118 THE RISE OF THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. chap, stairs influence, had, as we have seen, arrived at the Isle m ' of France. The intelligence which awaited him there, 1741. was °* a nature to stimulate all his energies. He received the news, which had some short time before arrived, of the danger which threatened Pondichery from the anticipated attack of llaghuji Bhonsla, and further that the authorities of the islands, obeying an urgent requisition from M. Dumas, had despatched their garrisons to India. Impressed with the necessity of saving Pondichery at all costs, La Bourdonnais re- mained only a week at the Isle of France, and sailed then for Pondichery. Arriving there on September 30, he found that the tact and skill of M. Dumas had warded off the danger from that settlement, but that Mahe was still beleaguered. Thither, accordingly, to the scene of his early Indian triumphs, he sailed, and arriving there speedily re-established French ascen- dancy. There being nothing more for him to accom- plish in India, he sailed back to the Isle of France to carry out the scheme he had concerted with Fleury. It was on his return thither that he experienced the bitter pang which those alone can feel who, prompted in their actions by noble and generous sentiments, find themselves restrained and held back by men of inferior powers. Then for the first time the order reached him to send back his ships to Europe. He knew the full significance of that order ; he felt that it was to give up, for the coming war, at all events, all hope of French preponderance in India ; he felt that it would leave him a powerless spectator of the triumphs of the English — disarmed and defenceless, perhaps even a prey to their attacks ; he felt that it destroyed the hope of his life, the object of all his toil, the certain accom- plishment, but for that, of his legitimate ambition. But what was he to do 1 ? The order was imperative. He must obey it. With a pang, the bitterness of which few men can have experienced, and which must
