Here were the most courtly gentlemen of Europe,
in the same embroidered and beruffled uniforms that they
would have worn before the king of France. Yet in and
out of this gay throng of polite society went hundreds
of copper-coloured braves; some of them more than
half-naked; most of them ready, after a victory, to be
cannibals who revelled in stews of white man's flesh;
all of them decked in waving plumes, all of them grotesquely
painted, like demons in a nightmare, and all of them
armed to the teeth.
Much to Vaudreuil's disgust the man whom the Indians
wished most to see was not himself, the 'Great Onontio,'
much less Bigot, prince of thieves, but the warrior chief,
Montcalm. They had the good sense to prefer the lion to
the owl or the fox. Three hundred of the wildest Ottawas
came striding in one day, each man a model of agility
and strength, a living bronze, a sculptor's dream, the
whole making a picture for the brush of the greatest
painter. 'We want to see the chief who tramples the
British to death and sweeps their forts off the face of
the earth.' Montcalm, though every inch a soldier, was
rather short than tall; and at first the Ottawa chief
looked surprised. 'We thought your head would be lost in
the clouds,' he said. But then, as he caught Montcalm's
piercing glance, he added: 'Yet when we look into your
eyes, we see the height of the pine and the wings of the
eagle.
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