Until then I had made but little effort to better my condition, but my advancement, as well as the increase in my pay, aroused me. I took fresh heart in and my appearance, and began to mix somewhat in such society as our forlorn situation afforded.
In Madame de Drucour, wife of our Commandant, I found a grande dame de par le monde, who commanded the admiration and respect of all our officers and the devotion of the soldiery and townspeople.
In Madame Prévost, the most charming little Canadian, wife of the Commissary—a creature with the carriage of a lackey and the soul of a dry-salter—I discovered a heart full of tender sympathy, dying of ennui. Her husband's unpopularity was such that but few of the officers would enter his doors, and indeed he was so fierce a Cerberus in regard to his unfortunate wife, that he made any attempt at alleviation of her unhappy condition wellnigh impossible. However, through my acquaintance with a M. de Sarennes, a Canadian partisan officer, who stood high in his favour, he saw fit to allow my visits, and I willingly put up with his want of breeding to offer such attention as I might to his prisoner, for so in truth she was.
Sarennes was attractive enough, in so far as his outward appearance went, but, like most of his countrymen—that is, the Canadians—was wanting in all those externals which are essential to a gentleman. He was courageous, but a braggart; he was well born, but had no breeding; he was open and friendly, but, I feared, truculent; and his sense of honour was not above the universal dishonesty which disgraced and wrecked his unfortunate country.
I had suspected his intimacy with Prévost had some less honourable foundation than a pitying admiration for his unfortunate wife, and I was confirmed in this by his proposal in my quarters one evening that I should hand over to him some blanks, signed by St. Julhien, on the Commissary, for stores, etc., which I was to requisition as required.
“May I ask to what use you intend to put them?” I said, more to sound him than for information, for this was one of the most favoured forms of peculation in the colonies.
“Oh, none that you will ever know of, Chevalier; and I should think an addition to your inadequate pay would not come amiss,” he added, artfully, without even an effort to veil his knavery.
The whole disgraceful, pettifogging scheme disgusted me; but, because he was a much younger man than I, and I believed might be in Prévost's power, I refrained from my natural indignation, and passing over the personal affront, I spake to him with all the consideration of a friend. I shewed him the path which he was treading, and pointed out the inevitable disgrace which must attend such a course, and most of all, the wretched meanness of so contemptible a crime. But, to my astonishment, he was inclined to excuse and cloak his wrong-doing.
“Sir,” said I, “nothing is further from my liking than an artificial morality, but I would avoid even the appearance of being cheaply vicious. Do not weigh out the largest possible measure of dishonesty to the smallest possible quantum of correction. If you must depart from that path of virtue towards which we should all direct our best endeavours, do so in a manner that will at least command the admiration of gentlemen and the leniency of a Divine Being, who may consider the frailty of the natural man, but never the tortuous conclusions of his compromising intellect.”
He was apparently sensible of my kindly advice, but I soon discovered that he not only disregarded it, but was endeavouring to do me an ill turn with the Commissary by directing his warped and jealous suspicions towards my innocent attentions to his wife.