"And our people have turned beggars; poor and starved, they beg at
the door of the King's storehouse--it is well called La Friponne,"
said Madame Duvarney, with some heat; for she was ever liberal to
the poor, and she had seen manor after manor robbed, and peasant
farmers made to sell their corn for a song, to be sold to them again
at famine prices by La Friponne. Even now Quebec was full of pilgrim
poor begging against the hard winter, and execrating their spoilers.
Doltaire was too fond of digging at the heart of things not to
admit she spoke truth.
"La Pompadour et La Friponne!
Qu'est que cela, mon petit homme?"
"Les deux terribles, ma chere mignonne,
Mais, c'est cela--
La Pompadour et La Friponne!"
He said this with cool drollery and point, in the patois of the
native, so that he set us all laughing, in spite of our mutual
apprehensions.
Then he continued, "And the King has sent a chorus to the play, with
eyes for the preposterous make-believe, and more, no purse to fill."
We all knew he meant himself, and we knew also that so far as
money went he spoke true; that though hand-in-glove with Bigot, he
was poor, save for what he made at the gaming-table and got from
France.
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