During the few weeks when illness confined him to his bed, Laval had leisure to reflect on the difficulties of his task. He understood that his age and the infirmities which the Lord laid upon him would no longer permit him to bring to so arduous a work the necessary energy. "His humility," says Sister Juchereau, "persuaded him that another in his place would do more good than he, although he really did a great deal, because he sought only the glory of God and the welfare of his flock." In consequence, he decided to go and carry in person his resignation to the king. But before embarking for France, with his accustomed prudence he set his affairs in order. He had one plan, especially, at heart, that of establishing according to the rules of the Church the chapter which had already existed de facto for a long while. Canons are necessary to a bishopric; their duties are not merely decorative, for they assist the bishop in his episcopal office, form his natural council, replace him on certain occasions, govern the diocese from the death of its head until the deceased is replaced, and finally officiate in turn before the altars of the cathedral in order that prayer shall incessantly ascend from the diocese towards the Most High. The only obstacle to this creation until now had been the lack of resources, for the canonical union with the abbeys of Maubec and Lestrees was not yet an accomplished fact. Mgr. de Laval resolved to appeal to the unselfishness of the priests of the seminary, and he succeeded: they consented to fulfil without extra salary the duties of canons.

By an ordinance of November 6th, 1684, the Bishop of Quebec established a chapter composed of twelve canons and four chaplains. The former, among whom were five priests born in the colony, were M. Henri de Bernieres, priest of Quebec, who remained dean until his death in 1700; MM. Louis Ange de Maizerets, archdeacon, Charles Glandelet, theologist, Dudouyt, grand cantor, and Jean Gauthier de Brulon, confessor. The ceremony of installation took place with the greatest pomp, amid the boom of artillery and the joyful sound of bells and music; governor, intendant, councillors, officers and soldiers, inhabitants of the city and the environments, everybody wished to be present. It remained to give a constitution to the new chapter. Mgr. de Laval had already busied himself with this for several months, and corresponded on this subject with M. Cheron, a clever lawyer of Paris. Accordingly, the constitution which he submitted for the infant chapter on the very morrow of the ceremony was admired unreservedly and adopted without discussion. Twenty-four hours afterwards he set sail accompanied by the good wishes of his priests, who, with anxious heart and tears in their eyes, followed him with straining gaze until the vessel disappeared below the horizon. Before his departure, he had, like a father who in his last hour divides his goods among his children, given his seminary a new proof of his attachment: he left it a sum of eight thousand francs for the building of the chapel.

It would seem that sad presentiments assailed him at this moment, for he said in the deed of gift: "I declare that my last will is to be buried in this chapel; and if our Lord disposes of my life during this voyage I desire that my body be brought here for burial. I also desire this chapel to be open to the public." Fortunately, he was mistaken, it was not the intention of the Lord to remove him so soon from the affections of his people. For twenty years more the revered prelate was to spread about him good works and good examples, and Providence reserved for him the happiness of dying in the midst of his flock.

His generosity did not confine itself to this grant. He could not leave his diocese, which he was not sure of seeing again, without giving a token of remembrance to that school of St. Joachim, which he had founded and which he loved so well; he gave the seminary eight thousand francs for the support of the priest entrusted with the direction of the school at the same time as with the ministry of the parish, and another sum of four thousand francs to build the village church.

A young Canadian priest, M. Guyon, son of a farmer of the Beaupre shore, had the good fortune of accompanying the bishop on the voyage. It would have been very imprudent to leave the venerable prelate alone, worn out as he was by troublesome fits of vertigo whenever he indulged too long in work; besides, he was attacked by a disease of the heart, whose onslaughts sometimes incapacitated him.

It would be misjudging the foresight of Mgr. de Laval to think that before embarking for the mother country he had not sought out a priest worthy to replace him. He appealed to two men whose judgment and circumspection he esteemed, M. Dudouyt and Father Le Valois of the Society of Jesus. He asked them to recommend a true servant of God, virtuous and zealous above all. Father Le Valois indicated the Abbe Jean Baptiste de la Croix de Saint-Vallier, the king's almoner, whose zeal for the welfare of souls, whose charity, great piety, modesty and method made him the admiration of all. The influence which his position and the powerful relations of his family must gain for the Church in Canada were an additional argument in his favour; the superior of St. Sulpice, M. Tronson, who was also consulted, praised highly the talents and the qualities of the young priest. "My Lord has shown great virtue in his resignation," writes M. Dudouyt. "I know no occasion on which he has shown so strongly his love for his Church; for he has done everything that could be desired to procure a person capable of preserving and perfecting the good work which he has begun here." If the Abbe de Saint-Vallier had not been a man after God's own heart, he would not have accepted a duty so honourable but so difficult. He was not unaware of the difficulties which he would have to surmount, for Mgr. de Laval explained them to him himself with the greatest frankness; and, what was a still greater sacrifice, the king's almoner was to leave the most brilliant court in the world for a very remote country, still in process of organization. Nevertheless he accepted, and Laval had the satisfaction of knowing that he was committing his charge into the hands of a worthy successor.

It was now only a question of obtaining the consent of the king before petitioning the sovereign pontiff for the canonical establishment of the new episcopal authority. It was not without difficulty that it was obtained, for the prince could not decide to accept the resignation of a prelate who seemed to him indispensable to the interests of New France. He finally understood that the decision of Mgr. de Laval was irrevocable; as a mark of confidence and esteem he allowed him to choose his successor.

At this period the misunderstanding created between the common father of the faithful and his most Christian Majesty by the claims of the latter in the matter of the right of regale[9] kept the Church in a false position, to the grief of all good Catholics. Pope Innocent XI waited with persistent and calm firmness until Louis XIV should become again the elder son of the Church; until then France could not exist for him, and more than thirty episcopal sees remained without occupants in the country of Saint Louis and of Joan of Arc. It was not, then, to be hoped that the appointment by the king of the Abbe de Saint-Vallier as second bishop of Quebec could be immediately sanctioned by the sovereign pontiff. It was decided that Mgr. de Laval, to whom the king granted an annuity for life of two thousand francs from the revenues of the bishopric of Aire, should remain titular bishop until the consecration of his successor, and that M. de Saint-Vallier, appointed provisionally grand vicar of the prelate, should set out immediately for New France, where he would assume the government of the diocese. The Abbe de Saint-Vallier had not yet departed before he gave evidence of his munificence, and proved to the faithful of his future bishopric that he would be to them as generous a father as he whom he was about to replace. By deed of May 10th, 1685, he presented to the Seminary of Quebec a sum of forty-two thousand francs, to be used for the maintenance of missionaries; he bequeathed to it at the same time all the furniture, books, etc., which he should possess at his death. Laval's purpose was to remain for the present in France, where he would busy himself actively for the interests of Canada, but his fixed resolve was to go and end his days on that soil of New France which he loved so well. It was in 1688, only a few months after the official appointment of Saint-Vallier to the bishopric of Quebec, and his consecration on January 25th of the same year, that Laval returned to Canada.

M. de Saint-Vallier embarked at La Rochelle in the beginning of June, 1685, on the royal vessel which was carrying to Canada the new governor-general, M. de Denonville. The king having permitted him to take with him a score of persons, he made a most judicious choice: nine ecclesiastics, several school-masters and a few good workmen destined for the labours of the seminary, accompanied him. The voyage was long and very fatiguing. The passengers were, however, less tried than those of two other ships which followed them, on one of which more than five hundred soldiers had been crowded together. As might have been expected, sickness was not long in breaking out among them; more than one hundred and fifty of these unfortunates died, and their bodies were cast into the sea.

Immediately after his arrival the grand vicar visited all the religious establishments of the town, and he observed everywhere so much harmony and good spirit that he could not pass it over in silence. Speaking with admiration of the seminary, he said: "Every one in it devoted himself to spiritual meditation, with such blessed results that from the youngest cleric to the highest ecclesiastics in holy orders each one brought of his own accord all his personal possessions to be used in common. It seemed to me then that I saw revived in the Church of Canada something of that spirit of unworldliness which constituted one of the principal beauties of the budding Church of Jerusalem in the time of the apostles." The examples of brotherly unity and self-effacement which he admired so much in others he also set himself: he placed in the library of the seminary a magnificent collection of books which he had brought with him, and deposited in the coffers of the house several thousand francs in money, his personal property. Braving the rigours of the season, he set out in the winter of 1685 and visited the shore of Beaupre, the Island of Orleans, and then the north shore as far as Montreal. In the spring he took another direction, and inspected all the missions of Gaspesia and Acadia. He was so well satisfied with the condition of his diocese that he wrote to Mgr. de Laval: "All that I regret is that there is no more good for me to do in this Church."

In the spring of this same year, 1686, a valiant little troop was making a more warlike pastoral visit. To seventy robust Canadians, commanded by d'Iberville, de Sainte-Helene and de Maricourt, all sons of Charles Le Moyne, the governor had added thirty good soldiers under the orders of MM. de Troyes, Duchesnil and Catalogne, to take part in an expedition for the capture of Hudson Bay from the English. Setting out on snowshoes, dragging their provisions and equipment on toboggans, then advancing, sometimes on foot, sometimes in bark canoes, they penetrated by the Ottawa River and Temiskaming and Abitibi Lakes as far as James Bay. They did not brave so many dangers and trials without being resolved to conquer or die; accordingly, in spite of its twelve cannon, Fort Monsipi was quickly carried. The two forts, Rupert and Ste. Anne, suffered the same fate, and the only one that remained to the English, that named Fort Nelson, was preserved to them solely because its remote situation saved it. The head of the expedition, M. de Troyes, on his return to Quebec, rendered an account of his successes to M. de Denonville and to a new commissioner, M. de Champigny, who had just replaced M. de Meulles.

The bishop's infirmities left him scarcely any respite. "My health," he wrote to his successor, "is exceedingly good considering the bad use I make of it. It seems, however, that the wound which I had in my foot during five or six months at Quebec has been for the last three weeks threatening to re-open. The holy will of God be done!" And he added, in his firm resolution to pass his last days in Canada: "In any case, I feel that I have sufficient strength and health to return this year to the only place which now can give me peace and rest. In pace in idipsum dormiam et requiescam. Meanwhile, as we must have no other aim than the good pleasure of our Lord, whatever desire He gives me for this rest and peace, He grants me at the same time the favour of making Him a sacrifice of it in submitting myself to the opinion that you have expressed, that I should stay this year in France, to be present at your return next autumn." The bad state of his health did not prevent him from devoting his every moment to Canadian interests. He went into the most infinitesimal details of the administration of his diocese, so great was his solicitude for his work. "We must hasten this year, if possible," he wrote, "to labour at the re-establishment of the church of Ste. Anne du Petit-Cap, to which the whole country has such an attachment. We must work also to push forward the clearing of the lands of St. Joachim, in order that we may have the proper rotation crops on each farm, and that the farms may suffice for the needs of the seminary." In another letter he concerns himself with the sum of three thousand francs granted by the king each year for the marriage portion of a certain number of poor young girls marrying in Canada. "We should," says he, "distribute these moneys in parcels, fifty francs, or ten crowns, to the numerous poor families scattered along the shores, in which there is a large number of children." He practises this wise economy constantly when it is a question, not of his personal property, but of the funds of his seminary. He finds that his successor, whom the ten years which he had passed at court as king's almoner could not have trained in parsimony, allows himself to be carried away, by his zeal and his desire to do good, to a somewhat excessive expense. With what tact and delicacy he indulges in a discreet reproach! "Magna est fides tua," he writes to him, "and much greater than mine. We see that all our priests have responded to it with the same confidence and entire submission with which they have believed it their duty to meet your sentiments, in which they have my approval. My particular admiration has been aroused by seeing in all your letters and in all the impulses of your heart so great a reliance on the lovable Providence of God that not only has it permitted you not to have the least doubt that it would abundantly provide the wherewithal for the support of all the works which it has suggested to you, but that upon this basis, which is the firm truth, you have had the courage to proceed to the execution of them. It is true that my heart has long yearned for what you have accomplished; but I have never had sufficient confidence or reliance to undertake it. I always awaited the means quae pater posuit in sua potestate. I hope that, since the Most Holy Family of our Lord has suggested all these works to you, they will give you means and ways to maintain what is so much to the glory of God and the welfare of souls. But, according to all appearances, great difficulties will be found, which will only serve to increase this confidence and trust in God." And he ends with this prudent advice: "Whatever confidence God desires us to have in His providence, it is certain that He demands from us the observance of rules of prudence, not human and political, but Christian and just."

He concerns himself even with the servants, and it is singular to note that his mind, so apt to undertake and execute vast plans, possesses none the less an astonishing sagacity and accuracy of observation in petty details. One Valet, entrusted with the purveyance, had obtained permission to wear the cassock. "Unless he be much changed in his humour," writes Mgr. de Laval, "it would be well to send him back to France; and I may even opine that, whatever change might appear in him, he would be unfitted to administer a living, the basis of his character being very rustic, gross, and displeasing, and unsuitable for ecclesiastical functions, in which one is constantly obliged to converse and deal with one's neighbours, both children and adults. Having given him the cassock and having admitted him to the refectory, I hardly see any other means of getting rid of him than to send him back to France."

In his correspondence with Saint-Vallier, Laval gives an account of the various steps which he was taking at court to maintain the integrity of the diocese of Quebec. This was, for a short time, at stake. The Recollets, who had followed La Salle in his expeditions, were trying with some chance of success to have the valley of the Mississippi and Louisiana made an apostolic vicariate independent of Canada. Laval finally gained his cause; the jurisdiction of the bishopric of Quebec over all the countries of North America which belonged to France was maintained, and later the Seminary of Quebec sent missionaries to Louisiana and to the Mississippi.

But the most important questions, which formed the principal subject both of his preoccupations and of his letters, are that of the establishment of the Recollets in the Upper Town of Quebec, that of a plan for a permanent mission at Baie St. Paul, and above all, that of the tithes and the support of the priests. This last question brought about between him and Mgr. de Saint-Vallier a most complete conflict of views. Yet the differences of opinion between the two servants of God never prevented them from esteeming each other highly. The following letter does as much honour to him who wrote it as to him to whom such homage is rendered: "The noble house of Laval from which he sprang," writes Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, "the right of primogeniture which he renounced on entering upon the ecclesiastical career; the exemplary life which he led in France before there was any thought of raising him to the episcopacy; the assiduity with which he governed so long the Church in Canada; the constancy and firmness which he showed in surmounting all the obstacles which opposed on divers occasions the rectitude of his intentions and the welfare of his dear flock; the care which he took of the French colony and his efforts for the conversion of the savages; the expeditions which he undertook several times in the interests of both; the zeal which impelled him to return to France to seek a successor; his disinterestedness and the humility which he manifested in offering and in giving so willingly his frank resignation; finally, all the great virtues which I see him practise every day in the seminary where I sojourn with him, would well deserve here a most hearty eulogy, but his modesty imposes silence upon me, and the veneration in which he is held wherever he is known is praise more worthy than I could give him...."

Mgr. de Saint-Vallier left Quebec for France on November 18th, 1686, only a few days after a fire which consumed the Convent of the Ursulines; the poor nuns, who had not been able to snatch anything from the flames, had to accept, until the re-construction of their convent, the generous shelter offered them by the hospitable ladies of the Hotel-Dieu. Mgr. de Saint-Vallier did not disembark at the port of La Rochelle until forty-five days after his departure, for this voyage was one continuous storm.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] A right, belonging formerly to the kings of France, of enjoying the revenues of vacant bishoprics.



CHAPTER XV

MGR. DE LAVAL COMES FOR THE LAST TIME TO CANADA

Mgr. de Saint-Vallier received the most kindly welcome from the king: he availed himself of it to request some aid on behalf of the priests of the seminary whom age and infirmity condemned to retirement. He obtained it, and received, besides, fifteen thousand francs for the building of an episcopal palace. He decided, in fact, to withdraw from the seminary, in order to preserve complete independence in the exercise of his high duties. Laval learned with sorrow of this decision; he, who had always clung to the idea of union with his seminary and of having but one common fund with this house, beheld his successor adopt an opposite line of conduct. Another cause of division rose between the two prelates; the too great generosity of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier had brought the seminary into financial embarrassment. The Marquis de Seignelay, then minister, thought it wiser under such circumstances to postpone till later the return of Mgr. de Laval to Canada. The venerable bishop, whatever it must have cost him, adhered to this decision with a wholly Christian resignation. "You will know by the enclosed letters," he writes to the priests of the Seminary of Quebec, "what compels me to stay in France. I had no sooner received my sentence than our Lord granted me the favour of inspiring me to go before the most Holy Sacrament and make a sacrifice of all my desires and of that which is the dearest to me in the world. I began by making the amende honorable to the justice of God, who deigned to extend to me the mercy of recognizing that it was in just punishment of my sins and lack of faith that His providence deprived me of the blessing of returning to a place where I had so greatly offended; and I told Him, I think with a cheerful heart and a spirit of humility, what the high priest Eli said when Samuel declared to him from God what was to happen to him: 'Dominus est: quod bonum est in oculis suis faciat.' But since the will of our Lord does not reject a contrite and humble heart, and since He both abases and exalts, He gave me to know that the greatest favour He could grant me was to give me a share in the trials which He deigned to bear in His life and death for love of us; in thanksgiving for which I said a Te Deum with a heart filled with joy and consolation in my soul: for, as to the lower nature, it is left in the bitterness which it must bear. It is a hurt and a wound which will be difficult to heal and which apparently will last until my death, unless it please Divine Providence, which disposes of men's hearts as it pleases, to bring about some change in the condition of affairs. This will be when it pleases God, and as it may please Him, without His creatures being able to oppose it."

In Canada the return of the revered Mgr. de Laval was impatiently expected, and the governor, M. de Denonville, himself wrote that "in the present state of public affairs it was necessary that the former bishop should return, in order to influence men's minds, over which he had a great ascendency by reason of his character and his reputation for sanctity." Some persons wrongfully attributed to the influence of Saint-Vallier the order which detained the worthy bishop in France; on the contrary, Saint-Vallier had said one day to the minister, "It would be very hard for a bishop who has founded this church and who desires to go and die in its midst, to see himself detained in France. If Mgr. de Laval should stay here the blame would be cast upon his successor, against whom for this reason many people would be ill disposed."

M. de Denonville desired the more eagerly the return of this prelate so beloved in New France, since difficulties were arising on every hand. Convinced that peace with the Iroquois could not last, he began by amassing provisions and ammunition at Fort Cataraqui, without heeding the protests of Colonel Dongan, the most vigilant and most experienced enemy of French domination in America; then he busied himself with fortifying Montreal. He visited the place, appointed as its governor the Chevalier de Callieres, a former captain in the regiment of Navarre, and in the spring of 1687 employed six hundred men under the direction of M. du Luth, royal engineer, in the erection of a palisade. These wooden defences, as was to be expected, were not durable and demanded repairs every year. The year 1686, which had begun with the conquest of the southern portion of Hudson Bay, was spent almost entirely in preparations for war and negotiations for peace; the Iroquois, nevertheless, continued their inroads. Finally M. de Denonville, having received during the following spring eight hundred poor recruits under the command of Vaudreuil, was ready for his expedition. Part of these reinforcements were at once sent to Montreal, where M. de Callieres was gathering a body of troops on St. Helen's Island: eight hundred and thirty-two regulars, one thousand Canadians, and three hundred Indian allies, all burning with the desire of distinguishing themselves, awaited now only the signal for departure.

"With this superiority of forces," says one author, "Denonville conceived, however, the unfortunate idea of beginning hostilities by an act which dishonoured the French name among the savages, that name which, in spite of their great irritation, they had always feared and respected." With the purpose of striking terror into the Iroquois he caused to be seized the chiefs whom the Five Nations had sent as delegates to Cataraqui at the request of Father de Lamberville, and sent them to France to serve on board the royal galleys. This violation of the law of nations aroused the fury of the Iroquois, and two missionaries, Father Lamberville and Millet, though entirely innocent of this crime, escaped torture only with difficulty. The king disapproved wholly of this treason, and returned the prisoners to Canada; others who, at Fort Frontenac, had been taken by M. de Champigny in as treacherous a manner, were likewise restored to liberty.

The army, divided into four bodies, set out on June 11th, 1687, in four hundred boats. It was joined at Sand River, on the shore of Lake Ontario, by six hundred men from Detroit, and advanced inland. After having passed through two very dangerous defiles, the French were suddenly attacked by eight hundred of the enemy ambushed in the bed of a stream. At first surprised, they promptly recovered from their confusion, and put the savages to flight. Some sixty Iroquois were wounded in this encounter, and forty-five whom they left dead on the field of battle were eaten by the Ottawas, according to the horrible custom of these cannibals. They entered then into the territory of the Tsonnontouans, which was found deserted; everything had been reduced to ashes, except an immense quantity of maize, to which they set fire; they killed also a prodigious number of swine, but they did not meet with a single Indian.

Instead of pursuing the execution of these reprisals by marching against the other nations, M. de Denonville proceeded to Niagara, where he built a fort. The garrison of a hundred men which he left there succumbed in its entirety to a mysterious epidemic, probably caused by the poor quality of the provisions. Thus the campaign did not produce results proportionate to the preparations which had been made; it humbled the Iroquois, but by this very fact it excited their rage and desire for vengeance; so true is it that half-measures are more dangerous than complete inaction. They were, besides, cleverly goaded on by Governor Dongan. Towards the end of the summer they ravaged the whole western part of the colony, and carried their audacity to the point of burning houses and killing several persons on the Island of Montreal.

M. de Denonville understood that he could not carry out a second expedition; disease had caused great havoc among the population and the soldiers, and he could no longer count on the Hurons of Michilimackinac, who kept up secret relations with the Iroquois. He was willing to conclude peace, and consented to demolish Fort Niagara and to bring back the Iroquois chiefs who had been sent to France to row in the galleys. The conditions were already accepted on both sides, when the negotiations were suddenly interrupted by the duplicity of Kondiaronk, surnamed the Rat, chief of the Michilimackinac Hurons. This man, the most cunning and crafty of Indians, a race which has nothing to learn in point of astuteness from the shrewdest diplomat, had offered his services against the Iroquois to the governor, who had accepted them. Enkindled with the desire of distinguishing himself by some brilliant deed, he arrives with a troop of Hurons at Fort Frontenac, where he learns that a treaty is about to be concluded between the French and the Iroquois. Enraged at not having even been consulted in this matter, fearing to see the interests of his nation sacrificed, he lies in wait with his troop at Famine Creek, falls upon the delegates, and, killing a number of them, makes the rest prisoners. On the statement of the latter that they were going on an embassy to Ville-Marie, he feigns surprise, and is astonished that the French governor-general should have sent him to attack men who were going to treat with him. He then sets them at liberty, keeping a single one of them, whom he hastens to deliver to M. de Durantaye, governor of Michilimackinac; the latter, ignorant of the negotiations with the Iroquois, has the prisoner shot in spite of the protestations of the wretched man, who the Rat pretends is mad. The plan of the Huron chief has succeeded; it remains now only to reap the fruits of it. He frees an old Iroquois who has long been detained in captivity and sends him to announce to his compatriots that the French are seeking in the negotiations a cowardly means of ridding themselves of their foes. This news exasperated the Five Nations; henceforth peace was impossible, and the Iroquois went to join the English, with whom, on the pretext of the dethronement of James II, war was again about to break out. M. de Callieres, governor of Montreal, set out for France to lay before the king a plan for the conquest of New York; the monarch adopted it, but, not daring to trust its execution to M. de Denonville, he recalled him in order to entrust it to Count de Frontenac, now again appointed governor.

We can easily conceive that in the danger thus threatening the colony M. de Denonville should have taken pains to surround himself with all the men whose aid might be valuable to him. "You will have this year," wrote M. de Brisacier to M. Glandelet, "the joy of seeing again our two prelates. You will find the first more holy and more than ever dead to himself; and the second will appear to you all that you can desire him to be for the particular consolation of the seminary and the good of New France." On the request of the governor-general, in fact, Mgr. de Laval saw the obstacle disappear which had opposed his departure, and he hastened to take advantage of it. He set out in the spring of 1688, at that period of the year when vegetation begins to display on all sides its festoons of verdure and flowers, and transforms Normandy and Touraine, that garden of France, into genuine groves; the calm of the air, the perfumed breezes of the south, the arrival of the southern birds with their rich and varied plumage, all contribute to make these days the fairest and sweetest of the year; but, in his desire to reach as soon as possible the country where his presence was deemed necessary, the venerable prelate did not wait for the spring sun to dry the roads soaked by the rains of winter; accordingly, in spite of his infirmities, he was obliged to travel to La Rochelle on horseback. However, he could not embark on the ship Le Soleil d'Afrique until about the middle of April.

His duties as Bishop of Quebec had ended on January 25th preceding, the day of the episcopal consecration of M. de Saint-Vallier. It would seem that Providence desired that the priestly career of the prelate and his last co-workers should end at the same time. Three priests of the Seminary of Quebec went to receive in heaven almost at the same period the reward of their apostolic labours. M. Thomas Morel died on September 23rd, 1687; M. Jean Guyon on January 10th, 1688; and M. Dudouyt on the fifteenth of the same month. This last loss, especially, caused deep grief to Mgr. de Laval. He desired that the heart of the devoted missionary should rest in that soil of New France for which it had always beat, and he brought it with him. The ceremony of the burial at Quebec of the heart of M. Dudouyt was extremely touching; the whole population was present. Up to his latest day this priest had taken the greatest interest in Canada, and the letter which he wrote to the seminary a few days before his death breathes the most ardent charity; it particularly enjoined upon all patience and submission to authority.

The last official document signed by Mgr. de Laval as titulary bishop was an addition to the statutes and rules which he had previously drawn up for the Chapter of the city of Champlain. He wrote at the same time: "It remains for me now, sirs and dearly beloved brethren, only to thank you for the good affection that you preserve towards me, and to assure you that it will not be my fault if I do not go at the earliest moment to rejoin you in the growing Church which I have ever cherished as the portion and heritage which it has pleased our Lord to preserve for me during nearly thirty years. I supplicate His infinite goodness that he into whose hands He has caused it to pass by my resignation may repair all my faults."

The prelate landed on June 3rd. "The whole population," says the Abbe Ferland, "was heartened and rejoiced by the return of Mgr. de Laval, who came back to Canada to end his days among his former flock. His virtues, his long and arduous labours in New France, his sincere love for the children of the country, had endeared him to the Canadians; they felt their trust in Providence renewed on beholding again him who, with them, at their head, had passed through many years of trial and suffering." He hardly took time to rest, but set out at once for Montreal, where he was anxious to deliver in person to the Sulpicians the document of spiritual and devotional union which had been quite recently signed at Paris by the Seminary of St. Sulpice and by that of the Foreign Missions. Returning to Quebec, he had the pleasure of receiving his successor on the arrival of the latter, who disembarked on July 31st, 1688.

The reception of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier was as cordial as that offered two months before to his predecessor. "As early as four o'clock in the morning," we read in the annals of the Ursulines, "the whole population was alert to hasten preparations. Some arranged the avenue along which the new bishop was to pass, others raised here and there the standard of the lilies of France. In the course of the morning Mgr. de Laval, accompanied by several priests, betook himself to the vessel to salute his successor whom the laws of the old French etiquette kept on board his ship until he had replied to all the compliments prepared for him. Finally, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole clergy, the civil and military authorities, and the people having assembled on the quay, Mgr. de Saint-Vallier made his appearance, addressed first by M. de Bernieres in the name of the clergy. He was next greeted by the mayor, in the name of the whole town, then the procession began to move, with military music at its head, and the new bishop was conducted to the cathedral between two files of musketeers, who did not fail to salute him and to fire volleys along the route." "The thanksgiving hymn which re-echoed under the vaults of the holy temple found an echo in all hearts," we read in another account; "and the least happy was not that of the worthy prelate who thus inaugurated his long and laborious episcopal career."



CHAPTER XVI

MASSACRE OF LACHINE

The virtue of Mgr. de Laval lacked the supreme consecration of misfortune. A wearied but triumphant soldier, the venerable shepherd of souls, coming back to dwell in the bishopric of Quebec, the witness of his first apostolic labours, gave himself into the hands of his Master to disappear and die. "Lord," he said with Simeon, "now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word." But many griefs still remained to test his resignation to the Divine Will, and the most shocking disaster mentioned in our annals was to sadden his last days. The year 1688 had passed peacefully enough for the colony, but it was only the calm which is the forerunner of the storm. The Five Nations employed their time in secret organization; the French, lulled in this deceptive security, particularly by news which had come from M. de Valrennes, in command of Fort Frontenac, to whom the Iroquois had declared that they were coming down to Montreal to make peace, had left the forts to return to their dwellings and to busy themselves with the work of the fields. Moreover, the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, who commanded at Montreal in the absence of M. de Callieres, who had gone to France, carried his lack of foresight to the extent of permitting the officers stationed in the country to leave their posts. It is astonishing to note such imprudent neglect on the part of men who must have known the savage nature. Rancour is the most deeply-rooted defect in the Indian, and it was madness to think that the Iroquois could have forgotten so soon the insult inflicted on their arms by the expedition of M. de Denonville, or the breach made in their independence by the abduction of their chiefs sent to France as convicts. The warning of their approaching incursion had meanwhile reached Quebec through a savage named Ataviata; unfortunately, the Jesuit Fathers had no confidence in this Indian; they assured the governor-general that Ataviata was a worthless fellow, and M. de Denonville made the mistake of listening too readily to these prejudices and of not at least redoubling his precautions.

It was on the night between August 4th and 5th, 1689; all was quiet on the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the elements were unchained, the rain and hail were raging. As daring as the Normans when they braved on frail vessels the fury of the seas, the Iroquois, to the number of fifteen hundred, profited by the storm to traverse Lake St. Louis in their bark canoes, and landed silently on the shore at Lachine. They took care not to approach the forts; the darkness was so thick that the soldiers discovered nothing unusual and did not fire the cannon as was the custom on the approach of the enemy. Long before daybreak the savages, divided into a number of squads, had surrounded the houses within a radius of several miles. Suddenly a piercing signal is given by the chiefs, and at once a horrible clamour rends the air; the terrifying war-cry of the Iroquois has roused the sleepers and raised the hair on the heads of the bravest. The colonists leap from their couches, but they have no time to seize their weapons; demons who seem to be vomited forth by hell have already broken in the doors and windows. The dwellings which the Iroquois cannot penetrate are delivered over to the flames, but the unhappy ones who issue from them in confusion to escape the tortures of the fire are about to be abandoned to still more horrible torments. The pen refuses to describe the horrors of this night, and the imagination of Dante can hardly in his "Inferno" give us an idea of it. The butchers killed the cattle, burned the houses, impaled women, compelled fathers to cast their children into the flames, spitted other little ones still alive and compelled their mothers to roast them. Everything was burned and pillaged except the forts, which were not attacked; two hundred persons of all ages and of both sexes perished under torture, and about fifty, carried away to the villages, were bound to the stake and burned by a slow fire. Nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants were able to escape, thanks to the strong liquors kept in some of the houses, with which the savages made ample acquaintance. Some of the colonists took refuge in the forts, others were pursued into the woods.

Meanwhile the alarm had spread in Ville-Marie. M. de Denonville, who was there, gives to the Chevalier de Vaudreuil the order to occupy Fort Roland with his troops and a hundred volunteers. De Vaudreuil hastens thither, accompanied by de Subercase and other officers; they are all eager to measure their strength with the enemy, but the order of Denonville is strict, they must remain on the defensive and run no risk. By dint of insistence, Subercase obtained permission to make a sortie with a hundred volunteers; at the moment when he was about to set out he had to yield the command to M. de Saint-Jean, who was higher in rank. The little troop went and entrenched itself among the debris of a burned house and exchanged an ineffectual fire with the savages ambushed in a clump of trees. They soon perceived a party of French and friendly Indians who, coming from Fort Remy, were proceeding towards them in great danger of being surrounded by the Iroquois, who were already sobered. The volunteers wished to rush out to meet this reinforcement, but their commander, adhering to his instructions, which forbade him to push on farther, restrained them. What might have been foreseen happened: the detachment from Fort Remy was exterminated. Five of its officers were taken and carried off towards the Iroquois villages, but succeeded in escaping on the way, except M. de la Rabeyre, who was bound to the stake and perished in torture.

On reading these details one cannot understand the inactivity of the French: it would seem that the authorities had lost their heads. We cannot otherwise explain the lack of foresight of the officers absent from their posts, the pusillanimous orders of the governor to M. de Vaudreuil, his imprudence in sending too weak a troop through the dangerous places, the lack of initiative on the part of M. de Saint-Jean, finally, the absolute lack of energy and audacity, the complete absence of that ardour which is inherent in the French character.

After this disaster the troops returned to the forts, and the surrounding district, abandoned thus to the fury of the barbarians, was ravaged in all directions. The Iroquois, proud of the terror which they inspired, threatened the city itself; we note by the records of Montreal that on August 25th there were buried two soldiers killed by the savages, and that on September 7th following, Jean Beaudry suffered the same fate. Finding nothing more to pillage or to burn, they passed to the opposite shore, and plundered the village of Lachesnaie. They massacred a portion of the population, which was composed of seventy-two persons, and carried off the rest. They did not withdraw until the autumn, dragging after them two hundred captives, including fifty prisoners taken at Lachine.

This terrible event, which had taken place at no great distance from them, and the news of which re-echoed in their midst, struck the inhabitants of Quebec with grief and terror. Mgr. de Laval was cruelly affected by it, but, accustomed to adore in everything the designs of God, he seized the occasion to invoke Him with more fervour; he immediately ordered in his seminary public prayers to implore the mercy of the Most High. M. de Frontenac, who was about to begin his second administration, learned the sinister news on his arrival at Quebec on October 15th. He set out immediately for Montreal, which he reached on the twenty-seventh of the same month. He visited the environments, and found only ruins and ashes where formerly rose luxurious dwellings.

War had just been rekindled between France and Great Britain. The governor had not men enough for vast operations, accordingly he prepared to organize a guerilla warfare. While the Abenaquis, those faithful allies, destroyed the settlements of the English in Acadia and killed nearly two hundred persons there, Count de Frontenac sent in the winter of 1689-90, three detachments against New England; all three were composed of only a handful of men, but these warriors were well seasoned. In the rigorous cold of winter, traversing innumerable miles on their snowshoes, sinking sometimes into the icy water, sleeping in the snow, carrying their supplies on their backs, they surprised the forts which they went to attack, where one would never have believed that men could execute so rash an enterprise. Thus the three detachments were alike successful, and the forts of Corlaer in the state of New York, of Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, and of Casco on the seaboard, were razed.

The English avenged these reverses by capturing Port Royal. Encouraged by this success, they sent Phipps at the head of a large troop to seize Quebec, while Winthrop attacked Montreal with three thousand men, a large number of whom were Indians. Frontenac hastened to Quebec with M. de Callieres, governor of Montreal, the militia and the regular troops. Already the fortifications had been protected against surprise by new and well-arranged entrenchments. The hostile fleet appeared on October 16th, 1690, and Phipps sent an officer to summon the governor to surrender the place. The envoy, drawing out his watch, declared with arrogance to the Count de Frontenac that he would give him an hour to decide. "I will answer you by the mouth of my cannon," replied the representative of Louis XIV. The cannon replied so well that at the first shot the admiral's flag fell into the water; the Canadians, braving the balls and bullets which rained about them, swam out to get it, and this trophy remained hanging in the cathedral of Quebec until the conquest. The Histoire de l'Hotel-Dieu de Quebec depicts for us very simply the courage and piety of the inhabitants during this siege. "The most admirable thing, and one which surely drew the blessing of Heaven upon Quebec was that during the whole siege no public devotion was interrupted. The city is arranged so that the roads which lead to the churches are seen from the harbour; thus several times a day were beheld processions of men and women going to answer the summons of the bells. The English noticed them; they called M. de Grandeville (a brave Canadian, and clerk of the farm of Tadousac, whom they had made prisoner) and asked him what it was. He answered them simply: 'It is mass, vespers, and the benediction.' By this assurance the citizens of Quebec disconcerted them; they were astonished that women dared to go out; they judged by this that we were very easy in our minds, though this was far from being the case."

It is not surprising that the colonists should have fought valiantly when their bishops and clergy set the example of devotion, when the Jesuits remained constantly among the defenders to encourage and assist on occasion the militia and the soldiers, when Mgr. de Laval, though withdrawn from the conduct of religious affairs, without even the right of sitting in the Sovereign Council, animated the population by his patriotic exhortations. To prove to the inhabitants that the cause which they defended by struggling for their homes was just and holy, at the same time as to place the cathedral under the protection of Heaven, he suggested the idea of hanging on the spire of the cathedral a picture of the Holy Family. This picture was not touched by the balls and bullets, and was restored after the siege to the Ursulines, to whom it belonged.

All the attempts of the English failed; in a fierce combat at Beauport they were repulsed. There perished the brave Le Moyne de Sainte-Helene; there, too, forty pupils of the seminary established at St. Joachim by Mgr. de Laval distinguished themselves by their bravery and contributed to the victory. Already Phipps had lost six hundred men. He decided to retreat. To cap the climax of misfortune, his fleet met in the lower part of the river with a horrible storm; several of his ships were driven by the winds as far as the Antilles, and the rest arrived only with great difficulty at Boston. Winthrop's army, disorganized by disease and discord, had already scattered.

A famine which followed the siege tried the whole colony, and Laval had to suffer by it as well as the seminary, for neither had hesitated before the sacrifices necessary for the general weal. "All the furs and furniture of the Lower Town were in the seminary," wrote the prelate; "a number of families had taken refuge there, even that of the intendant. This house could not refuse in such need all the sacrifices of charity which were possible, at the expense of a great portion of the provisions which were kept there. The soldiers and others have taken and consumed at least one hundred cords of wood and more than fifteen hundred planks. In brief, in cattle and other damages the loss to the seminary will amount to a round thousand crowns. But we must on occasions of this sort be patient, and do all the good we can without regard to future need."

The English were about to suffer still other reverses. In 1691 Major Schuyler, with a small army composed in part of savages, came and surprised below the fort of the Prairie de la Madeleine a camp of between seven and eight hundred soldiers, whose leader, M. de Saint-Cirque, was slain; but the French, recovering, forced the major to retreat, and M. de Valrennes, who hastened up from Chambly with a body of inhabitants and Indians, put the enemy to flight after a fierce struggle. The English failed also in Newfoundland; they were unable to carry Fort Plaisance, which was defended by M. de Brouillan; but he who was to do them most harm was the famous Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, son of Charles Le Moyne. Born in Montreal in 1661, he subsequently entered the French navy. In the year 1696 he was ordered to drive the enemy out of Newfoundland; he seized the capital, St. John's, which he burned, and, marvellous to relate, with only a hundred and twenty-five men he subdued the whole island, slew nearly two hundred of the English, and took six or seven hundred prisoners. The following year he set out with five ships to take possession of Hudson Bay. One day his vessel found itself alone before Fort Nelson, facing three large ships of the enemy; to the amazement of the English, instead of surrendering, d'Iberville rushes upon them. In a fierce fight lasting four hours, he sinks the strongest, compels the second to surrender, while the third flees under full sail. Fort Bourbon surrendered almost at once, and Hudson Bay was captured.

After the peace d'Iberville explored the mouths of the Mississippi, erected several forts, founded the city of Mobile, and became the first governor of Louisiana. When the war began again, the king gave him a fleet of sixteen vessels to oppose the English in the Indies. He died of an attack of fever in 1706.

During this time, the Iroquois were as dangerous to the French by their inroads and devastations as the Abenaquis were to the English colonies; accordingly Frontenac wished to subdue them. In the summer of 1696, braving the fatigue and privations so hard to bear for a man of his age, Frontenac set out from Ile Perrot with more than two thousand men, and landed at the mouth of the Oswego River. He found at Onondaga only the smoking remains of the village to which the savages had themselves set fire, and the corpses of two Frenchmen who had died in torture. He marched next against the Oneidas; all had fled at his approach, and he had to be satisfied with laying waste their country. There remained three of the Five Nations to punish, but winter was coming on and Frontenac did not wish to proceed further into the midst of invisible enemies, so he returned to Quebec.

The following year it was learned that the Treaty of Ryswick had just been concluded between France and England. France kept Hudson Bay, but Louis XIV pledged himself to recognize William III as King of England. The Count de Frontenac had not the good fortune of crowning his brilliant career by a treaty with the savages; he died on November 28th, 1698, at the age of seventy-eight years. In reaching this age without exceeding it, he presented a new point of resemblance to his model, Louis the Great, according to whom he always endeavoured to shape his conduct, and who was destined to die at the age of seventy-seven.

[Note.—The incident of the flag mentioned above on page 230 is treated at greater length in Dr. Le Sueur's Frontenac, pp. 295-8, in the "Makers of Canada" series. He takes a somewhat different view of the event.—Ed.]



CHAPTER XVII

THE LABOURS OF OLD AGE

The peace lasted only four years. M. de Callieres, who succeeded Count de Frontenac, was able, thanks to his prudence and the devotion of the missionaries, to gather at Montreal more than twelve hundred Indian chiefs or warriors, and to conclude peace with almost all the tribes. Chief Kondiaronk had become a faithful friend of the French; it was to his good-will and influence that they were indebted for the friendship of a large number of Indian tribes. He died at Montreal during these peaceful festivities and was buried with pomp.

The war was about to break out anew, in 1701, with Great Britain and the other nations of Europe, because Louis XIV had accepted for his grandson and successor the throne of Spain. M. de Callieres died at this juncture; his successor, Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, brought the greatest energy to the support in Canada of a struggle which was to end in the dismemberment of the colony. God permitted Mgr. de Laval to die before the Treaty of Utrecht, whose conditions would have torn the patriotic heart of the venerable prelate.

Other reasons for sorrow he did not lack, especially when Mgr. de Saint-Vallier succeeded, on his visit to the king in 1691, in obtaining a reversal of the policy marked out for the seminary by the first bishop of the colony; this establishment would be in the future only a seminary like any other, and would have no other mission than that of the training of priests. By a decree of the council of February 2nd, 1692, the number of the directors of the seminary was reduced to five, who were to concern themselves principally with the training of young men who might have a vocation for the ecclesiastical life; they might also devote themselves to missions, with the consent of the bishop. No ecclesiastic had the right of becoming an associate of the seminary without the permission of the bishop, within whose province it was to employ the former associates for the service of his diocese with the consent of the superiors. The last part of the decree provided that the four thousand francs given by the king for the diocese of Quebec should be distributed in equal portions, one for the seminary and the two others for the priests and the church buildings. As to the permanence of priests, the decree issued by the king for the whole kingdom was to be adhered to in Canada. In the course of the same year Mgr. de Saint-Vallier obtained, moreover, from the sovereign the authority to open at Quebec in Notre-Dame des Anges, the former convent of the Recollets, a general hospital for the poor, which was entrusted to the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu. The poor who might be admitted to it would be employed at work proportionate to their strength, and more particularly in the tilling of the farms belonging to the establishment. If we remember that Mgr. de Laval had consecrated twenty years of his life to giving his seminary, by a perfect union between its members and his whole clergy, a formidable power in the colony, a power which in his opinion could be used only for the good of the Church and in the public interest, and that he now saw his efforts annihilated forever, we cannot help admiring the resignation with which he managed to accept this destruction of his dearest work. And not only did he bow before the impenetrable designs of Providence, but he even used his efforts to pacify those around him whose excitable temperaments might have brought about conflicts with the authorities. The Abbe Gosselin quotes in this connection the following example: "A priest, M. de Francheville, thought he had cause for complaint at the behaviour of his bishop towards him, and wrote him a letter in no measured terms, but he had the good sense to submit it previously to Mgr. de Laval, whom he regarded as his father. The aged bishop expunged from this letter all that might wound Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, and it was sent with the corrections which he desired." The venerable prelate did not content himself with avoiding all that might cause difficulties to his successor; he gave him his whole aid in any circumstances, and in particular in the foundation of a convent of Ursulines at Three Rivers, and when the general hospital was threatened in its very existence. "Was it not a spectacle worthy of the admiration of men and angels," exclaims the Abbe Fornel in his funeral oration on Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, "to see the first Bishop of Quebec and his successor vieing one with the other in a noble rivalry and in a struggle of religious fervour for the victory in exercises of piety? Have they not both been seen harmonizing and reconciling together the duties of seminarists and canons; of canons by their assiduity in the recitation of the breviary, and of seminarists in condescending to the lowest duties, such as sweeping and serving in the kitchen?" The patience and trust in God of Mgr. de Laval were rewarded by the following letter which he received from Father La Chaise, confessor to King Louis XIV: "I have received with much respect and gratitude two letters with which you have honoured me. I have blessed God that He has preserved you for His glory and the good of the Church in Canada in a period of deadly mortality; and I pray every day that He may preserve you some years more for His service and the consolation of your old friends and servants. I hope that you will maintain towards them to the end your good favour and interest, and that those who would wish to make them lose these may be unable to alter them. You will easily judge how greatly I desire that our Fathers may merit the continuation of your kindness, and may preserve a perfect union with the priests of your seminary, by the sacrifice which I desire they should make to the latter, in consideration of you, of the post of Tamarois, in spite of all the reasons and the facility for preserving it to them...."

The mortality to which the reverend father alludes was the result of an epidemic which carried off, in 1700, a great number of persons. Old men in particular were stricken, and M. de Bernieres among others fell a victim to the scourge. It is very probable that this affliction was nothing less than the notorious influenza which, in these later years, has cut down so many valuable lives throughout the world. The following years were still more terrible for the town; smallpox carried off one-fourth of the population of Quebec. If we add to these trials the disaster of the two conflagrations which consumed the seminary, we shall have the measure of the troubles which at this period overwhelmed the city of Champlain. The seminary, begun in 1678, had just been barely completed. It was a vast edifice of stone, of grandiose appearance; a sun dial was set above a majestic door of two leaves, the approach to which was a fine stairway of cut stone. "The building," wrote Frontenac in 1679, "is very large and has four storeys, the walls are seven feet thick, the cellars and pantries are vaulted, the lower windows have embrasures, and the roof is of slate brought from France." On November 15th, 1701, the priests of the seminary had taken their pupils to St. Michel, near Sillery, to a country house which belonged to them. About one in the afternoon fire broke out in the seminary buildings. The inhabitants hastened up from all directions to the spot and attempted with the greatest energy to stay the progress of the flames. Idle efforts! The larger and the smaller seminary, the priests' house, the chapel barely completed, were all consumed, with the exception of some furniture and a little plate and tapestry. The cathedral was saved, thanks to the efforts of the state engineer, M. Levasseur de Nere, who succeeded in cutting off the communication of the sacred temple with the buildings in flames. Mgr. de Laval, confined then to a bed of pain, avoided death by escaping half-clad; he accepted for a few days, together with the priests of the seminary, the generous hospitality offered them by the Jesuit Fathers. In order not to be too long a burden to their hosts, they caused to be prepared for their lodgment the episcopal palace which had been begun by Mgr. de Saint-Vallier. They removed there on December 4th following. The scholars had been divided between the episcopal palace and the house of the Jesuits. "The prelate," says Sister Juchereau, "bore this affliction with perfect submission to the will of God, without uttering any complaint. It must have been, however, the more grievous to him since it was he who had planned and erected the seminary, since he was its father and founder, and since he saw ruined in one day the fruit of his labour of many years." Thanks to the generosity of the king, who granted aid to the extent of four thousand francs, it was possible to begin rebuilding at once. But the trials of the priests were not yet over. "On the first day of October, 1705," relate the annals of the Ursulines, "the priests of the seminary were afflicted by a second fire through the fault of a carpenter who was preparing some boards in one end of the new building. While smoking he let fall in a room full of shavings some sparks from his pipe. The fire being kindled, it consumed in less than an hour all the upper storeys. Only those which were vaulted were preserved. The priests estimate that they have lost more in this second fire than in the first. They are lodged below, waiting till Providence furnishes them with the means to restore their building. The Jesuit Fathers have acted this time with the same charity and cordiality as on the former occasion. Mgr. L'Ancien[10] and M. Petit have lived nearly two months in their infirmary. This rest has been very profitable to Monseigneur, for he has come forth from it quite rejuvenated. May the Lord grant that he be preserved a long time yet for the glory of God and the good of Canada!"

When Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem to raise it from its ruins, a great grief seized upon him at the sight of the roofs destroyed, the broken doors, the shattered ramparts of the city of David. In the middle of the night he made the circuit of these ruins, and on the morrow he sought the magistrates and said to them: "You see the distress that we are in? Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem." The same feelings no doubt oppressed the soul of the octogenarian prelate when he saw the walls cracked and blackened, the heaps of ruins, sole remnants of his beloved house. But like Nehemiah he had the support of a great King, and the confidence of succeeding. He set to work at once, and found in the generosity of his flock the means to raise the seminary from its ruins. While he found provisional lodgings for his seminarists, he himself took up quarters in a part of the seminary which had been spared by the flames; he arranged, adjoining his room, a little oratory where he kept the Holy Sacrament, and celebrated mass. There he passed his last days and gave up his fair soul to God.

Mgr. de Saint-Vallier had not like his predecessor the sorrow of seeing fire consume his seminary; he had set out in 1700 for France, and the differences which existed between the two prelates led the monarch to retain Mgr. de Saint-Vallier near him. In 1705 the Bishop of Quebec obtained permission to return to his diocese. But for three years hostilities had already existed between France and England. The bishop embarked with several monks on the Seine, a vessel of the Royal Navy. This ship carried a rich cargo valued at nearly a million francs, and was to escort several merchant ships to their destination at Quebec. The convoy fell in, on July 26th, with an English fleet which gave chase to it; the merchant ships fled at full sail, abandoning the Seine to its fate. The commander, M. de Meaupou, displayed the greatest valour, but his vessel, having a leeward position, was at a disadvantage; besides, he had committed the imprudence of so loading the deck with merchandise that several cannon could not be used. In spite of her heroic defence, the Seine was captured by boarding, the commander and the officers were taken prisoners, and Mgr. de Saint-Vallier remained in captivity in England till 1710.

The purpose of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier's journey to Europe in 1700 had been his desire to have ratified at Rome by the Holy See the canonical union of his abbeys, and the union of the parish of Quebec with the seminary. On setting out he had entrusted the administration of the diocese to MM. Maizerets and Glandelet; as to ordinations, to the administration of the sacrament of confirmation, and to the consecration of the holy oils, Mgr. de Laval would be always there, ready to lavish his zeal and the treasures of his charity. This long absence of the chief of the diocese could not but impose new labours on Mgr. de Laval. Never did he refuse a sacrifice or a duty, and he saw in this an opportunity to increase the sum of good which he intended soon to lay at the foot of the throne of the Most High. He was seventy-nine years of age when, in spite of the havoc then wrought by the smallpox throughout the country, he went as far as Montreal, there to administer the sacrament of confirmation. Two years before his death, he officiated pontifically on Easter Day in the cathedral of Quebec. "On the festival of Sainte Magdalene," say the annals of the general hospital, "we have had the consolation of seeing Mgr. de Laval officiate pontifically morning and evening.... He was accompanied by numerous clergy both from the seminary and from neighbouring missions.... We regarded this favour as a mark of the affection cherished by this holy prelate for our establishment, for he was never wont to officiate outside the cathedral, and even there but rarely on account of his great age. He was then more than eighty years old. The presence of a person so venerable by reason of his character, his virtues, and his great age much enhanced this festival. He gave the nuns a special proof of his good-will in the visit which he deigned to make them in the common hall." The predilection which the pious pontiff constantly preserved for the work of the seminary no whit lessened the protection which he generously granted to all the projects of education in the colony; the daughters of Mother Mary of the Incarnation as well as the assistants of Mother Marguerite Bourgeoys had claims upon his affection. He fostered with all his power the establishment of the Sisters of the Congregation, both at Three Rivers and at Quebec. His numerous works left him but little respite, and this he spent at his school of St. Joachim in the refreshment of quiet and rest. Like all holy men he loved youth, and took pleasure in teaching and directing it. Accordingly, during these years when, in spite of the sixteen lustra which had passed over his venerable head, he had to take upon himself during the long absence of his successor the interim duties of the diocese, at least as far as the exclusively episcopal functions were concerned, he learned to understand and appreciate at their true value the sacrifices of the Charron Brothers, whose work was unfortunately to remain fruitless.

In 1688 three pious laymen, MM. Jean Francois Charron, Pierre Le Ber, and Jean Fredin had established in Montreal a house with a double purpose of charity: to care for the poor and the sick, and to train men and send them to open schools in the country districts. Their plan was approved by the king, sanctioned by the bishop of the diocese, encouraged by the seigneurs of the island, and welcomed by all the citizens with gratitude. In spite of these symptoms of future prosperity the work languished, and the members of the community were separated and scattered one after the other. M. Charron did not lose courage. In 1692 he devoted his large fortune to the foundation of a hospital and a school, and received numerous gifts from charitable persons. Six hospitallers of the order of St. Joseph of the Cross, commonly called Freres Charron, took the gown in 1701, and pronounced their vows in 1704, but the following year they ceased to receive novices. The minister, M. de Pontchartrain, thought "the care of the sick is a task better adapted to women than to men, notwithstanding the spirit of charity which may animate the latter," and he forbade the wearing of the costume adopted by the hospitallers. Francois Charron, seeing his work nullified, yielded to the inevitable, and confined himself to the training of teachers for country parishes. The existence of this establishment, abandoned by the mother country to its own strength, was to become more and more precarious and feeble. Almost all the hospitallers left the institution to re-enter the world; the care of the sick was entrusted to the Sisters. Francois Charron made a journey to France in order to obtain the union for the purposes of the hospital of the Brothers of St. Joseph with the Society of St. Sulpice, but he failed in his efforts. He obtained, nevertheless, from the regent an annual subvention of three thousand francs for the training of school-masters (1718). He busied himself at once with finding fitting recruits, and collected eight. The elder sister of our excellent normal schools of the present day seemed then established on solid foundations, but it was not to be so. Brother Charron died on the return voyage, and his institution, though seconded by the Seminary of St. Sulpice, after establishing Brothers in several villages in the environs of Montreal, received from the court a blow from which it did not recover: the regent forbade the masters to assume a uniform dress and to pledge themselves by simple vows. The number of the hospitallers decreased from year to year, and in 1731 the royal government withdrew from them the annual subvention which supported them, however poorly. Finally their institution, after vainly attempting to unite with the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, ceased to exist in 1745.

Mgr. de Laval so greatly admired the devotion of these worthy men that he exclaimed one day: "Let me die in the house of these Brothers; it is a work plainly inspired by God. I shall die content if only in dying I may contribute something to the shaping or maintenance of this establishment." Again he wrote: "The good M. Charron gave us last year one of their Brothers, who rendered great service to the Mississippi Mission, and he has furnished us another this year. These acquisitions will spare the missionaries much labour.... I beg you to show full gratitude to this worthy servant of God, who is as affectionately inclined to the missions and missionaries as if he belonged to our body. We have even the plan, as well as he, of forming later a community of their Brothers to aid the missions and accompany the missionaries on their journeys. He goes to France and as far as Paris to find and bring back with him some good recruits to aid him in forming a community. Render him all the services you can, as if it were to missionaries themselves. He is a true servant of God." Such testimony is the fairest title to glory for an institution.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] A respectfully familiar sobriquet given to Mgr. de Laval.



CHAPTER XVIII

LAST YEARS OF MGR. DE LAVAL

Illness had obliged Mgr. de Laval to hand in his resignation. He wrote, in fact, at this period of his life to M. de Denonville: "I have been for the last two years subject to attacks of vertigo accompanied by heart troubles which are very frequent and increase markedly. I have had one quite recently, on the Monday of the Passion, which seized me at three o'clock in the morning, and I could not raise my head from my bed." His infirmities, which he bore to the end with admirable resignation, especially affected his limbs, which he was obliged to bandage tightly every morning, and which could scarcely bear the weight of his body. To disperse the unwholesome humours, his arm had been cauterized; to cut, carve and hack the poor flesh of humanity formed, as we know, the basis of the scientific and medical equipment of the period. These sufferings, which he brought as a sacrifice to our Divine Master, were not sufficient for him; he continued in spite of them to wear upon his body a coarse hair shirt. He had to serve him only one of those Brothers who devoted their labour to the seminary in exchange for their living and a place at table. This modest servant, named Houssart, had replaced a certain Lemaire, of whom the prelate draws a very interesting portrait in one of his letters: "We must economize," he wrote to the priests of the seminary, "and have only watchful and industrious domestics. We must look after them, else they deteriorate in the seminary. You have the example of the baker, Louis Lemaire, an idler, a gossip, a tattler, a man who, instead of walking behind the coach, would not go unless Monseigneur paid for a carriage for him to follow him to La Rochelle, and lent him his dressing-gown to protect him from the cold. Formerly he worked well at heavy labour at Cap Tourmente; idleness has ruined him in the seminary. As soon as he had reached my room, he behaved like a man worn out, always complaining, coming to help me to bed only when the fancy took him; always extremely vain, thinking he was not dressed according to his position, although he was clad, as you know, more like a nobleman than a peasant, which he was, for I had taken him as a beggar and almost naked at La Rochelle.... As soon as he entered my room he sat down, and rather than be obliged to pretend to see him, I turned my seat so as not to see him.... We should have left that man at heavy work, which had in some sort conquered his folly and pride, and it is possible that he might have been saved. But he has been entirely ruined in the seminary...." This humorous description proves to us well that even in the good old days not all domestics were perfect.

The affectionate and respectful care given by Houssart to his master was such as is not bought with money. Most devoted to the prelate, he has left us a very edifying relation of the life of the venerable bishop, with some touching details. He wrote after his death: "Having had the honour of being continually attached to the service of his Lordship during the last twenty years of his holy life, and his Lordship having had during all that time a great charity towards me and great confidence in my care, you cannot doubt that I contracted a great sympathy, interest and particular attachment for his Lordship." In another letter he speaks to us of the submission of the venerable bishop to the commands of the Church. "He did his best," he writes, "notwithstanding his great age and continual infirmities, to observe all days of abstinence and fasting, both those which are commanded by Holy Church and those which are observed from reasons of devotion in the seminary, and if his Lordship sometimes yielded in this matter to the command of the physicians and the entreaties of the superiors of the seminary, who deemed that he ought not to fast, it was a great mortification for him, and it was only out of especial charity to his dear seminary and the whole of Canada that he yielded somewhat to nature in order not to die so soon...."

Never, in spite of his infirmities, would the prelate fail to be present on Sunday at the cathedral services. When it was impossible for him to go on foot, he had himself carried. His only outings towards the end of his life consisted in his visits to the cathedral or in short walks along the paths of his garden. Whenever his health permitted, he loved to be present at the funerals of those who died in the town; those consolations which he deigned to give to the afflicted families bear witness to the goodness of his heart. "It was something admirable," says Houssart, "to see, firstly, his assiduity in being present at the burial of all who died in Quebec, and his promptness in offering the holy sacrifice of the mass for the repose of their souls, as soon as he had learned of their decease; secondly, his devotion in receiving and preserving the blessed palms, in kissing his crucifix, the image of the Holy Virgin, which he carried always upon him, and placed at nights under his pillow, his badge of servitude and his scapulary which he carried also upon him; thirdly, his respect and veneration for the relics of the saints, the pleasure which he took in reading every day in the Lives of the Saints, and in conversing of their heroic deeds; fourthly, the holy and constant use which he made of holy water, taking it wherever he might be in the course of the day and every time he awoke in the night, coming very often from his garden to his room expressly to take it, carrying it upon him in a little silver vessel, which he had had made purposely, when he went to the country. His Lordship had so great a desire that every one should take it that he exercised particular care in seeing every day whether the vessels of the church were supplied with it, to fill them when they were empty; and during the winter, for fear that the vessels should freeze too hard and the people could not take any as they entered and left the church, he used to bring them himself every evening and place them by our stove, and take them back at four o'clock in the morning when he went to open the doors."

With a touching humility the pious old man scrupulously conformed to the rules of the seminary and to the orders of the superior of the house. Only a few days before his death, he experienced such pain that Brother Houssart declared his intention of going and asking from the superior of the seminary a dispensation for the sick man from being present at the services. At once the patient became silent; in spite of his tortures not a complaint escaped his lips. It was Holy Wednesday: it was impossible to be absent on that day from religious ceremonies. We do not know which to admire most in such an attitude, whether the piety of the prelate or his submission to the superior of the seminary, since he would have been resigned if he had been forbidden to go to church, or, finally, his energy in stifling the groans which suffering wrenched from his physical nature. Few saints carried mortification and renunciation of terrestrial good as far as he. "He is certainly the most austere man in the world and the most indifferent to worldly advantage," wrote Mother Mary of the Incarnation. "He gives away everything and lives like a pauper; and we may truly say that he has the very spirit of poverty. It is not he who will make friends for worldly advancement and to increase his revenue; he is dead to all that.... He practises this poverty in his house, in his living, in his furniture, in his servants, for he has only one gardener, whom he lends to the poor when they need one, and one valet...." This picture falls short of the truth. For forty years he arose at two o'clock in the morning, summer and winter: in his last years illness could only wrest from him one hour more of repose, and he arose then at three o'clock. As soon as he was dressed, he remained at prayer till four and then went to church. He opened the doors himself, and rang the bells for mass, which he said, half an hour later, especially for the poor workmen, who began their day by this pious exercise.

His thanksgiving after the holy sacrifice lasted till seven o'clock, and yet, even in the greatest cold of the severe Canadian winter, he had nothing to warm his frozen limbs but the brazier which he had used to celebrate the mass. A good part of his day, and often of the night, when his sufferings deprived him of sleep, was also devoted to prayer or spiritual reading, and nothing was more edifying than to see the pious octogenarian telling his beads or reciting his breviary while walking slowly through the paths of his garden. He was the first up and the last to retire, and whatever had been his occupations during the day, never did he lie down without having scrupulously observed all the spiritual offices, readings or reciting of beads. It was not, however, that his food gave him a superabundance of physical vigour, for the Trappists did not eat more frugally than he. A soup, which he purposely spoiled by diluting it amply with hot water, a little meat and a crust of very dry bread composed his ordinary fare, and dessert, even on feast days, was absolutely banished from his table. "For his ordinary drink," says Brother Houssart, "he took only hot water slightly flavoured with wine; and every one knows that his Lordship never took either cordial or dainty wines, or any mixture of sweets of any sort whatever, whether to drink or to eat, except that in his last years I succeeded in making him take every evening after his broth, which was his whole supper, a piece of biscuit as large as one's thumb, in a little wine, to aid him to sleep. I may say without exaggeration that his whole life was one continual fast, for he took no breakfast, and every evening only a slight collation.... He used his whole substance in alms and pious works; and when he needed anything, such as clothes, linen, etc., he asked it from the seminary like the humblest of his ecclesiastics. He was most modest in matters of dress, and I had great difficulty in preventing him from wearing his clothes when they were old, dirty and mended. During twenty years he had but two winter cassocks, which he left behind him on his death, the one still quite good, the other all threadbare and mended. To be brief, there was no one in the seminary poorer in dress...." Mgr. de Laval set an example of the principal virtues which distinguish the saints; so he could not fail in that which our Lord incessantly recommends to His disciples, charity! He no longer possessed anything of his own, since he had at the outset abandoned his patrimony to his brother, and since later on he had given to the seminary everything in his possession. But charity makes one ingenious: by depriving himself of what was strictly necessary, could he not yet come to the aid of his brothers in Jesus Christ? "Never was prelate," says his eulogist, M. de la Colombiere, "more hostile to grandeur and exaltation.... In scorning grandeur, he triumphed over himself by a poverty worthy of the anchorites of the first centuries, whose rules he faithfully observed to the end of his days. Grace had so thoroughly absorbed in the heart of the prelate the place of the tendencies of our corrupt nature that he seemed to have been born with an aversion to riches, pleasures and honours.... If you have noticed his dress, his furniture and his table, you must be aware that he was a foe to pomp and splendour. There is no village priest in France who is not better nourished, better clad and better lodged than was the Bishop of Quebec. Far from having an equipage suitable to his rank and dignity he had not even a horse of his own. And when, towards the end of his days, his great age and his infirmities did not allow him to walk, if he wished to go out he had to borrow a carriage. Why this economy? In order to have a storehouse full of garments, shoes and blankets, which he distributed gratuitously, with paternal kindness and prudence. This was a business which he never ceased to ply, in which he trusted only to himself, and with which he concerned himself up to his death."