat, and looking
under his hand to steady his gaze. "Better brooms were never made in
Besancon. The country is swept as clean as a ball-room. Your Excellency
and the Marquise might lead the dance over it, and not a straw lie in
your way!"

"And did you manage it without a fight, Varin?" asked the Sieur
d'Estebe, with a half sneer.

"Fight! Why fight? The habitans will never resist the King's name. We
conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels we don't
begin at the tail! If we did, the habitans would be like the eels of
Melun--cry out before they were hurt. No! no! D'Estebe! We are more
polite in Ville Marie. We tell them the King's troops need the corn.
They doff their caps, and with tears in their eyes, say, 'Monsieur le
Commissaire, the King can have all we possess, and ourselves too, if he
will only save Canada from the Bostonnais.' This is better than stealing
the honey and killing the bees that made it, D'Estebe!"

"But what became of the families of the habitans after this swoop of
your foragers?" asked the Seigneur de Beauce, a country gentleman
who retained a few honorable ideas floating on top of the wine he had
swallowed.

"Oh! the families--that is, the women and children, for we took the men
for the army. You see, De Beauce," replied Varin, with a mocking air,
as he crossed his thumbs like a peasant of Languedoc when he wishes to
inspire belief in his words, "the families have to do what the gentlemen
of Beauce practise in times of scarcity--breakfast by gaping! or they
can eat wind, like the people of Poitou: it will make them spit clean!"

De Beauce was irritated at the mocking sign and the proverbial allusion
to the gaping of the people of Beauce. He started up in wrath, and
striki