Count Frontenac stood before him. Since his recall, he had lived at court, needy and no longer in favor; but he had influential friends, and an intriguing wife, always ready to serve him. The king knew his merits as well as his faults; and, in the desperate state of his Canadian affairs, he had been led to the resolution of restoring him to the command from which, for excellent reasons, he had removed him seven years before. He now told him that, in his belief, the charges brought against him were without foundation. [2] "I send you back to Canada," he is reported to have said, "where I am sure that you will serve me as well as you did before; and I ask nothing more of you." [3] The post was not a tempting one to a man in his seventieth year. Alone and unsupported,--for the king, with Europe rising against him, would give him no more troops,--he was to restore the prostrate colony to hope and courage, and fight two enemies with a force that had proved no match for one of them alone. The audacious count trusted himself, and undertook the task; received the royal instructions, and took his last leave of the master whom even he after a fashion honored and admired. [2] Journal de Dangeau, II. 390. Frontenac, since his recall, had not been wholly without marks of royal favor. In 1685, the king gave him a "gratification" of 3,500 francs. Ibid., I. 205. [3] Goyer, Oraison Funèbre du Comte de Frontenac. He repaired to Rochelle, where two ships of the royal navy were waiting his arrival, embarked in one of them, and sailed for the New World. An heroic remedy had been prepared for the sickness of Canada, and Frontenac was to be the surgeon. The cure, however, was not of his contriving. Denonville had sent Callières, his second in command, to represent the state of the colony to the court, and beg for help. Callières saw that there was little hope of more troops or any considerable supply of money; and he laid before the king a plan, which had at least the recommendations of boldness and cheapness. This was to conquer New York with the forces already in Canada, aided only by two ships of war. The blow, he argued, should be struck at once, and the English taken by surprise. A thousand regulars and six hundred Canadian militia should pass Lake Champlain and Lake George in canoes and bateaux, cross to the Hudson and capture Albany, where they would seize all the river craft and descend the Hudson to the town of New York, which, as Callières stated, had then about two hundred houses and four hundred fighting men. The two ships were to cruise at the mouth of the harbor, and wait the arrival of the troops, which was to be made known to them by concerted signals, whereupon they were to enter and aid in the attack. The whole expedition, he thought, might be accomplished in a month; so that by the end of October the king would be master of all the country. The advantages were manifold. The Iroquois, deprived of English