summons the haunting spirit of this creature of La Pompadour, whose
mischievous influence lost Louis XV his colonial empire, and whose
infamies sealed the fate of the Bourbons.

Francois Bigot arrived at Quebec in 1748, a year in which the fortunes
of New France had reached so low an ebb that nothing but the most
loyal administration might now save her. Even then a strong honest
man might possibly have weathered the storm already lowering over this
New World dominion; but, with pitiable perverseness, every trait in
Bigot's character helped it on to ruin. In private life vain, selfish,
heartless, extravagant to the point of folly; in public life mercenary
and venal beyond shame--such were the characteristics of the man whom
Louis's favourite chose to be civil administrator at Quebec, where the
patriotic faith and labour of a gallant and high-hearted people were
rewarded by plunder, mis-rule, and that neglect which gave them at
last into the hands of the conqueror.

[Illustration: DE BOUGAINVILLE
(General under Montcalm, 1759)]

On his arrival, the Intendant speedily surrounded himself by
sycophants and knaves who joined him in the reckless pursuit of
pleasure, and became ready instruments to further his darker designs.
A man of ability, adroitness, and culture, Bigot might have won public
favour, but his habits instantly estranged the better people of the
colony. The _honnetes gens_, a party which included the great
Montcalm, the brave Bougainville, La Corne de St. Luc, M. de Levis,
and M. de Saint-Ours, would have nothing to do with him, and he was
left in the hands of servile flatterers, ready enough to serve him.
Deschenaux, his _fidus Achates_, was a cobbler's son, whom experience
alone had educated and fate and unscrupulousness had advanced. Cadet,
his commissary-general, was the gross son of a butcher, and had spent
his dissatisfied youth in the pasture-fields of Charlesbourg.
Hughes Pean was the town major of Quebec, but his chief hold on Bigot
lay in the beauty of his wife, the charming Angelique des Meloises.
This woman, whose beauty, wit, and _diablerie_ are a subject of
popular tradition, possessed a fascination which gave her an influence
at the intendancy analogous to that exerted at Versailles by her
notorious contemporary, La Pompadour.

Ruled by this coterie of dark spirits, Quebec became the scene of a
profligacy unparalleled in her history. The Palace, instead of being a
hall of justice, was the ab