You will see
thereby to what a pitch of temerity and lawlessness he has transported
himself, in order to compel me to use violence against him, with the
hope of justifying what he has asserted about my pretended outbreaks
of anger." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre,_ 2 _Nov.,_ 1681.]
The mutual charges of the two functionaries were much the same; and,
so far at least as concerns trade, there can be little doubt that they
were well founded on both sides. The strife of the rival factions grew
more and more bitter: canes and sticks played an active part in it,
and now and then we hear of drawn swords. One is reminded at times of
the intestine feuds of some mediaeval city, as, for example, in the
following incident, which will explain the charge of Frontenac against
the intendant of barricading his house and arming his servants:--
On the afternoon of the twentieth of March, a son of Duchesneau,
sixteen years old, followed by a servant named Vautier, was strolling
along the picket fence which bordered the descent from the Upper to
the Lower Town of Quebec. The boy was amusing himself by singing a
song, when Frontenac's partisan, Boisseau, with one of the guardsmen,
approached, and, as young Duchesneau declares, called him foul names,
and said that he would give him and his father a thrashing.
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