The spirit, if not the words, of the old English
loyalist was in them:
"For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shone upon."
New France, after gathering a harvest of glory such as America had
never seen reaped before, fell at last, through the neglect of her
mother country. But she dragged down the nation in her fall, and
France would now give the apple of her eye for the recovery, never
to be, of "the acres of snow" which La Pompadour so scornfully
abandoned to the English.
These considerations lay in the lap of the future, however; they
troubled not the present time and company. The glasses were again
replenished with wine or watered, as the case might be, for the
Count de la Galissoniere and Herr Kalm kept Horatian time and
measure, drinking only three cups to the Graces, while La Corne St.
Luc and Rigaud de Vaudreuil drank nine full cups to the Muses,
fearing not the enemy that steals away men's brains. Their heads
were helmeted with triple brass, and impenetrable to the heaviest
blows of the thyrsus of Bacchus.
Pages:
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750