concerning whom another officer also writes:  “It is very surprising with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable.  Families whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection—­Fortune de guerre.  Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time."[819]

[Footnote 819:  Alexander Campbell to John Floyd, 22 Oct. 1759.  Campbell was a lieutenant of the Highlanders; Lloyd was a Connecticut merchant.]

Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end:  a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable.  The change, however, was an agreeable one when he was ordered for a week to the General Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the enemy.  Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies, nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with gratitude and respect.  “When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy.  Each patient has his bed, with curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him.  Every sick or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young, handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful.  Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities of taking great latitudes if they are so disposed; but I never heard any of them charged with the least levity.”  The nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of their new masters, whom one of them describes as the “most moderate of all conquerors.”

“I lived here,” Knox continues, “at the French King’s table, with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries.  Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their company.  They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an O mon Dieu!” He walked in the garden with the French officers, played at cards with them, and passed the time so pleasantly that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard life of camp and garrison.

Mere de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay, late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says that he “fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her virgin sisters.”