Read "The Power And The Glory" by Gilbert Parker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Comtesse Frontenac lived at an apartment in the old Arsenal, the gift of a French general, Duc de Lude, with Mademoiselle Outrelaise, and together they were called "The Divines, " and this name had been given to the Illinois by La Salle, but mademoiselle was now visiting her family and the Comtesse was alone. She and Frontenac had not lived together for many years, yet she was proud of him and had in these later times the wish to help him in all ways. She had come of a good family, the daughter of La Grange Trianon Sieur de Nouville, and she had run away with him to be married at the little church St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which could unite couples without the consent of their parents.
This was in 1648, when Frontenac was a brigadier-general at twenty-six. Their married happiness was short, for she was witty and brilliant and self-willed, and Frontenac was masterful and vain and loved display, and, though not of the highest rank, his position was an enviable one, for he had been a close friend of Louis XIII. They had fallen apart, but the years went on. She had been popular at court, and had at last retired, having little money. She and Mademoiselle Outrelaise, who never went near the court, still played a great part in Parisian life, and after Frontenac went to Canada from the Venetian Embassy where French troops had been under his command, she who knew now his prodigious worth helped him all she could, but would not go with him. They were again the closest friends.