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 b.a.l.l.s 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 ma.s.s, vespers, and the benediction." By this a.s.surance 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 a.s.sist 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 b.a.l.l.s 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. G.o.d 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 a.s.sociate of the seminary without the permission of the bishop, within whose province it was to employ the former a.s.sociates 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.siduity 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 G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude two letters with which you have honoured me. I have blessed G.o.d 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. Leva.s.seur 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 G.o.d, 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. Pet.i.t 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.s. There he pa.s.sed his last days and gave up his fair soul to G.o.d.
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 a.s.sistants 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 _l.u.s.tra_ which had pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude. 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution, 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 a.s.sume 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 inst.i.tution, 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 G.o.d. 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 grat.i.tude to this worthy servant of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d." Such testimony is the fairest t.i.tle to glory for an inst.i.tution.
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 Pa.s.sion, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 Roch.e.l.le, 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 n.o.bleman than a peasant, which he was, for I had taken him as a beggar and almost naked at La Roch.e.l.le.... 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 a.s.siduity in being present at the burial of all who died in Quebec, and his promptness in offering the holy sacrifice of the ma.s.s 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 att.i.tude, 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 ma.s.s, 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 ma.s.s. 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 ca.s.socks, 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 princ.i.p.al 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."
The charity of the prelate was boundless. Not only at the hospital of Quebec did he visit the poor and console them, but he even rendered them services the most repugnant to nature. "He has been seen," says M. de la Colombiere, "on a ship where he behaved like St. Francois-Xavier, where, ministering to the sailors and the pa.s.sengers, he breathed the bad air and the infection which they exhaled; he has been seen to abandon in their favour all his refreshments, and to give them even his bed, sheets and blankets. To administer the sacraments to them he did not fear to expose his life and the lives of the persons who were most dear to him."
When he thus attended the sick who were attacked by contagious fever, he did his duty, even more than his duty; but when he went, without absolute need, and shared in the repugnant cares which the most devoted servants of Christ in the hospitals undertake only after struggles and heroic victory over revolted nature he rose to sublimity. It was because he saw in the poor the suffering members of the Saviour; to love the poor man, it is not enough to wish him well, we must respect him, and we cannot respect him as much as any child of G.o.d deserves without seeing in him the image of Jesus Christ himself. No one acquires love for G.o.d without being soon wholly enkindled by it; thus it was no longer sufficient for Mgr. de Laval to instruct and console the poor and the sick, he served them also in the most abject duties, going as far as to wash with his own hands their sores and ulcers. A madman, the world will say; why not content one"s self with attending those people without indulging in the luxury of heroism so repugnant? This would have sufficed indeed to relieve nature, but would it have taught those incurable and desperate cases that they were the first friends of Jesus Christ, that the Church looked upon them as its jewels, and that their fate from the point of view of eternity was enviable to all? It would have relieved without consoling and raising the poor man to the height which belongs to him in Christian society. Official a.s.sistance, with the best intentions in the world, the most ingenious organization and the most perfect working, can, however, never be charity in the perfectly Christian sense of this word. If it could allay all needs and heal all sores it would still have accomplished only half of the task: relieving the body without reaching the soul. And man does not live by bread alone. He who has been disinherited of the boons of fortune, family and health, he who is incurable and who despairs of human joys needs something else besides the most comfortable hospital room that can be imagined; he needs the words which fell from the lips of G.o.d: "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that suffer, blessed are they that mourn." He needs a pitying heart, a tender witness to indigence n.o.bly borne, a respectful friend of his misfortune, still more than that, a worshipper of Jesus hidden in the persons of the poor, the orphan and the sick. They have become rare in the world, these real friends of the poor; the more a.s.sistance has become organized, the more charity seems to have lost its true nature; and perhaps we might find in this state of things a radical explanation for those implacable social antagonisms, those covetous desires, those revolts followed by endless repression, which bring about revolutions, and by them all manner of tyranny. Let us first respect the poor, let us love them, let us sincerely admire their condition as one enn.o.bled by G.o.d, if we wish them to become reconciled with Him, and reconciled with the world. When the rich man is a Christian, generous and respectful of the poor, when he practises the virtues which most belong to his social position, the poor man is very near to conforming to those virtues which Providence makes his more immediate duty, humility, obedience, resignation to the will of G.o.d and trust in Him and in those who rule in His name. The solution of the great social problem lies, as it seems to us, in the spiritual love of the poor. Outside of this, there is only the heathen slave below, and tyranny above with all its terrors. That is what religious enthusiasm foresaw in centuries less well organized but more religious than ours.
CHAPTER XIX
DEATH OF MGR. DE LAVAL
The end of a great career was now approaching. In the summer of 1707, a long and painful illness nearly carried Mgr. de Laval away, but he recovered, and convalescence was followed by manifest improvement. This soul which, like the lamp of the sanctuary, was consumed in the tabernacle of the Most High, revived suddenly at the moment of emitting its last gleams, then suddenly died out in final brilliance. The improvement in the condition of the venerable prelate was ephemeral; the illness which had brought him to the threshold of the tomb proved fatal some weeks later. He died in the midst of his labours, happy in proving by the very origin of the disease which brought about his death, his great love for the Saviour. It was, in fact, in prolonging on Good Friday his pious stations in his chilly church (for our ancestors did not heat their churches, even in seasons of rigorous cold), that he received in his heel the frost-bite of which he died. Such is the name the writers of the time give to this sore; in our days, when science has defined certain maladies formerly misunderstood, it is permissible to suppose that this so-called frost-bite was nothing else than diabetic gangrene. No illusion could be cherished, and the venerable old man, who had not, so to speak, pa.s.sed a moment of his existence without thinking of death, needed to adapt himself to the idea less than any one else. In order to have nothing more to do than to prepare for his last hour he hastened to settle a question which concerned his seminary: he reduced definitely to eight the number of pensions which he had established in it in 1680. This done, it remained for him now only to suffer and die. The ulcer increased incessantly and the continual pains which he felt became atrocious when it was dressed. His intolerable sufferings drew from him, nevertheless, not cries and complaints, but outpourings of love for G.o.d. Like Saint Vincent de Paul, whom the tortures of his last malady could not compel to utter other words than these: "Ah, my Saviour! my good Saviour!" Mgr. de Laval gave vent to these words only: "O, my G.o.d! have pity on me! O G.o.d of Mercy!" and this cry, the summary of his whole life: "Let Thy holy will be done!" One of the last thoughts of the dying man was to express the sentiment of his whole life, humility. Some one begged him to imitate the majority of the saints, who, on their death-bed, uttered a few pious words for the edification of their spiritual children. "They were saints," he replied, "and I am a sinner." A speech worthy of Saint Vincent de Paul, who, about to appear before G.o.d, replied to the person who requested his blessing, "It is not for me, unworthy wretch that I am, to bless you."
The fervour with which he received the last sacraments aroused the admiration of all the witnesses of this supreme hour. They almost expected to see this holy soul take flight for its celestial mansion. As soon as the prayers for the dying had been p.r.o.nounced, he asked to have the chaplets of the Holy Family recited, and during the recitation of this prayer he gave up his soul to his Creator. It was then half-past seven in the morning, and the sixth day of the month consecrated to the Holy Virgin, whom he had so loved (May, 1708).
It was with a quiver of grief which was felt in all hearts throughout the colony that men learned the fatal news. The banks of the great river repeated this great woe to the valleys; the sad certainty that the father of all had disappeared forever sowed desolation in the homes of the rich as well as in the thatched huts of the poor. A cry of pain, a deep sob arose from the bosom of Canada which would not be consoled, because its incomparable bishop was no more! Etienne de Citeaux said to his monks after the death of his holy predecessor: "Alberic is dead to our eyes, but he is not so to the eyes of G.o.d, and dead though he appear to us, he lives for us in the presence of the Lord; for it is peculiar to the saints that when they go to G.o.d through death, they bear their friends with them in their hearts to preserve them there forever." This is our dearest desire; the friends of the venerable prelate were and still are to-day his own Canadians: may he remain to the end of the ages our protector and intercessor with G.o.d!