Fanchon, weary of waiting, had fallen asleep. She roused herself,
offering to accompany her aunt in hopes of learning something of her
interview with her mistress. All she got was a whisper that the
jewels were found. La Corriveau passed out into the darkness, and
plodded her way to the house of her friend, where she resolved to
stay until she accomplished the secret and cruel deed she had
undertaken to perform.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE BROAD, BLACK GATEWAY OF A LIE.
The Count de la Galissoniere was seated in his cabinet a week after
the arrival of La Corriveau on her fatal errand. It was a plain,
comfortable apartment he sat in, hung with arras, and adorned with
maps and pictures. It was there he held his daily sittings for the
ordinary despatch of business with a few such councillors as the
occasion required to be present.
The table was loaded with letters, memorandums, and bundles of
papers tied up in official style. Despatches of royal ministers,
bearing the broad seal of France. Reports from officers of posts
far and near in New France lay mingled together with silvery strips
of the inner bark of the birch, painted with hieroglyphics, giving
accounts of war parties on the eastern frontier and in the far west,
signed by the totems of Indian chiefs in alliance with France.
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