"What wonder is it our husbands and brothers and sons say these faineants care naught what becomes of the country or the people, so long as they gain some little distinction which may entitle them to an early return and an empty decoration! They have neither pity, nor faith, nor the slightest interest in the cause for which they are fighting. "If M. de Vaudreuil, whom they pretend to despise, were permitted to take the field himself, with a few thousand good Canadians behind him, we would hear a different story. Think you if my son had been permitted to reach Louisbourg it would have fallen? No, a thousand times no! And it is the same elsewhere. Who repulsed the English charge at Carillon? The Canadians. Who brings every important piece of news of the enemy? Some despised Canadian. Who know how to fight and how to handle themselves in the woods? Canadians, and only Canadians! And these are the men they affect to despise! And it is Canadian wives and sisters and daughters--more shame to them!--who lay themselves out to amuse and to be talked about by these same disdainful gentry! "Go to your room, mademoiselle!" she ended, turning on Angelique. "I will hear nothing of your doings among a clique I despise from top to bottom;" and the indignant old lady stopped, worn out for very lack of breath, while Angelique made a little laughing grimace at me and fled. The indictment was severe, but there was much truth in it at the same time. The condition of the people was pitiable in the extreme. Provisions were at ruinous prices, the wretched paper money was almost worthless, and even the officers were beggared by their necessary expenses. At the opening of the New Year the Intendance was invaded by a crowd of desperate women clamouring for relief, and the address of M. Bigot in ridding himself of his unwelcome visitors was laughed at as a joke. Worse than this, no attempt was made to lessen or even hide the gaieties that went on, play was as high and as ruinous as ever, and the town was all agog over the report of a ball to be given with unusual splendour by the Intendant on Twelfth-Night. It was true that he made a daily distribution of food at his doors, that he spake pleasant and reassuring words to the suffering people, that he even permitted the respectably dressed among them to enter and view his guests from the gallery of his ball-room, but this did but serve to intensify the bitterness and indignation of those who stood apart from him and his following. It would be unjust to brand M. de Montcalm, and perhaps others, as willing participants in these excesses; on account of their position, their presence at all formal entertainments was a necessity, and certainly the town offered no distraction of any other nature whatsoever.