“Well, we can’t help that now, Menard.”
“That is not the question. You ask me to keep the Onondagas out of this fight, after we have taken a hundred of their warriors in this way.”
“I know it, Menard; I know it. But the Governor’s orders––Well, I have nothing to say. You can only do your best.”
They went to the reception room, where Madame de Provost awaited them. Menard was made to stay and dine, in order that Madame could draw from him a long account of his latest adventures on the frontier. Madame de Provost, though she had lived a dozen years in the province, had never been farther from Quebec than the Seignory of the Marquis de St. Denis, half a dozen leagues below the city. The stories that came to her ears of massacres and battles, of settlers butchered in the fields, and of the dashing adventures of La Salle and Du Luth, were to her no more than wild tales 28 from a far-away land. So she chattered through the long dinner; and for the first time since he had reached the city, Menard wished himself back on Lake Ontario, where there were no women.
Menard returned to the citadel early in the evening. Lieutenant Danton was drawing plans for a redoubt, but he leaned back as Menard entered.
“I began to think you were not coming back, Captain,” he said. “I’m told the Major says that you are the only man in New France who could have got that trading agreement from the Onondagas last year. How did you do it?”
“How does a man usually do what he is told to do?” Menard sat on a corner of the long table and looked lazily at the boy.
“That wasn’t the kind of treaty our Governors make; you know it wasn’t.”
“You were not here under Frontenac.”
“No. I wish I had been. He must have been a great orator. My father has told me about the long council at Montreal. He said that Frontenac out-talked the greatest of the Mohawk orators. Did you learn it from him?”