He found the hospitality in Quebec such that a
Parisian would be surprised at the profusion of good things of
every kind. The city was, he thought, like the best type of the
cities of France. The Canadian climate was health-giving, the sky
clear, the summer not unlike that of Languedoc, but the winter
trying, since the severe weather caused the inhabitants to remain
too much indoors. He described the Canadian ladies as witty,
lively, devout, those of Quebec amusing themselves at play,
sometimes for high stakes; those of Montreal, with conversation
and dancing. He confessed that one of them proved a little too
fascinating for his own peace of mind. The intolerable thing was
the need to meet and pay court to the Indians whom the Governor,
the Marquis de Vaudreuil, regarded as valuable allies. These
savages, brutal, changeable, exacting, Montcalm from the first
despised. It filled him with disgust to see them swarming in the
streets of Montreal, sometimes carrying bows and arrows, their
coarse features worse disfigured by war-paint and a gaudy
headdress of feathers, their heads shaven, with the exception of
one long scalp-lock, their gleaming bodies nearly naked or draped
with dirty buffalo or beaver skins.
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