"She prefers love to honor, as all women do!" remarked Bigot; "and
likes money better than either." The Grand Company pays the fiddler
for the royal fetes at Versailles, while the Bourgeois Philibert
skims the cream off the trade of the Colony. This peace will
increase his power and make his influence double what it is
already!"
"Egad, Bigot!" replied Cadet, who sat near him smoking a large pipe
of tobacco, "you speak like a preacher in Lent. We have hitherto
buttered our bread on both sides, but the Company will soon, I fear,
have no bread to butter! I doubt we shall have to eat your decrees,
which will be the only things left in the possession of the
Friponne."
"My decrees have been hard to digest for some people who think they
will now eat us. Look at that pile of orders, Cadet, in favor of
the Golden Dog!"
The Intendant had long regarded with indignation the ever increasing
trade and influence of the Bourgeois Philibert, who had become the
great banker as well as the great merchant of the Colony, able to
meet the Grand Company itself upon its own ground, and fairly divide
with it the interior as well as the exterior commerce of the Colony.
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