The rest of the company seated round the table comprised a number of
dissolute seigneurs and gallants of fashion about town--men of great
wants and great extravagance, just the class so quaintly described
by Charlevoix, a quarter of a century previous, as "gentlemen
thoroughly versed in the most elegant and agreeable modes of
spending money, but greatly at a loss how to obtain it."
Among the gay young seigneurs who had been drawn into the vortex of
Bigot's splendid dissipation, was the brave, handsome Le Gardeur de
Repentigny--a captain of the Royal Marine, a Colonial corps recently
embodied at Quebec. In general form and feature Le Gardeur was a
manly reflex of his beautiful sister Amelie, but his countenance was
marred with traces of debauchery. His face was inflamed, and his
dark eyes, so like his sister's, by nature tender and true, were now
glittering with the adder tongues of the cursed wine-serpent.
Taking the cue from Bigot, Le Gardeur responded madly to the
challenges to drink from all around him. Wine was now flooding
every brain, and the table was one scene of riotous debauch.
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