" [Footnote:
Parkman, "La Salle," p. 323.]
Meanwhile the king, the same king who five years before had said in La
Salle's commission that he had "nothing more at heart" than the
exploration of that country, writes to the governor of Canada from
Fontainebleau: "I am convinced, as you, that the discovery of the Sieur de
la Salle is very useless, and that such enterprises ought to be prevented
in the future." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 324.]
In his extremity, his supplies cut off, his men sent to Quebec deserting
with the profits of his hides, La Salle leaves Tonty on the Rock, starts
for Quebec, intending to go to France, meets on the way an officer
appointed to succeed him in all his wilderness authority, and in the
spring of 1684 is again a lodger in Rue de la Truanderie, a miserable
little street in Paris where, as I have said before, I have tried to
locate the lodging of the valiant soul who once dwelt upon the mysterious
rock near my boyhood home.
Thence this man of "solitary disposition," whose life had been joined to
savages, and who had for years had "neither servants, clothes nor fare
which did not savor more of meanness than of ostentation," and who was of
such natural timidity that it took him a week "to make up his mind to go
to an audience" with Monseigneur de Conti, is summoned to an interview
with the king himself.
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