Not so De Pean. He meditated treachery, and it were hard to say whether it was unnoted by the penetrating eye of Bigot. The Intendant, however, did not interfere farther, either by word or sign, but left De Pean to accomplish in his own way the bloody object they all had in view, namely, the death of the Bourgeois and the break-up of the Honnêtes Gens. De Pean, while resolving to make Le Gardeur the tool of his wickedness, did not dare to take him into his confidence. He had to be kept in absolute ignorance of the part he was to play in the bloody tragedy until the moment of its denouement arrived. Meantime he must be plied with drink, maddened with jealousy, made desperate with losses, and at war with himself and all the world, and then the whole fury of his rage should, by the artful contrivance of De Pean, be turned, without a minute's time for reflection, upon the head of the unsuspecting Bourgeois.
To accomplish this successfully, a woman's aid was required, at once to blind Le Gardeur and to sharpen his sword.
In the interests of the Company Angélique des Meloises was at all times a violent partisan. The Golden Dog and all its belongings were objects of her open aversion. But De Pean feared to impart to her his intention to push Le Gardeur blindly into the affair. She might fear for the life of one she loved. De Pean reflected angrily on this, but he determined she should be on the spot. The sight of her and a word from her, which De Pean would prompt at the critical moment, should decide Le Gardeur to attack the Bourgeois and kill him; and then, what would follow? De Pean rubbed his hands with ecstasy at the thought that Le Gardeur would inevitably bite the dust under the avenging hand of Pierre Philibert, and Angélique would be his beyond all fear of rivals.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE BOURGEOIS PHILIBERT.
The Bourgeois Philibert, after an arduous day's work, was enjoying in his armchair a quiet siesta in the old comfortable parlor of his city home.
The sudden advent of peace had opened the seas to commerce, and a fleet of long-shut-up merchantmen were rapidly loading at the quays of the Friponne as well as at those of the Bourgeois, with the products of the Colony for shipment to France before the closing in of the St. Lawrence by ice. The summer of St. Martin was lingering soft and warm on the edge of winter, and every available man, including the soldiers of the garrison, were busy loading the ships to get them off in time to escape the hard nip of winter.
Dame Rochelle sat near the window, which to-day was open to the balmy air. She was occupied in knitting, and occasionally glancing at a volume of Jurieu's hard Calvinistic divinity, which lay upon the table beside her. Her spectacles reposed upon the open page, where she had laid them down while she meditated, as was her custom, upon knotty points of doctrine, touching free will, necessity, and election by grace; regarding works as a garment of filthy rags, in which publicans and sinners who trusted in them were damned, while in practice the good soul was as earnest in performing them as if she believed her salvation depended exclusively thereupon.
Dame Rochelle had received a new lease of life by the return home of Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his betrothal to Amélie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride completed her happiness.
In her anxiety to discover the tastes and preferences of her young mistress, as she already called her, Dame Rochelle consulted Amélie on every point of her arrangements, finding her own innate sense of the beautiful quickened by contact with that fresh young nature. She was already drawn by that infallible attraction which every one felt in the presence of Amélie.