“He is a pretty fellow enough, I dare say, Babet; who can he be? He rides like a field-marshal too, and that gray horse has ginger in his heels!” remarked Jean, as the officer was riding at a rapid gallop up the long, white road of Charlebourg. “He is going to Beaumanoir, belike, to see the Royal Intendant, who has not returned yet from his hunting party.” “Whither they went three days ago, to enjoy themselves in the chase and drink themselves blind in the Château while everybody else is summoned to the city to work upon the walls!” replied Babet, scornfully. “I'll be bound that officer has gone to order the gay gallants of the Friponne back to the city to take their share of work with honest people.” “Ah! the Friponne! The Friponne!” ejaculated Jean. “The foul fiend fly away with the Friponne! My ferryboat is laden every day with the curses of the habitans returning from the Friponne, where they cheat worse than a Basque pedler, and without a grain of his politeness!” The Friponne, as it was styled in popular parlance, was the immense magazine established by the Grand Company of Traders in New France. It claimed a monopoly in the purchase and sale of all imports and exports in the Colony. Its privileges were based upon royal ordinances and decrees of the Intendant, and its rights enforced in the most arbitrary manner--and to the prejudice of every other mercantile interest in the Colony. As a natural consequence it was cordially hated, and richly deserved the maledictions which generally accompanied the mention of the Friponne--the swindle--a rough and ready epithet which sufficiently indicated the feeling of the people whom it at once cheated and oppressed. “They say, Jean,” continued Babet, her mind running in a very practical and womanly way upon the price of commodities and good bargains, “they say, Jean, that the Bourgeois Philibert will not give in like the other merchants. He sets the Intendant at defiance, and continues to buy and sell in his own comptoir as he has always done, in spite of the Friponne.” “Yes, Babet! that is what they say. But I would rather he stood in his own shoes than I in them if he is to fight this Intendant--who is a Tartar, they say.” “Pshaw, Jean! you have less courage than a woman. All the women are on the side of the good Bourgeois: he is an honest merchant--sells cheap, and cheats nobody!” Babet looked down very complacently upon her new gown, which had been purchased at a great bargain at the magazine of the Bourgeois. She felt rather the more inclined to take this view of the question inasmuch as Jean had grumbled, just a little--he would not do more--at his wife's vanity in buying a gay dress of French fabric, like a city dame, while all the women of the parish were wearing homespun,--grogram, or linsey-woolsey,--whether at church or market.