The news fell on him like a thunderbolt. Thousands of miles of stormy sea lay between him and the face that haunted his dreams. As he thought how near he had been to her in the harbour of St John, his heart bounded madly within him, and his eyeballs beat upon his brain.
But he was not long in planning a course of action. He would hasten to court, and find means of returning to the New World at once. Destruction only could await the colonists, and he shuddered as he thought of the tenderly-nurtured girls exposed to the fierce storms and bitter cold of a Canadian winter.
So his good horse was saddled once more, and the measured beat of its hoofs became swifter and yet swifter as Paris was neared.
Once in the city, he lost no time in presenting a request for an audience with the King, and the announcement of his name, and the nature of his errand, readily gained him admission to Francis' presence.
He found that Cartier had been before him by a few days, and had urged the necessity of recalling Roberval, and the hopelessness of any attempts to colonise the New World. The King had been greatly disappointed by the downfall of all the hopes and brilliant prophecies with which the expedition had started. He had rewarded Cartier's bravery and enterprise with the promise of a patent of nobility, but seemed reluctant to encourage the idea of withdrawing the second detachment of colonists. He was inclined to suspect that jealousy of De Roberval, and disappointment at his own failure, had something to do with Cartier's anxiety to break up a scheme on which his heart had been set a year before. La Pommeraye saw his hopes receding into the distance; his heart sank within him.
"But what thinks the Duke of Guise?" said the King, suddenly, turning to that veteran nobleman, who was now his chief adviser, occupying the place that Anne de Montmorenci had so long filled.
The Duke had been standing silently by during the interview, regarding La Pommeraye with a meditative air.
"Methinks, sire," he answered, "that there is much wisdom in what the young man urges. Already we have cast too much good treasure away in these vain enterprises; and now that Spain needs our utmost attention, we can spare neither men nor money for schemes of foreign colonisation."