But most conspicuous to the eyes of Montreal were two men standing at Frontenac’s right hand, a Norman and an Italian. Both were tall, the Italian being of deeper colors and more generous materials. His large features were clothed in warm brown skin. Rings of black hair thick as a fleece were cut short above his military collar. His fearless, kindly eyes received impressions from every aspect of the New World. There dwelt in Henri de Tonty the power to make men love him at sight,—savages as well as Europeans. He wore the dress of a French lieutenant of infantry, and looked less than thirty years old, having entered the service of France in his early youth.
The other man, Robert Cavelier,—called La Salle from an estate he had once owned in France,—explorer, and seignior of Fort Frontenac and adjacent grants on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was at that time in the prime of his power. He was returning from France, with the king’s permission to work out all his gigantic enterprises, with funds for the purpose, and one of the most promising young military men in Europe as his lieutenant.
Montreal merchants on the wharf singled out La Salle with jealous eye, which saw in the drooping point and flaring base of his nose an endless smile of scorn. He was a man who had only to use his monopolies to become enormously rich, cutting off the trade of the lakes from Montreal. That he was above gain, except as he could use it for hewing his ambitious road into the wilderness, they did not believe. The merchants of Montreal readily translated the shyness and self-restraint of his solitary nature into the arrogance of a recently ennobled and successful man.
La Salle had a spare face, with long oval cheeks, curving well inward beside the round of his sensitive prominent chin. Gray and olive tones still further cooled the natural pallor of his skin and made ashen brown the hair which he wore flowing.
The plainness of an explorer and the elegance of a man exact in all his habits distinguished La Salle’s dress against that background of brilliant courtiers.
He moved ashore with Frontenac, who saluted benignly both the array of red allies and the inhabitants of this second town in the province.
The sub-governor stepped out to escort the governor-general to the fort, bells rang, cannon still boomed, martial music pierced the heart with its thrill, and the Carignan squad wheeled in behind Frontenac’s moving train.
“Sieur de la Salle! Sieur de la Salle!” a little girl called, breaking away from the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose convent robes had enclosed her like palisades, “take me also in the procession!”
This demand granted itself, so nimbly did she escape a nun’s ineffectual grasp and spring between Tonty and La Salle.