'I never repent,' he said to me one day. 'I have done
after my nature, in the sway and impulse of our time, and as the
King has said, After us the deluge. What a pity it is we shall see
neither the flood nor the ark! And so, when all is done, we shall
miss the most interesting thing of all: ourselves dead and the gap
and ruin we leave behind us. By that, from my standpoint,' he would
add, 'life is a failure as a spectacle.'
"Talking in this fashion and in a hundred other ways, we came to
Quebec. And you know in general what happened. I met your honoured
father, whose life I had saved on the Ohio some years before, and
he worked for my comfort in my bondage. You know how exchange after
exchange was refused, and that for near three years I have been
here, fretting my soul out, eager to be fighting in our cause,
yet tied hand and foot, wasting time and losing heart, idle in an
enemy's country. As Doltaire said, war was declared, but not till he
had made here in Quebec last efforts to get those letters. I do not
complain so bitterly of these lost years, since they have brought me
the best gift of my life, your love and friendship; but my enemies
here, commanded from France, have bided their time, till an accident
has given them a cue to dispose of me without openly breaking the
accepted law of nations.
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