f the officers partook of a cheerful refreshment with
the Governor before they retired to their several quarters. Only Bigot
and his friends declined to sup with the Governor: they took a polite
leave, and rode away from the Chateau to the Palace of the Intendant,
where a more gorgeous repast and more congenial company awaited them.

The wine flowed freely at the Intendant's table, and as the irritating
events of the day were recalled to memory, the pent-up wrath of the
Intendant broke forth. "Damn the Golden Dog and his master both!"
exclaimed he. "Philibert shall pay with his life for the outrage of
to-day, or I will lose mine! The dirt is not off my coat yet, Cadet!"
said he, as he pointed to a spatter of mud upon his breast. "A pretty
medal that for the Intendant to wear in a Council of War!"

"Council of War!" replied Cadet, setting his goblet down with a bang
upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like
to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys
of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a
botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he
asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had
more the air of a judge cross-examining a culprit than of a Governor
asking information of a king's officer!"

"True, Cadet!" replied Varin, who was always a flatterer, and who at
last saved his ill-gotten wealth by the surrender of his wife as a
love-gift to the Duc de Choiseul. "We all have our own injuries to bear.
The Intendant was just showing us the spot of dirt cast upon him by the
mob; and I ask what satisfaction he has asked in the Council for the
insult."

"Ask satisfaction!" replied Cadet with a laugh. "Let him take it!
Satisfaction! We will all help him! But I say that the hair of the dog
that bit him will alone cure the bite! What I laughed at the most was
this morning at Beaumanoir, to see how coolly that whelp of the Golden
Dog, young Philibert, walked off with De Repentigny from the very midst
of all the Grand Company!"

"We shall lose our young neophyte, I doubt, Cadet! I was a fool to let
him go with Philibert!" remarked Bigot.

"Oh, I am not afraid of losing him, we hold him by a strong triple cord,
spun by the Devil. No fear of losing him!" answered Cadet, grinning
good-humoredly.

"What do you mean, Cadet?" The Intendant took up his cup and drank very
nonchalantly, as if he thought li