第236章 CHAPTER LIV(3)

Angelique had played desperately her game of life with the juggling fiend of ambition, and had not wholly lost. Although the murder of Caroline de St. Castin pressed hard upon her conscience, and still harder upon her fears, no man read in her face the minutest asterisk that pointed to the terrible secret buried in her bosom, nor ever discovered it. So long as La Corriveau lived, Angelique never felt safe. But fear was too weak a counsellor for her to pretermit either her composure or her pleasures. She redoubled her gaiety and her devotions; and that was the extent of her repentance! The dread secret of Beaumanoir was never revealed. It awaited, and awaits still, the judgment of the final day of account.

Angelique had intrigued and sinned in vain. She feared Bigot knew more than he really did, in reference to the death of Caroline, and oft, while laughing in his face, she trembled in her heart, when he played and equivocated with her earnest appeals to marry her.

Wearied out at length with waiting for his decisive yes or no, Angelique, mortified by wounded pride and stung by the scorn of Le Gardeur on his return to the Colony, suddenly accepted the hand of the Chevalier de Pean, and as a result became the recognized mistress of the Intendant,--imitating as far as she was able the splendor and the guilt of La Pompadour, and making the Palace of Bigot as corrupt, if not as brilliant, as that of Versailles.

Angelique lived thenceforth a life of splendid sin. She clothed herself in purple and fine linen, while the noblest ladies of the land were reduced by the war to rags and beggary. She fared sumptuously, while men and women died of hunger in the streets of Quebec. She bought houses and lands, and filled her coffers with gold out of the public treasury, while the brave soldiers of Montcalm starved for the want of their pay. She gave fetes and banquets while the English were thundering at the gates of the capital. She foresaw the eventual fall of Bigot and the ruin of the country, and resolved that, since she had failed in getting himself, she would make herself possessor of all that he had.

The fate of Bigot was a warning to public peculators and oppressors.

He returned to France soon after the surrender of the Colony, with Cadet, Varin, Penisault, and others of the Grand Company, who were now useless tools, and were cast aside by their court friends. The Bastille opened its iron doors to receive the godless and wicked crew, who had lost the fairest Colony of France, the richest jewel in her crown. Bigot and the others were tried by a special commission, were found guilty of the most heinous malversations of office, and sentenced to make full restitution of the plunder of the King's treasures, to be imprisoned until their fines and restitutions were paid, and then banished from the kingdom forever.

It is believed that, by favor of La Pompadour, Bigot's heavy sentence was commuted, and he retained a sufficiency of his ill- gotten wealth to enable him, under a change of name, to live in ease and opulence at Bordeaux, where he died.

Angelique had no sympathy for Bigot in his misfortunes, no regrets save that she had failed to mould him more completely to her own purposes, flattering herself that had she done so, the fortunes of the war and the fate of the Colony might have been different. What might have been, had she not ruined herself and her projects by the murder of Caroline, it were vain to conjecture. But she who had boldly dreamed of ruling king and kingdom by the witchery of her charms and the craft of her subtle intellect, had to content herself with the name of De Pean and the shame of a lawless connection with the Intendant.