With Sword and Crucifix / Being an Account of the Strange Adventures of Count Louis Sancerre, Companion of Sieur LaSalle, on the Lower Mississippi, in the Year of Grace 1682

“‘THE SWORD AND THE CRUCIFIX,’ WHISPERED DE SANCERRE, POINTING TO THE SOLDIER AND THE PRIEST”
Being an Account of the Strange Adventures of Count Louis de Sancerre, Companion of Sieur de la Salle, on the Lower Mississippi in the Year of Grace 1682
BY EDWARD S. VAN ZILE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1900
Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved.
WITH SWORD AND CRUCIFIX
“Louis le Grand, King of France and Navarre, has deserted pleasure to follow piety—and times are changed, monsieur.”
The speaker, Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, descendant of a famous constable of France, leaned against a tree near the shore of a majestic river, and musingly watched the moonbeams as they chased the ripples toward an unknown sea. A soft, cool breeze, heavy with the odor of new-born flowers, caressed his pale, clear-cut face, and toyed with the ruffles and trappings of a costume more becoming at Versailles than in the mysterious wilderness through which its wearer had floated for many weeks.
On the bank at the exiled courtier’s feet lay reclining the martial figure of a man, whose stern, immobile face, lofty brow, and piercing eyes told a tale of high resolve and stubborn will. Sieur de la Salle, winning his way to immortality through wastes of swamp and canebrake and the windings of a great river, had made his camp at a bend in the stream from which the outlook seemed to promise the fulfilment of his dearest hopes. On the crest of a low hill, sloping gently to the water, his followers had thrown up a rude fort of felled trees, and now at midnight the adventurous Frenchmen and their score of Indian allies were tasting sleep after a day of wearisome labor.
De la Salle and a hapless waif from the splendid court of Louis XIV., more sensitive than their subordinates to the grandeur of the undertaking in which they were engaged, had felt no wish to slumber. They had strolled away from the silent camp; and, for the first time since Count Louis de Sancerre had joined the expedition, its leader had been learning something of the flippant, witty, reckless, debonair courtier’s career.