It was most fortunate that the note of irony did not escape me.
“Where governments failed, General Wilkinson succeeded,” I answered dryly.
Monsieur de St. Gré glanced at me, and an enigmatical smile spread over his face. I knew then that the ice was cracked between us. Yet he was too much a man of the world not to make one more tentative remark.
“A union between Kentucky and Louisiana would be a resistless force in the world, Mr. Ritchie,” he said.
“It was Nebuchadnezzar who dreamed of a composite image, Monsieur,” I answered; “and Mr. Wilkinson forgets one thing,—that Kentucky is a part of the United States.”
At that Monsieur St. Gré laughed outright. He became a different man, though he lost none of his dignity.
“I should have had more faith in my old friend Gratiot,” he said; “but you will pardon me if I did not recognize at once the statesman he had sent me, Mr. Ritchie.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Monsieur,” he went on, returning to that dignity of mien which marked him, “my political opinions are too well known that I should make a mystery of them to you. I was born a Frenchman, I shall die a Frenchman, and I shall never be happy until Louisiana is French once more. My great-grandfather, a brother of the Marquis de St. Gré of that time, and a wild blade enough, came out with D'Iberville. His son, my grandfather, was the Commissary-general of the colony under the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He sent me to France for my education, where I was introduced at court by my kinsman, the old Marquis, who took a fancy to me and begged me to remain. It was my father's wish that I should return, and I did not disobey him. I had scarcely come back, Monsieur, when that abominable secret bargain of Louis the Fifteenth became known, ceding Louisiana to Spain. You may have heard of the revolution which followed here. It was a mild affair, and the remembrance of it makes me smile to this day, though with bitterness. I was five and twenty, hot-headed, and French. Que voulez-vous?” and Monsieur de St. Gré shrugged his shoulders. “O'Reilly, the famous Spanish general, came with his men-of-war. Well I remember the days we waited with leaden hearts for the men-of-war to come up from the English turn; and I can see now the cannon frowning from the ports, the grim spars, the high poops crowded with officers, the great anchors splashing the yellow water. I can hear the chains running. The ships were in line of battle before the town, their flying bridges swung to the levee, and they loomed above us like towering fortresses. It was dark, Monsieur, such as this afternoon, and we poor French colonists stood huddled in the open space below, waiting for we knew not what.”
He paused, and I started, for the picture he drew had carried me out of myself.