Your
people have taken Louisburg; had I been there, it should never have
been given up. Drucour was hasty--he listened to the women. I should
allow no woman to move me. I should be inflexible. They might send
two Amhersts and two Wolfes against me, I would hold my fortress."
"They will never send two, your Excellency," said I.
He did not see the irony, and he prattled on: "That Wolfe, they
tell me, is bandy-legged; is no better than a girl at sea, and
never well ashore. I am always in raw health--the strong mind in
the potent body. Had I been at Louisburg, I should have held it,
as I held Ticonderoga last July, and drove the English back with
monstrous slaughter."
Here was news. I had had no information in many months, and all
at once two great facts were brought to me.
"Your Excellency, then, was at Ticonderoga?" said I.
"I sent Montcalm to defend it," he replied pompously. "I told
him how he must act; I was explicit, and it came out as I had said:
we were victorious. Yet he would have done better had he obeyed me
in everything. If I had been at Louisburg--"
I could not at first bring myself to flatter the vice-regal peacock;
for it had been my mind to fight these Frenchmen always; to yield in
nothing; to defeat them like a soldier, not like a juggler.
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