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 114 THE RISE OF THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. chap, repressed speculators, and baffled ship-captains, whose , gains and depredations had been lessened by the 1741. measures of La Bourdonnais, presented to the Minister and to the Directors of the Company a long list of their grievances, accompanied by insinuations common to their class, that La Bourdonnais was working mainly for his own interests, the narrow mind of the Cardinal did not repel the charges, and, worked upon at the same time by the Directors, he began to concert with them measures for his disgrace. It was partly the intima- tion of this, and the consequent desire to justify himself, that had brought La Bourdonnais from the scene of his labours. Though narrow-minded to a degree, Fleury was not intentionally unjust. He received the great colonist with marked disfavour at the outset, but he did not remain long proof against the candour and frankness which cha- racterised alike his demeanour and his statements. La Bourdonnais in fact insisted upon being informed of all that had been said against him, and, this done, he had little difficulty, not only in justifying his conduct, but in convincing the Minister and the Directors of the great value of the measures he had accomplished. The per- sonal charges against him dissolved into air. He showed, in the course of his justifications, that he had never pos- sessed a foot of land in the islands ; that he had never traded for a single livre; and that so great had been the confidence of the colonists in his impartiality, that all the differences in the islands had been terminated by his arbitration, without recourse having been had, except in one solitary instance, to a lawsuit. Released from the charges against him, and reinstated in the confidence of his masters, the fertile mind of La Bourdonnais began at once to revolve fresh schemes. At that time (1740-41), hostilities between France and England seemed imminent. The two nations had taken opposite sides in the war of the Austrian succession, and