"Ah! true.... We had got to my expedition on the Saint-Sacrement. It earned me the rank of quarter-master of one of the Army Corps, and the commission to go to Versailles to explain the precarious situation of the Governor of Canada, to ask for reinforcements for him. I stayed two years and a half in France without obtaining anything that I asked. True, I got what I did not ask for, that is to say, the Cross of Saint-Louis and the rank of colonel in the staff of the regiment of Rovergne. I arrived in Canada just in time to receive from the Marquis of Montcalm the command of the Grenadiers and Volunteers, at the famous retreat from Quebec, which I was ordered to effect. When Montcalm arrived beneath the walls of the town, he thought he might risk a battle. The two generals were killed: Montcalm in our ranks; Wolfe in those of the English. Montcalm dead, our army defeated, there were no means of defending Canada. I returned to France, and went through the campaign of 1761 in England, as aide-de-camp to M. de Choiseul-Stainville."
"Then it was you to whom the king made the present of two guns?" interrupted the curé de Boulogne.
"Who told you that?"
"I read about it, my friend, in the Gazette de la Cour.... How could I have dreamt this Bougainville was my friend Antoine?"
"What did you think of the present?"
"Bah! I thought it well deserved ... but, all the same, I thought the king ought to have given this M. Bougainville, whom I was far from suspecting to be you, something more easily carried about than two cannons; for, of course, though a great honour, one cannot carry them about wherever one goes."
"There is truth in what you say," Bougainville resumed, laughing; "but, as at the same time the king made me captain of a ship, and entrusted me with the founding of a settlement for myself and the inhabitants of St. Malo, in the isles of Malouines, I thought my two cannon might be of use there."
"Ah! quite right," said the Abbé Rémy; "but, excuse my ignorance of geography, my dear Antoine, where are the Malouines Isles?"
"I beg your pardon, my friend," said Bougainville, "I should have called them the Falkland Isles, for it was I who gave them their name of Malouines Isles in honour of the town of St. Malo."
"Very good!" said the Abbé Rémy, smiling; "I recognise them under that name! The Falkland Isles belong to the archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean; I know where they are, near the southern extremity of South America, to the east of Magellan Straits."