Page:Marmette - Heroisme et Trahison - 1880.djvu/167

Le texte de cette page a été corrigé et est conforme au fac-similé.

anglaises descendirent sans encombre jusqu’à l’anse des Mères.^[1]

Rendus entre les postes de Saint-Michel et du Foulon, ils débarquèrent sans coup férir. Wolfe à la tête de l’infanterie légère s’avança, dans le plus grand silence, vers un corps de garde qui défendait le pied de la rampe que longe le ruisseau Saint--

M. Dussieux dit aussi à ce sujet, que : « Des déserteurs avaient communiqué le mot d’ordre aux Anglais. »

↑ Je ne puis m’empêcher de citer ce passage saisissant et poétique de l’Histoire de la conspiration de Pontiac par M. Francis Parkman. Il représente Wolfe, encore faible des suites de sa maladie et descendant, entouré des siens, vers le Foulon. — "He sat in the stera of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every arrangement made and it only remained to face the issue. The ebbing tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke the silence of the night but the gurgling of the river and the low voice of Wolfe as he repeated to the officers about him the stanzas of Grey’s elegy in a country Church yard, which had recently appeared and which he had just received from England. Perhaps as he uttered those strangely appropriate words :
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"
the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with mournful prophecy across his mind. 'Gentlemen,’ he said, as he closed his recital, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow.'"

[1] Je ne puis m’empêcher de citer ce passage saisissant et poétique de l’Histoire de la conspiration de Pontiac par M. Francis Parkman. Il représente Wolfe, encore faible des suites de sa maladie et descendant, entouré des siens, vers le Foulon. — "He sat in the stera of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every arrangement made and it only remained to face the issue. The ebbing tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke the silence of the night but the gurgling of the river and the low voice of Wolfe as he repeated to the officers about him the stanzas of Grey’s elegy in a country Church yard, which had recently appeared and which he had just received from England. Perhaps as he uttered those strangely appropriate words :
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"
the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with mournful prophecy across his mind. 'Gentlemen,’ he said, as he closed his recital, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow.'"

[1]