f us, we
must perform them! That is the old spirit! If the skies fall upon our
heads, we must, like true Gauls, hold them up on the points of our
lances! What say you, Rigaud de Vaudreuil? Cannot one Canadian surround
ten New Englanders?" The Governor alluded to an exploit of the gallant
officer whom he turned to address.

"Probatum est, your Excellency! I once with six hundred Canadians
surrounded all New England. Prayers were put up in all the churches of
Boston for deliverance when we swept the Connecticut from end to end
with a broom of fire."

"Brave Rigaud! France has too few like you!" remarked the Governor with
a look of admiration.

Rigaud bowed, and shook his head modestly. "I trust she has ten thousand
better;" but added, pointing at his fellow-officers who stood conversing
at a short distance, "Marshal de Saxe has few the equals of these in his
camp, my Lord Count!" And well was the compliment deserved: they were
gallant men, intelligent in looks, polished in manners, and brave to a
fault, and all full of that natural gaiety that sits so gracefully on a
French soldier.

Most of them wore the laced coat and waistcoat, chapeau, boots, lace
ruffles, sash, and rapier of the period--a martial costume befitting
brave and handsome men. Their names were household words in every
cottage in New France, and many of them as frequently spoken of in the
English Colonies as in the streets of Quebec.

There stood the Chevalier de Beaujeu, a gentleman of Norman family, who
was already famed upon the frontier, and who, seven years later, in the
forests of the Monongahela, crowned a life of honor by a soldier's death
on the bloody field won from the unfortunate Braddock, defeating an army
ten times more numerous than his own.

Talking gayly with De Beaujeu were two gallant-looking young men of
a Canadian family which, out of seven brothers, lost six slain in the
service of their King--Jumonville de Villiers, who was afterwards, in
defiance of a flag of truce, shot down by order of Colonel Washington,
in the far-off forests of the Alleghenies, and his brother, Coulon
de Villiers, who received the sword of Washington when he surrendered
himself and garrison prisoners of war, at Fort Necessity, in 1754.

Coulon de Villiers imposed ignominious conditions of surrender upon
Washington, but scorned to take other revenge for the death of his
brother. He spared the life of Washington, who lived to become the
leader and idol of