To his wife he says:  “The price of everything is rising.  I am ruining myself; I owe the treasurer twelve thousand francs.  I long for peace and for you.  In spite of the public distress, we have balls and furious gambling.”  In February he returned to Montreal in a sleigh on the ice of the St. Lawrence,—­a mode of travelling which he describes as cold but delicious.  Montreal pleased him less than ever, especially as he was not in favor at what he calls the Court, meaning the circle of the Governor-General.  “I find this place so amusing,” he writes ironically to Bourlamaque, “that I wish Holy Week could be lengthened, to give me a pretext for neither making nor receiving visits, staying at home, and dining there almost alone.  Burn all my letters, as I do yours.”  And in the next week:  “Lent and devotion have upset my stomach and given me a cold; which does not prevent me from having the Governor-General at dinner to-day to end his lenten fast, according to custom here.”  Two days after he announces:  “To-day a grand dinner at Martel’s; twenty-three persons, all big-wigs (les grosses perruques); no ladies.  We still have got to undergo those of Pean, Deschambault, and the Chevalier de Levis.  I spend almost every evening in my chamber, the place I like best, and where I am least bored.”

With the opening spring there were changes in the modes of amusement.  Picnics began, Vaudreuil and his wife being often of the party, as too was Levis.  The Governor also made visits of compliment at the houses of the seigniorial proprietors along the river; “very much,” says Montcalm, as “Henri IV. did to the bourgeois notables of Paris.  I live as usual, fencing in the morning, dining, and passing the evening at home or at the Governor’s.  Pean has gone up to La Chine to spend six days with the reigning sultana [Pean’s wife, mistress of Bigot].  As for me, my ennui increases.  I don’t know what to do, or say, or read, or where to go; and I think that at the end of the next campaign I shall ask bluntly, blindly, for my recall, only because I am bored."[537]

[Footnote 537:  Montcalm a Bourlamaque, 22 Mai, 1758.]

His relations with Vaudreuil were a constant annoyance to him, notwithstanding the mask of mutual civility.  “I never,” he tells his mother, “ask for a place in the colony troops for anybody.  You need not be an Oedipus to guess this riddle.  Here are four lines from Corneille:—­

   “’Mon crime veritable est d’avoir aujourd’hui
    Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui,
    Et c’est de la que part cette secrete haine
    Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.’

Nevertheless I live here on good terms with everybody, and do my best to serve the King.  If they could but do without me; if they could but spring some trap on me, or if I should happen to meet with some check!”

Vaudreuil meanwhile had written to the Court in high praise of Levis, hinting that he, and not Montcalm, ought to have the chief command.[538]