“My son, God save me from the man who doth nurse a grievance. Your case is simply this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and it is now called Fort Frontenac. He put you and associates of yours in charge, and you had profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recommendation to the king, Sieur de la Salle was made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly chewed to the poisoning of thy immortal soul.”
“You churchmen all,—Jesuits, Sulpitians, or Récollets,—are over zealous to domineer in this colony,” spoke Jacques le Ber, through the effort of carrying his bale.
“My son,” said Father Hennepin, swelling his stomach and inflating his throat, “why should I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue, if I felt no zeal for saving souls?”
“I spoke of domineering,” repeated the angry merchant.
“And touching Monsieur de la Salle,” said Father Hennepin, “I exhort thee not to love him; for who could love him,—but to rid thyself of hatred of any one.”
“Father Hennepin has not then attached himself to La Salle’s new enterprise?”
“I have a grand plan of discovery of my own,” said the friar, deeply, rolling his shaven head, “an enterprise which would terrify anybody but me. The Sieur de la Salle merely opens my path. I will confess to thee, my son, that in youth I often hid myself behind the doors of taverns,—which were no fit haunts for men of holy life,—to hearken unto sailors’ tales of strange lands. And thus would I willingly do without eating or drinking, such burning desire I had to explore new countries.”
The Father did not observe that Jacques le Ber had reached his own booth and was there arranging his goods regardless of explorations in strange lands, but walked on, talking to the air, his out-thrust lips rounding every word, until some derisive savage pointed out this solo.
Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place in the governor’s council, thinking wrathfully of his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all do, upon the affronts and hindrances of the present, rather than on his prospect of founding a strong and worthy family in the colony.