“Le Moyne has made some very lovely pictures of the country. His landscapes are to the life, and he has that rare knowledge of the painter, which enables him to choose his point of view happily, and tells him how much to take in, and how much to leave out. The Admiral will be able to form a better idea of the country from the pictures of Le Moyne, than he will from the pebbles of Delille or the dried flowers and leaves of Serrier. Le Moyne shows him the rivers and the trees, the valleys and the hills; and, if his pictures get safely to France, the people there will envy us the paradise here which we are so little able to enjoy.”
Laudonniere heard the youth with half-shut eyes, and the dialogue languished on the part of the former; but D’Erlach seemed resolute to keep him wakeful, and suggested continually new provocatives to conversation, until his superior, absolutely worn out with exhaustion, bade him go to sleep himself or suffer him to do so. Alphonse smiled, and left the room perfectly satisfied, as he beheld the faint streakings of daylight gliding through the interstices between the logs of which the building was composed. In less than an hour, hearing a sound as of one entering, he hastily went out of his chamber, for he had neither undressed himself nor slept, and met Bon Pre, with the salver of coffee, about to go into the chamber of Laudonniere.
“Well, is it spiced? Has La Roquette furnished the drug?”
“His own hands put it in.”
“Very well; let us in together. Laudonniere is not likely to awaken soon, and I will remain with him ’till he does. If the coffee cools, and he offers not to drink, well. I will say nothing. It is best that he should know nothing ’till all’s over.”
“But the rest!” said Bon Pre, in a whisper.
“We must manage that, also, quite as well as this.”
“If you should want help?”