"Ah, ha! the name of Angélique is fresh to you, has no meaning, and I see you halting and asking me to tell you more of her. But here she is a household word—or, should it be, by-word?—and I, a stranger, am counted fortunate in having come close to the rustle of her skirt. That skirt, you can believe me, is in many fabrics, and ever of the best, and, though I cannot confirm it, the other women of Quebec say that no parcel of lace, or silk, or satin, freshly sent by Old France to New France, is free of being tampered with by Bigot in the pleasuring of his mistress. Without that news in your ear, you would not, my friend, comprehend the Chateau Bigot.
"Angélique was not the first flame with whom the old sinner has lit his fires in Canada, for there was Caroline, the Algonquin maid, not to mention others. Bigot, the story goes, had been hunting and, be it conceded, he is, for a Frenchman, a sound shot, and had lost himself in the wilds. Presently, while he pondered on his course, there appeared a fascinating Indian girl, and he made her guide him to his chateau and there kept her. The woman pays in such affairs, be she white, brown, or black, all the complexions I have seen, and that Indian lass came to a sad end, being found stark one morning in bed, with a knife through her lissom body.
"But that was Bigot of the Garden of Eden, the primitive savage of passion who would have his apple without having to eat the punishment, so far, anyhow, though, I suppose, the devil, who has seven-league boots when he likes, will overtake him. If he were to do it now he would find him engrossed in the smiles and, maybe, the caresses of Angélique. I have, myself, pretended to be some judge of woman-folk, and Angélique pleases me in divers manners. That is an admission I would not mind making to herself, though, to be sure, I have found it the silent gallantry towards women which reaps most harvest. She is, by marriage, Madame Pean, wife of a creature whom Bigot uses, and she is a note of lovely abandon which a man with half my insurgency would like to pluck an' he could.
"We have been introduced, Madame Angélique and I, for here all goes by the most correct form on the surface. We have even drunk from the same cup of wine, because she preferred me hers yester-night, saying, 'To our gallant recruit Monsieur Inverey, and to his gallant nation, les Ecossais.' Ah, the laughing witch! You should have seen the languor in her eyes, the blushing red of her lips, the delicate contour of her arm, as she raised her glass to me and then bade me empty it.
"'Ah,' said I, bowing and taking it from her hand, against whose baby pinkness the champagne sparkled; 'ah, it is good to see, chère Madame, that you know the ceremony of the Loving Cup, and how, elegantly, to express it.' My phrase of the Loving Cup took her, I saw, it and my significance in using it, and her dark eyes, her pouting lips, and the turn of her lovely head, all had a new meaning as, saying, 'To our Lady Venus, in New France,' I emptied the glass and set it on the table beside her.
"We fell a-talking, Madame Angélique and I, and she was good enough to praise my French, and I said that, alas! it was not sufficient to do justice to her charms. She flushed with pleasure, and said archly that she wished her husband, Monsieur Pean, or even her very good friend the Intendant, would pay her like compliments. 'But,' she added, 'you Scotsmen are so gallant and so truthful,' and in her sweet French the token rang true. With it she raised her eyebrows, expecting me to confirm her raillery, which I did, for I said, 'Madame, truth is the only gallantry that tells twice, and so I am content to employ it, for I hope we are to be friends.'
"It was a bold measure to take, but Madame Angélique, I judged, with her on-coming air, was precisely the woman who would respond to bold measures. She is none of your woo-me-slowly ladies, her bosom, as it rose and fell in her French laces, being eloquent of that. She is a singularly fine animal to whom Providence has, by an unusual generosity, given a soul, though mostly, maybe, it hides in the silken dalliance which is the note of Angélique.
"You will perceive, my old friend and, I hope, old enemy, that I present to you a whole bouquet of charms: beauty of form, the radiance of a personality, and brains with an edge to flatter or flout. Very rarely does Providence dower so many graces to one woman, but they are all in Madame Angélique. Moreover, she has the subtlest of sex strategy, for in greeting me she made a stumble with her lace petticoat so that I might catch the daintiness of her foot and ankle. She also has the swiftest, as well as the softest of glances, and I felt it travel from my brogues to my head, approving the journey, I fancied.
"I have been particular about Madame Angélique because she is a woman in a thousand, this frail beauty of New France, its Madame de Pompadour in brilliance, however the comparison may hold in virtue, and because, if I prosper at all in the friendship, I hope to hear from her the inner news of events here which, by its usefulness to General Wolfe, is to lead me far in my home desires. When I left Scotland I had a sore heart, for truly it fills that heart, but you will gather that I have found a fresh land which also has its milk and honey.
"How much of them shall I sip? That's the gamble, and time will tell, but it is a great gamble in which I am enlisted, and, by my faith, I like a gamble. It stirs the blood in me, makes it run as it ran when I made love to my first sweetheart, and a strapping lass she was, though, alas! I have almost forgotten her very existence. Poor Carrie! I wonder, I wonder, but hi, ho! what use to ask of the flowers of yesterday, where are they?