Children played along the river’s brink, and squaws kept fire under the kettles. A few men guarded the booths along the palisades from pilferers, though scarce a possible pilferer roamed from the centre of interest.
Crowds of spectators pressed around the great circle; traders who had brought packs of skins skilfully intercepted by them at some station above Montreal; interpreters, hired by merchants to serve them during the fair; coureurs de bois stretching up their neck sinews until these knotted with intense and prolonged effort. In this standing wall the habitant was crowded by converted Iroquois from the Mountain mission, who, having learned their rights as Christians, yielded no inch of room.
The sun descended out of sight behind Mount Royal, though his presence lingered with sky and river in abundant crimsons. Still the smoke of the peace pipe rose above the council ring, and eloquence rolled its periods on. That misty scarf around the horizon, which high noon drove out of sight, floated into view again, becoming denser and denser. The pipings of out-door insects came sharpened through twilight, and all the camp-fires were deepening their hue, before a solemn uprising of Frenchmen and Indians proclaimed the council over.
La Salle had sat through it at the governor’s right hand, watching those bronze faces and restless eyes with sympathy as great as Frontenac’s. He, also, was a lord of the wilderness. He could more easily open his shy nature to such red brethren and eloquently command, denounce, or persuade them, than stand before dames and speak one word,—which he was forced to attempt when candles were lighted in the candelabra of the fort.
There was not such pageantry at Montreal as in the more courtly society of Quebec. The appearance of the governor with his train of young nobles drew out those gentler inhabitants who took no part in the bartering of the beaver fair.
Perrot, the sub-governor, had known his period of bitter disagreement with Frontenac. Having made peace with a superior he once defied, he was anxious to pay Frontenac every honor, and the two governors were united in their policy of amusing and keeping busy so varied an assemblage as that which thronged the beaver fair. Festivity as grand as colonial circumstances permitted was therefore held in the governor’s apartments. The guarded fortress gates stood open; torches burned within the walls, and blanketed savages stalked in and out.
Yet that colonial drawing-room lacked the rude elements which go to making most pioneer societies. Human intercourse in frontier towns exposed to danger and hardship, though it may be hearty and innocent, is rarely graceful.
But here was a small Versailles transplanted to the wilderness. Fragments of a great court met Indian-wedded nobles and women with generations of good ancestors behind them. Here were even the fashions of the times in gowns, and the youths of Louis’ salon bowed and paid compliments to powdered locks. These French colonial nobles were poor; but with pioneer instinct they decorated themselves with the best garments their scanty money would buy. Here thronged Dumays, Le Moynes, Mousniers, Desroches, Fleurys, Baudrys, Migeons, Vigers, Gautiers, all chattering and animated. Here stood the Baroness de Saint-Castin like a statue of bronze. Here were those illustrious Le Moynes, father and sons, whose deeds may be traced in our day from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Here Frontenac, with the graciously winning manner which belonged to his pleasant hours, drew to himself and soothed disaffected magnates of his colonial kingdom.
All these figures, and the spectacles swarming around the beaver fair, like combinations in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no more, gave Tonty such condensed knowledge of the New World as no ordinary days could offer.
La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences at court and distinguished by royal favor, stood abashed and annoyed by the part he must play toward civilized people.