CHAPTER 9
1658-1663.  

LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.

WHEN Argenson arrived to assume the govern-ment, a curious greeting had awaited him.  The Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their school disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes  made him speeches by turn, in prose and verse.  First, Pierre du Quet, who played the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor, in a complimentary harangue.  Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse.  Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid.  Jean Francois Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron.  The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret.  Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their chief.

Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered at Quebec to greet the new "Onontio." On the next day—-at his own cost, as he writes to a friend  he gave them a feast, consisting of "seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons, eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after their fashion."

These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one.  He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois; and he begs the proprietary company which he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers or laborers, according to the occasion.

The company turned a deaf ear to his appeals.  They had lost money in Canada, and were grievously out of humor with it.  In their view, the first duty of a governor was to collect their debts, which, for more reasons than one, was no easy task.  While they did nothing to aid the colony in its distress, they beset Argenson with demands for the thousand pounds of beaver-skins, which the inhabitants had agreed to send them every year in return for the privilege of the fur-trade,  a privilege which the Iroquois war made for the present worthless.  The perplexed governor vents his feelings in sarcasm.  "They (the company) take no pains to learn the truth; and when they hear of settlers carried off and burned by the Iroquois, they will think it a punishment for not settling old debts, and paying over the beaver-skins."1 "I wish," he adds, "they would send somebody to look after their affairs here.  I would gladly give him the same lodging and entertainment as my own."

Another matter gave him great annoyance.  This was the virtual independence of Montreal; and here, if nowhere else, he and the bishop were of the same mind.  On one occasion he made a visit to the place in question, where he expected to be received as gov-ernor-general; but the local governor, Maisonneuve, declined, or at least postponed, to take his orders and give him the keys of the fort.  Argenson accordingly speaks of Montreal as " a place which makes so much noise, but which is of such small account."1 He adds that, besides wanting to be independent, the Montrealists want to monopolize the fur-trade, which would cause civil war; and that the King ought to interpose to correct their obstinacy.

In another letter he complains of d'Ailleboust, who had preceded him in the government, though himself a Montrealist.  Argenson says that, on going out to fight the Iroquois, he left d'Ailleboust at Quebec, to act as his lieutenant; that, instead of doing so, he had assumed to govern in his own right; that he had taken possession of his absent superior's furniture, drawn his pay, and in other respects behaved as if he never expected to see him again.  " When I returned," continues the governor, "I made him director in the council, without pay, as there was none to give him.  It was this, I think, that made him remove to Montreal; for which I do not care, provided the glory of our Master suffer no prejudice thereby."

These extracts may, perhaps, give an unjust impression of Argenson, who, from the general tenor of his letters, appears to have been a temperate and reasonable person.  His patience and his nervous system seem, however, to have been taxed to the utmost.  His pay could not support him.  "The costs of living here are horrible," he writes.  "I have only two thousand crowns a year for all my expenses, and I have already been forced to run into debt to the company to an equal amount."1 Part of his scanty income was derived from a fishery of eels, on which sundry persons had encroached, to his great detriment.2 "I see no reason," he adds, "for staying here any longer.  When I came to this country, I hoped to enjoy a little repose, but I am doubly deprived of it,  on one hand by enemies without, and incessant petty disputes within; and, on the other, by the .difficulty I find in subsisting.  The profits of the fur-trade have been so reduced that all the inhabitants are in the greatest poverty.  They are all insolvent, and cannot pay the merchants their advances."

His disgust at length reached a crisis.  "I am resolved to stay here no longer, but to go home next year.  My horror of dissension, and the manifest certainty of becoming involved in disputes with certain persons with whom I am unwilling to quarrel, oblige me to anticipate these troubles, and seek some way of living in peace.  These excessive fatigues are far too much for my strength.  I am writing to Monsieur the President, and to the gentlemen of the Company of New France, to choose some other man for this government."1 And again, " If you take any interest in this country, see that the person chosen to command here has, besides the true piety necessary to a Christian in every condition of life, great firmness of character and strong bodily health.  I assure you that without these qualities he cannot succeed.  Besides, it is absolutely necessary that he should be a man of property and of some rank, so that he will not be despised for humble birth, or suspected of coming here to make his fortune; for in that case he can do no good whatever."

His constant friction with the head of the Church distressed the pious governor, and made his recall doubly a relief.  According to a contemporary writer, Laval was the means of delivering him from the burden of government, having written to the President Lamoignon to urge his removal.  Be this as it may, it is certain that the bishop was not sorry to be rid of him.

The Baron Dubois d'Avaugour arrived to take his place.  He was an old soldier of forty years' service,4 blunt, imperative, and sometimes obstinate to per-verseness, but full of energy, and of a probity which even his enemies confessed.  " He served a long time in Germany while you were there," writes the minister Colbert to the Marquis de Tracy, " and you must have known his talents, as well as his bizarre and somewhat impracticable temper." On landing, he would have no reception, being, as Father Lalemant observes, "an enemy of all ceremony." He went, however, to see the Jesuits, and "took a morsel of food in our refectory."1 Laval was prepared to receive him with all solemnity at the Church; but the governor would not go.  He soon set out on a tour of observation as far as Montreal, whence he returned delighted with the country, and immediately wrote to Colbert in high praise of it, observing that the Saint Lawrence was the most beautiful river he had ever seen.

It was clear from the first that, while he had a prepossession against the bishop, he wished to be on good terms with the Jesuits.  He began by placing some of them on the council; but they and Laval were too closely united; and if Avaugour thought to separate them, he signally failed.  A few months only had elapsed when we find it noted in Father Lalemant's private journal that the governor had dissolved the council and appointed a new one, and that other " changes and troubles" had befallen.  The inevitable quarrel had broken out; it was a complex one, but the chief occasion of dispute was fortunate for the ecclesiastics, since it placed them, to a certain degree, morally in the right.  

The question at issue was not new.  It had agitated the colony for years, and had been the spring of some of Argenson's many troubles.  Nor did it cease with Avaugour, for we shall trace its course hereafter, tumultuous as a tornado.  It was simply the temperance question,  not as regards the colonists, though here, too, there was great room for reform, but as regards the Indians.

Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of excessive disorders.  They drank expressly to get drunk, and when drunk they were like wild beasts.  Crime and violence of all sorts ensued; the priests saw their teachings despised and their flocks ruined.  On the other hand, the sale of brandy was a chief source of profit, direct or indirect, to all those interested in the fur-trade, including the principal persons of the colony.  In Argenson's time, Laval launched an excommunication against those engaged in the abhorred traffic; for nothing less than total prohibition would content the clerical party, and besides the spiritual penalty, they demanded the punishment of death against the contumacious offender.  Death, in fact, was decreed.  Such was the posture of affairs when Avaugour arrived; and, willing as he was to conciliate the Jesuits, he per-mitted the decree to take effect, although, it seems, with great repugnance.  A few weeks after his arrival, two men were shot and one whipped, for selling brandy to Indians.  An extreme though partially suppressed excitement shook the entire settlement; for most of the colonists were, in one degree or another, implicated in the offence thus punished.  An explosion soon followed; and the occasion of it was the humanity or good-nature of the Jesuit Lalemant.

A woman had been condemned to imprisonment for the same cause, and Lalemant, moved by compassion, came to the governor to intercede for her.  Avaugour could no longer contain himself, and answered the reverend petitioner with characteristic bluntness.  "You and your brethren were the first to cry out against the trade, and now you want to save the traders from punishment.  I will no longer be the sport of your contradictions.  Since it is not a crime for this woman, it shall not be a crime for anybody."1 And in this posture he stood fast, with an inflexible stubbornness.

Henceforth there was full license to liquor-dealers.  A violent reaction ensued against the past restriction, and brandy flowed freely among French and Indians alike.  The ungodly drank to spite the priests and revenge themselves for the " constraint of consciences," of which they loudly complained.  The utmost confusion followed, and the principles on which the pious colony was built seemed up heaved from the foundation.  Laval was distracted with grief and anger.  He outpoured himself from the pulpit in threats of divine wrath, and launched fresh excommunications against the offenders; but such was the popular fury that he was forced to yield and revoke them.

Disorder grew from bad to worse.  "Men gave no heed to bishop, preacher, or confessor," writes Father Charlevoix.  " The French have despised the remonstrances of our prelate, because they are supported by the civil power," says the superior of the Ursulines.  "He is almost dead with grief, and pines away before our eyes."

Laval could bear it no longer, but sailed for France, to lay his complaints before the court, and urge the removal of Avaugour.  He had, besides, two other important objects, as will appear hereafter.  His absence brought no improvement.  Summer and autumn passed, and the commotion did not abate.  Winter was drawing to a close, when, at length, outraged Heaven interposed an awful warning to the guilty colony.

Scarcely had the bishop left his flock when the skies grew portentous with signs of the chastisement to come.  "We beheld," gravely writes Father Lalemant, "blazing serpents which flew through the air, borne on wings of fire.  We beheld above Quebec a great globe of flame, which lighted up the night, and threw out sparks on all sides.  This same meteor appeared above Montreal, where it seemed to issue from the bosom of the moon, with a noise as loud as cannon or thunder; and after sailing three leagues through the air, it disappeared behind the mountain whereof this island bears the name."

Still greater marvels followed.  First, a Christian Algonquin squaw, described as "innocent, simple, and sincere," being seated erect in bed, wide awake, by the side of her husband, in the night between the fourth and fifth of February, distinctly heard a voice saying, "Strange things will happen to-day; the earth will quake I " In great alarm she whispered the prodigy to her husband, who told her that she lied.  This silenced her for a time; but when, the next morning, she went into the forest with her hatchet to cut a fagot of wood, the same dread voice resounded through the solitude, and sent her back in terror to her hut.

These things were as nothing compared with the marvel that befell a nun of the hospital, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin, who died five years later, in the odor of sanctity.  On the night of the fourth of February, 1663, she beheld in the spirit four furious demons at the four corners of Quebec, shaking it with a violence which plainly showed their purpose of reducing it to ruins; "and this they would have done," says the story, "if a personage of admirable beauty and ravishing majesty (Christ), whom she saw in the midst of them, and who from time to time gave rein to their fury, had not restrained them when they were on the point of accomplishing their wicked design." She also heard the conversation of these demons, to the effect that people were now well frightened, and many would be converted; but this would not last long, and they, the demons, would have them in time.  "Let us keep on shaking," they cried, encouraging one another, "and do our best to upset everything."

Now, to pass from visions to facts: " At half-past five o'clock on the morning of the fifth," writes Father Lalemant, " a great roaring sound was heard at the same time through the whole extent of Canada.  This sound, which produced an effect as if the houses were on fire, brought everybody out of doors; but instead of seeing smoke and flame, they were amazed to behold the walls shaking, and all the stones moving as if they would drop from their places.  The houses seemed to bend first to one side and then to the other.  Bells sounded of themselves; beams, joists, and planks cracked; the ground heaved, making the pickets of the palisades dance in a way that would have seemed incredible had we not seen it in divers places.

"Everybody was in the streets; animals ran wildly about; children cried; men and women, seized with fright, knew not where to take refuge, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of the houses, or swallowed up in some abyss opening under their feet.  Some, on their knees in the snow, cried for mercy, and others passed the night in prayer; for the earthquake continued without ceasing, with a motion much like that of a ship at sea, insomuch that sundry persons felt the same qualms of stomach which they would feel on the water.  In the forests the commotion was far greater.  The trees struck one against the other as if there were a battle between them; and you would have said that not only their branches, but even their trunks, started out of their places and leaped on one another with such noise and confusion that the Indians said that the whole forest was drunk."

Mary of the Incarnation gives a similar account, as does also Frances Juchereau de Saint-Ignace; and these contemporary records are sustained to some extent by the evidence of geology.1 A remarkable effect was produced on the Saint Lawrence, which was so charged with mud and clay that for many weeks the water was unfit to drink.  Considerable hills and large tracts of forest slid from their places, some into the river, and some into adjacent valleys.  A number of men in a boat near Tadoussac stared aghast at a large hill covered with trees, which sank into the water before their eyes; streams were turned from their courses; water-falls were levelled; springs were dried up in some places, while in others new springs appeared.  Nevertheless, the accounts that have come down to us seem a little exaggerated, and sometimes ludicrously so; as when, for example, Mother Mary of the Incarnation tells us of a man who ran all night to escape from a fissure in the earth which opened behind him and chased him as he fled.

It is perhaps needless to say that "spectres and phantoms of fire, bearing torches in their hands," took part in the convulsion.  " The fiery figure of a man vomiting flames " also appeared in the air, with many other apparitions too numerous to mention.  It is recorded that three young men were on their way through the forest to sell brandy to the Indians, when one of them, a little in advance of the rest, was met by a hideous spectre which nearly killed him with fright.  He had scarcely strength enough to rejoin his companions, who, seeing his terror, began to laugh at him.  One of them, however, presently came to his senses, and said: " This is no laughing matter; we are going to sell liquor to the Indians against the prohibitions of the Church, and perhaps God means to punish our disobedience." On this they all turned back.  That night they had scarcely lain down to sleep when the earthquake roused them, and they ran out of their hut just in time to escape being swallowed up along with it.

With every allowance, it is clear that the convulsion must have been a severe one, and it is remarkable that in all Canada not a life was lost.  The writers of the day see in this a proof that God meant to reclaim the guilty and not destroy them.  At Quebec there was for the time an intense revival of religion.  The end of the world was thought to be at hand, and everybody made ready for the last judgment.  Repentant throngs beset confessionals and altars; enemies were reconciled; fasts, prayers, and penances filled the whole season of Lent.  Yet, as we shall see, the Devil could still find wherewith to console himself.

It was midsummer before the shocks wholly ceased and the earth resumed her wonted calm.  An extreme drought was followed by floods of rain, and then Nature began her sure' work of reparation.  It was about this time that the thorn which had plagued the Church was at length plucked out.  Avaugour was summoned home.  He took his recall with magnanimity, and on his way wrote at Gaspe" a memorial to Colbert, in which he commends New France to the attention of the King.  "The Saint Lawrence," he "is the entrance to what may be made the greatest state in the world;" and, in his purely military way, he recounts the means of realizing this grand possibility.  Three thousand soldiers should be sent to the colony, to be discharged and turned into settlers after three years of service.  During these three years they may make Quebec an impregnable fortress, subdue the Iroquois, build a strong fort on the river where the Dutch have a miserable wooden redoubt, called Fort Orange (Albany), and finally open a way by that river to the sea.  Thus the heretics will be driven out, and the King will be master of America, at a total cost of about four hundred thousand francs yearly for ten years.  He closes his memorial.  by a short allusion to the charges against him, and to his forty years of faithful service; and concludes, speaking of the authors of his recall, Laval and the Jesuits: " By reason of the respect I owe their cloth, I will rest content, Monseigneur, with assuring you that I have not only served the King with fidelity, but also, by the grace of God, with very good success, considering the means at my disposal."1 He had, in truth, borne himself as a brave and experienced soldier; and he soon after died a soldier's death, while defending the fortress of Zrin, in Croatia, against the Turks..