“You are mending, Le Gardeur de Repentigny! You are worthy to belong to the Grand Company! But you shall have my toast. We have drank it twenty times already, but it will stand drinking twenty times more. It is the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of man--a woman--” “And the best epilogue too, Bigot!” interjected Varin, visibly drunk; “but let us have the toast, my cup is waiting.” “Well, fill up all, then; and we will drink the health, wealth, and love by stealth, of the jolliest dame in sunny France--The Marquise de Pompadour!” “La Pompadour! La Pompadour!” Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained to the bottoms, and a thunder of applause and clattering of glasses followed the toast of the mistress of Louis XV., who was the special protectress of the Grand Company,--a goodly share of whose profits in the monopoly of trade in New France was thrown into the lap of the powerful favorite. “Come, Varin! your turn now!” cried Bigot, turning to the Commissary; “a toast for Ville Marie! Merry Montreal! where they eat like rats of Poitou, and drink till they ring the fire-bells, as the Bordelais did to welcome the collectors of the gabelle. The Montrealers have not rung the fire-bells yet against you, Varin, but they will by and by!” Varin filled his cup with an unsteady hand until it ran over, and propping his body against the table as he stood up, replied, “A toast for Ville Marie! and our friends in need!--The blue caps of the Richelieu!” This was in allusion to a recent ordinance of the Intendant, authorizing him to seize all the corn in store at Montreal and in the surrounding country--under pretence of supplying the army, and really to secure the monopoly of it for the Grand Company. The toast was drunk, amid rapturous applause. “Well said, Varin!” exclaimed Bigot; “that toast implied both business and pleasure: the business was to sweep out the granges of the farmers; the pleasure is to drink in honor of your success.” “My foragers sweep clean!” said Varin, resuming his seat, and looking under his hand to steady his gaze. “Better brooms were never made in Besançon. The country is swept as clean as a ball-room. Your Excellency and the Marquise might lead the dance over it, and not a straw lie in your way!” “And did you manage it without a fight, Varin?” asked the Sieur d'Estebe, with a half sneer. “Fight! Why fight? The habitans will never resist the King's name. We conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels we don't begin at the tail! If we did, the habitans would be like the eels of Mélun--cry out before they were hurt. No! no! D'Estebe! We are more polite in Ville Marie. We tell them the King's troops need the corn. They doff their caps, and with tears in their eyes, say, 'Monsieur le Commissaire, the King can have all we possess, and ourselves too, if he will only save Canada from the Bostonnais.' This is better than stealing the honey and killing the bees that made it, D'Estebe!”