THERE WAS A NIGHT IN New France when I foolishly forgot to guard the distinction between myself as a general and as a man. I let my personal longings get the better of my actions, which is something I hardly ever do. Whenever I do it, I come to regret it bitterly.

It was July 1759, and I couldn’t stand the mosquitoes another second. The bogwater with its carnivorous jug-leafed plants. The stink of my men. The relentless stringy beef, bowel chaos and toe fungus. The cloying incense of Canada’s sticky fir buds. The goad of her white-throated sparrow’s song sharp as spruce pins.

I’d imprisoned the French, not anticipating how inhospitable their land would become without them in it. The lonely quiet became unbearable. There is nothing of comfort to me in a Canadian wood and I cannot live in it. I know this now beyond doubt, and it might be my only certainty regarding my Quebec fantasy. But at that time I was still under the colonizer’s spell.

I forgot myself and sent out invitations. I commanded my officers to bathe and to wash their clothes, and invited the women prisoners of New France to a soirée in my tent.

I had the sutlers break out the marzipan and confits, and our cook dug a pit for a pair of lambs Niall Mackison had risked his neck fetching from a cliff on Île d’Orléans. I ordered my last pineapple sliced and studded with barley sugar and laid on a trestle. I borrowed French glasses from Montcalm himself. I did all this not out of kindness to our prisoners, though I was always pleased to cause any woman happiness, but out of my own longing. I wanted an illusion of Paris and I got it. There were gowns, coiffures. We lit the great tent with candles. I played my flute, and a little songbird—a miller’s daughter from Isle-aux-Coudres—sang “Partons, la mer est belle” and “Vive la rose,” and we all danced.

Sophie never believed this story. She ridiculed it until the phantasm, illumined and gorgeous, faded from me.

But it all comes back to me now. And the story is true. I sent the invitations on my best ship’s paper and I thought the women would be glad to get them. It was a stupid mistake. Have you never let your enthusiasm for a venture cloud your judgment? I asked Sophie. Have you never been surprised and hurt when others do not share your love of some particular, lovely enterprise?