Taking too little thought
for the morrow, he liked, as Charlevoix remarks, 'to get
the fun out of his money, and scarcely anybody amused
himself by hoarding it.' He was light-hearted even to
frivolousness, and this gave the austere Church fathers
many serious misgivings. He was courteous always, but
boastful, and regarded his race as the salt of the earth.
A Norman in every bone of his body, he used, as his
descendants still do, quaint Norman idioms and forms of
speech. He was proud of his ancestry. Stories that went
back to the days when 'twenty thousand thieves landed at
Hastings' were passed along from father to son, gaining
in terms of prodigious valour as they went. His versatility
gained him the friendship and confidence of the Indian,
an advantage which his English brother to the south was
rarely able to secure.
Much of the success which marked French diplomacy with
the tribes was due to this versatility. Beneath an ungainly
exterior the habitant often concealed a surprising ability
in certain lines of action. He was a master of blandishment
when he had an end thereby to gain. Dealings which required
duplicity, provided the outcome appeared to be desirable,
did not rudely shock his conscience. He had no Puritan
scruples in his dealings with men of another race and
religion. But in many things he had a high sense of
honour, and nothing roused his ire so readily as to
question it. Unstable as water, however, he did not excel
in tasks that took patience.
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