Blood Brothers in Louisbourg Read Free

all over the world. It was a three-day journey by coach to get there. I travelled alone; my father followed later with his regiment. That was a good thing. Three days in a stuffy coach was bad enough, but if I had to listen to him rage against the English all the way I would have gone insane. He would have supported a war against the Austrians or the Persians or the Mongolians, if the King had declared one. War was war to a man who believed in war. However, opinions about the war actually varied quite a bit in France as I learned during the coach ride.
    It was crowded. I ended up giving my window seat to a young lady travelling with her mother. Now I was boxed in and couldn’t see much out the window. And so I buried my head in my book. It was a copy of Voltaire’s English Essays , in which he praises the English parliamentary system and criticizes the French monarchy. This was the book that had been banned in France, and the reason Voltaire had been imprisoned in the Bastille. Even so, there were copies being quietly handed around and I had borrowed one from an English friend of mine who played violin. Voltaire really cared about France and its people. You could tell by the way he wrote. Yes, his ideas were revolutionary, but that’s what was so exciting. Real change would take courage. And Voltaire was courageous. Even the King had been unable to shut him up. As I stared out through the little patch of window, I thought how much more noble it would be to die for a revolutionary idea than for a senseless war.
    As I slowly read and re-read pages of the book, which wasn’t easy with the coach swaying and bouncing along the road, a rather angry-looking man across from me was watching. He wasn’t really paying attention. He was sleepy. He did not strike me as an educated man, but after an hour or so his gaze slowly slid across the cover of my book. I watched as his eyes suddenly opened wide, and a look of disgust appeared on his face.
    â€œHey!” he barked. “What rubbish is this?”
    He jumped to his feet. All in one motion he grabbed the book out of my hands, leaned across the lap of the young lady without excusing himself, opened the window and threw the book out. He sat back down with such an angry expression I didn’t dare say a word.
    â€œHeretic!” he yelled at me.
    The next thing that happened surprised me even more. The man to my right, a well-dressed, elderly man, raised his cane and bumped against the roof of the coach, ordering the riders to stop. The coach came to a halt with lots of noise and shaking of the horses. The older man stepped out and held the door. Very politely he said to me, “Go. Fetch your book.”
    â€œNo!” screamed the other man. “I will not ride in a coach with a heretic!”
    I saw him reach clumsily for the hilt of his sword, but the elderly man drew his own sword so quickly it appeared as if by magic. He bowed and apologized to the ladies, then politely said, “If Monsieur feels so strongly, perhaps he would like to take a moment to step outside the coach.”
    The angry man took his hand away from the hilt of his sword and looked away, mumbling under his breath.
    â€œMy young scholar,” the older man said to me, “fetch your book.”
    Excusing myself, I hopped out of the coach, ran down the road and found my book. I wiped the mud off it, straightened up its cover and put it into my pocket. Then I returned to the coach, thanked the elderly man and took my seat. As we resumed our journey, the man opposite me sat burning up with rage. If ever a man could have exploded out of anger it would have been him. At the next exchange of horses he left the coach and stayed behind to wait for another. He said he would not ride with heretics and traitors and swore that we were all damned to burn in Hell. I found it amazing that a single book could stir up so much anger, especially when the offended man had probably never even