"The people," he continues, "frightened by these expenses, fear a deterioration in the value of the paper money of the country; a bad effect follows—the cost of living increases. The Canadians who have not taken part in illicit profits hate the government.... Even should peace come, the colony is ruined if the whole government is not changed." Thus he wrote to his responsible chief in France.
In his journal he is naturally fuller in his condemnations and he remarks: "One would need to have the pen always in hand to write down all these 'friponneries.' O! tempora! O mores!"
This season was a painful one for him; he laments over the present and the future. "Pauvre roi! Pauvre France! Cara patria!" In another letter to Bourlamaque he surveys his own position: "In a short time I shall be forty-seven years of age. The dignity of a marshal of France would flatter me as well as any other man; it would be fine to have it in six years, but to buy it by this kind of life would be at too dear a price."
In his journal he unburdens himself more fully. "O, king, worthy of being better served," he writes. "Dear fatherland, crushed with taxes, to enrich cheats and greedy ones!... Shall I keep my innocence as I have done up to the present, in the midst of corruption? I shall have defended the colony; I shall have owed 10,000 écus; but I shall see men enriching themselves like a Ralig, a Coban, a Cécile, a set of men without faith, rascals interested in the provision enterprise, gaining in one year four or five hundred thousand livres, arising from their outrageous expenditures; a Maurin, a clerk at 100 crowns, an abortion by nature, a snail in figure, traveling with a suite of calèches and carriages, spending more in conveyances, harness and in horses than a young coxcomb and giddy-headed farmer-general of revenues. And this uphold of provisions, an enterprise formed since the time of M. de la Porte, who went shares in it! Will France never produce an enlightened head of its marine department, a reformer of abuses? The peculations of a Verres, of a Marius, of which Juvenal speaks, do not come near these."
When not otherwise engaged in his literary and military studies—for social life seems to have been not very attractive to him in Montreal—Montcalm would confer with the governor, with whom the appearance of courtesy at least was preserved, though at times with underlying mutual antipathies. On one occasion he entered the office of Vaudreuil, whom he surprised listening indulgently to M. d'Eschambault, his nephew by marriage, inveighing against the French officers, accusing them of insubordinate speech against the authorities after the unfortunate events following Carillon. Caught in the act, the governor, flushing up, took the opportunity to complain bitterly of the French officers. Montcalm profited by the occasion also to unburden his heart on the subject of all the unworthy hawking of tittle-tattle and exaggerations productive of harm to the service, and he dealt "a long and strong, but respectful" lesson to both of them. "I should trust," wrote Montcalm to Bourlamaque, "that this will correct tale-bearers and those who listen to them."
Another incident related to Bourlamaque also gives a picture of the strained relations of the two military factions in Montreal. One day, in the governor's office, an officer of the colonial militia saw fit to say in the presence of Vaudreuil, Montcalm and others, that during the siege of William Henry, General Webb had great fear at Fort Lydius, that Orange and New York were without troops, and that this fort could have been easily taken. This being a favourite topic with the governor, he commented on it with eagerness. Stung to the quick by this recurrence to an old sore, Montcalm gave anew the reasons which had prevented him making the second siege in 1757, adding that it was no use feeding still on chimeras. "I concluded, by saying modestly, that I did my best at the seat of war, following my feeble lights, and that if he was not satisfied with his second in command, he had better make the campaign in person, so as to carry out his own ideas. The tears sprang to his eyes and he muttered between his teeth that such might be the case. The conversation finished on my part by saying: 'I shall be delighted and I shall willingly serve under you.'
"Madame de Vaudreuil wished to intervene. 'Madame,' I said, 'permit me, without departing from the respect due to you, to have the honour to tell you that ladies ought not to mix in war affairs.' Madame again wished to interrupt. 'Madame,' I said, 'without departing from the respect due to you, allow me to have the honour to inform you that if Madame de Montcalm were here and heard us speaking of war affairs with M. le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would maintain silence.'"
"This scene, before his officers, three of them colonials, will be embroidered and reimbroidered; but here it is."