CHAPTER 11
1657-1665.

LAVAL AND Me’zy

WE have seen that Laval, when at court, had been invited to choose a governor to his liking.  He soon made his selection.  There was a pious officer, Saffray de Mfey, major of the town and citadel of Caen, whom he had well known during his long stay with Bernieres at the Hermitage.  Me’zy was the principal member of the company of devotees formed at Caen under the influence of Bernieres and his disciples.  In his youth he had been headstrong and dissolute.  Worse still, he had been, it is said, a Huguenot; but both in life and doctrine his conversion had been complete, and the fervid mysticism of Bernieres acting on his vehement nature had transformed him into a red hot zealot.  Towards the hermits and their chief he showed a docility in strange contrast with his past history, and followed their inspirations  with an  ardor  which  sometimes overleaped its mark.

Thus a Jacobin monk, a doctor of divinity, once came to preach at the church of Saint Paul at Caen; on which, according to their custom, the brotherhood of the Hermitage sent two persons to make report concerning his orthodoxy.  Me’zy and another military zealot, "who," says the narrator, "hardly know how to read, and assuredly do not know their catechism," were deputed to hear his first sermon; wherein this Jacobin, having spoken of the necessity of the grace of Jesus Christ in order to the doing of good deeds, these two wiseacres thought that he was preaching Jansenism; and thereupon, after the sermon, the Sieur de Me’zy went to the proctor of the ecclesiastical court and denounced him."

His zeal, though but moderately tempered with knowledge, sometimes proved more useful than on this occasion.  The Jacobin convent at Caen was divided against itself.  Some of the monks had embraced the doctrines taught by Bernie"res, while the rest held dogmas which he declared to be contrary to those of the Jesuits, and therefore heterodox.  A prior was to be elected, and with the help of Bernieres his partisans gained the victory, choosing one Father Louis, through whom the Hermitage gained a complete control in the convent.  But the adverse party presently resisted, and complained to the provincial of their order, who came to Caen to close the dispute by deposing Father Louis.  Hearing of his approach, Bernieres asked aid from his military disciple, and De Me'zy sent him a squad of soldiers, who guarded the convent doors and barred out the provincial.

Among the merits of Me'zy, his humility and charity were especially admired; and the people of Caen had more than once seen the town major staggering across the street with a beggar mounted on his back, whom he was bearing dry shod through the mud in the exercise of those virtues.  In this he imitated his master Bernieres, of whom similar acts are recorded.  However dramatic in manifestation, his devotion was not only sincere but intense.  Laval imagined that he knew him well.  Above all others, Me'zy was the man of his choice; and so eagerly did he plead for him that the King himself paid certain debts which the pious major had contracted, and thus left him free to sail for Canada.

His deportment on the voyage was edifying, and the first days of his accession were passed in harmony.  He permitted Laval to form the new council, and supplied the soldiers for the seizure of Dumesnil's papers.  A question arose concerning Montreal, a subject on which the governors and the bishop rarely differed in opinion.  The present instance was no exception to the rule.  Me’zy removed Maisonneuve, the local governor, and immediately replaced him, the effect being, that whereas he had before derived his authority from the seigniors of the island, he now derived it from the governor-general.  It was a movement in the interest of centralized power, and as such was cordially approved by Laval.

The first indication to the bishop and the Jesuits that the new governor was not likely to prove in their hands as clay in the hands of the potter, is said to have been given on occasion of an interview with an embassy of Iroquois chiefs, to whom Mezy, aware of their duplicity, spoke with a decision and haughtiness that awed the savages and astonished the ecclesiastics.  He seems to have been one of those natures that run with an engrossing vehemence along any channel into which they may have been turned.  At the Hermitage he was all devotee; but climate and conditions had changed, and he or his symptoms changed with them.  He found himself raised suddenly to a post of command, or one which was meant to be such.  The town major of Caen was set to rule over a region far larger than France.  The royal authority was trusted to his keeping, and his honor and duty forbade him to break the trust.  But when he found that those who had procured for him his new dignities had done so that he might be an instrument of their will, his ancient pride started again into life, and his headstrong temper broke out like a long smothered   fire.     Laval   stood   aghast   at   the transformation.     His lamb had turned wolf.

What especially stirred the governor's dudgeon was the conduct of Bourdon, Villeray, and Auteuil, those faithful allies whom Laval had placed on the council, and who, as Me"zy soon found, were wholly in the bishop's interest.  On the thirteenth of February he sent his friend Angoville, major of the fort, to Laval, with a written declaration to the effect that he had ordered them to absent themselves from the council, because, having been appointed "on the persuasion of the aforesaid Bishop of Petrsea, who knew them to be wholly his creatures, they wish to make themselves masters in the aforesaid council, and have acted in divers ways against the interests of the King and the public for the promotion of personal and private ends, and have formed and fomented cabals, contrary to their duty and their oath of fidelity to his aforesaid Majesty." He further declares that advantage had been taken of the facility of his disposition and his ignorance of the country to surprise him into assenting to their nomination ; and he asks the bishop to acquiesce in their expulsion, and join him in calling an assembly of the people to choose others in their place.  Laval refused; on which Me’zy caused his declaration to be placarded about Quebec and proclaimed by sound of drum.  The proposal of a public election, contrary as it was to the spirit of the government, opposed to the edict establishing the council, and utterly odious to the young autocrat who ruled over France, gave Laval a great advantage.  "I reply," he wrote, "to the request which Monsieur the Governor makes me to consent to the interdiction of the persons named in his declaration, and proceed to the choice of other councillors or officers by an assembly of the people, that neither my conscience nor my honor, nor the respect and obedience which I owe to the will and commands of the King, nor my fidelity and affection to his service, will by any means permit me to do so."

Me’zy was dealing with an adversary armed with redoubtable weapons.  It was intimated to him that the sacraments would be refused, and the churches closed against him.  This threw him into an agony of doubt and perturbation; for the emotional religion which had become a part of his nature, though overborne by gusts of passionate irritation, was still full of life within him.  Tossing between the old feeling and the new, he took a course which reveals the trouble and confusion of his mind.  He threw himself for counsel and comfort on the Jesuits, though he knew them to be one with Laval against him, and though, under cover of denouncing sin in general, they had lashed him sharply in their sermons.  There is something pathetic in the appeal he makes to them.  For the glory of God and the service of the King, he had come, he says, on Laval's solicitation, to seek salvation in Canada; and being under obligation to the bishop, who had recommended him to the King, he felt bound to show proofs of his gratitude on every occasion.  Yet neither gratitude to a benefactor nor the respect due to his character and person should be permitted to interfere with duty to the King, "since neither conscience nor honor permit us to neglect the requirements of our office and betray the interests of his Majesty, after receiving orders from his lips, and making oath of fidelity between his hands." He proceeds to say that, having discovered practices of which he felt obliged to prevent the continuance, he had made a declaration expelling the offenders from office; that the bishop and all the ecclesiastics had taken this declaration as an offence; that, regardless of the King's service, they had denounced him as a calumniator, an unjust judge, without gratitude, and perverted in conscience; and that one of the chief among them had come to warn him that the sacraments would be refused and the churches closed against him.  "This," writes the unhappy governor, "has agitated our soul with scruples; and we have none from whom to seek light save those who are our declared opponents, pronouncing judgment on us without knowledge of cause.  Yet as our salvation and the duty we owe the King are the things most important to us on earth, and as we hold them to be inseparable the one from the other; and as nothing is so certain as death, and nothing so uncertain as the hour thereof; and as there is no time to inform his Majesty of what is passing and to receive his commands; and as our soul, though conscious of innocence, is always in fear,  we feel obliged, despite their opposition, to have recourse to the reverend father casuists of the House of Jesus, to tell us in conscience what we can do for the fulfilment of our duty at once to God and to the King."

The Jesuits gave him little comfort.  Lalemant, their superior, replied by advising him to follow the directions of his confessor, a Jesuit, so far as the question concerned spiritual matters, adding that in temporal matters he had no advice to give.  The distinction was illusory.  The quarrel turned wholly on temporal matters, but it was a quarrel with a bishop.  To separate in such a case the spiritual obligation from the temporal was beyond the skill of Me’zy, nor would the confessor have helped him.

Perplexed and troubled as he was, he would not reinstate Bourdon and the two councillors.  The people began to clamor at the interruption of justice, for which they blamed Laval, whom a recent imposition of tithes had made unpopular.  Me’zy thereupon issued a proclamation, in which, after mentioning his opponents as the most subtle and artful persons in Canada, he declares that, in consequence of petitions sent him from Quebec and the neighboring settlements, he had called the people to the council chamber, and by their advice had appointed the Sieur de Chartier as attorney-general in place of Bourdon.

Bourdon replied by a violent appeal from the governor to the remaining members of the council; on which Me’zy declared him excluded from all public functions whatever, till the King's pleasure should be known.  Thus Church and State still frowned on each other, and new disputes soon arose to widen the breach between them.  On the first establishment of the council, an order had been passed for the election of a mayor and two aldermen (echevins) for Quebec, which it was proposed to erect into a city, though it had only seventy houses and less than a thousand inhabitants.  Repentigny was chosen mayor, and Madry and Charron aldermen; but the choice was not agreeable to the bishop, and the three functionaries declined to act, influence having probably been brought to bear on them to that end.  The council now resolved that a mayor was needless, and the people were permitted to choose a syndic in his stead.  These municipal elections were always so controlled by the authorities that the element of liberty which they seemed to represent was little but a mockery.  On the present occasion, after an unaccountable delay of ten months, twenty-two persons cast their votes in presence of the council, and the choice fell on Charron.  The real question was whether the new syndic should belong to the governor or to the bishop.  Charron leaned to the governor's party.  The ecclesiastics insisted that the people were dissatisfied, and a new election was ordered, but the voters did not come.  The governor now sent messages to such of the inhabitants as he knew to be in his interest, who gathered in the council chamber, voted under his eye, and again chose a syndic agreeable to him.  Laval's party protested in vain.

The councillors held office for a year, and the year had now expired.  The governor and the bishop, it will be remembered, had a joint power of appointment; but agreement between them was impossible.  Laval was for replacing his partisans, Bourdon, Villeray, Auteuil, and La Ferte".  Me’zy refused; and on the eighteenth of September he reconstructed the council by his sole authority, retaining of the old councillors only Amours and Tilly, and replacing the rest by Denis, La Tesserie, and Pe"ronne de Maze", the surviving son of Dumesnil.  Again Laval protested ; but Me’zy proclaimed his choice by sound of drum, and caused placards to be posted, full, according to Father Lalemant, of abuse against the bishop.  On this he was excluded from confession and absolution.  He complained loudly; "but our reply was,'' says the father, "that God knew everything."

This unanswerable but somewhat irrelevant response failed to satisfy him, and it was possibly on this occasion that an incident occurred which is recounted by the bishop's eulogist, La Tour.  He says that Me’zy, with some unknown design, appeared before the church at the head of a band of soldiers, while Laval was saying mass .  The service over, the bishop presented himself at the door, on which, to the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him.  The story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary evidence.

On the Sunday after Me'zy's coup d'etat, the pulpits resounded with denunciations.  The people listened, doubtless, with becoming respect; but their sympathies were with the governor; and he, on his part, had made appeals to them at more than one crisis of the quarrel.  He now fell into another indiscretion.  He banished Bourdon and Villeray, and ordered them home to France.

They carried with them the instruments of their revenge,  the accusations of Laval and the Jesuits against the author of their woes.  Of these accusations one alone would have sufficed.  Me’zy had appealed to the people.  It is true that he did so from no love of popular liberty, but simply to make head against an opponent; yet the act alone was enough, and he received a peremptory recall.  Again Laval had triumphed.  He had made one governor and unmade two, if not three.  The modest Levite, as one of his biographers calls him in his earlier days, had become the foremost power in Canada.

Laval had a threefold strength at court,  his high birth, his reputed sanctity, and the support of the Jesuits.  This was not all, for the permanency of his position in the colony gave him another advantage.  The governors were named for three years, and could be recalled at any time; but the vicar apostolic owed his appointment to the Pope, and the Pope alone could revoke it.  Thus he was beyond reach of the royal authority, and the court was in a certain sense obliged to conciliate him.  As for Me’zy, a man of no rank or influence, he could expect no mercy.  Yet, though irritable and violent, he seems to have tried conscientiously to reconcile conflicting duties, or what he regarded as such.  The governors and intendants, his successors, received, during many years, secret instructions from the court to watch Laval, and cautiously prevent him from assuming powers which did not belong to him.  It is likely that similar instructions had been given to Me'zy, and that the attempt to fulfil them had aided to embroil him with one who was probably the last man on earth with whom he would willingly have quarrelled.

An inquiry was ordered into his conduct; but.  a voice more potent than the voice of the King had called him to another tribunal.  A disease, the result perhaps of mental agitation, seized upon him and soon brought him to extremity.  As ^e lay gasping between life and death, fear and horror took possession of his soul.  Hell yawned before his fevered vision, peopled with phantoms which long and lonely meditations, after the discipline of Loyola, made real and palpable to his thought.  He smelt the fumes of infernal brimstone, and heard the bowlings of the damned.  He saw the frown of the angry Judge, and the fiery swords of avenging angels, hurling wretches like himself, writhing in anguish and despair, into the gulf of unutterable woe.  He listened to the ghostly counsellors who besieged his bed, bowed his head in penitence, made his peace with the Church, asked pardon of Laval, confessed to him, and received absolution at his hands; and his late adversaries, now benign and bland, soothed him with promises of pardon, and hopes of eternal bliss.

Before he died, he wrote to the Marquis de Tracy, newly appointed viceroy, a letter which indicates that even in his penitence he could not feel himself wholly in the wrong.  He also left a will in which the pathetic and the quaint are curiously mingled.  After praying his patron, Saint Augustine, with Saint John, Saint Peter, and all the other saints, to intercede for the pardon of his sins, he directs that his body shall be buried in the cemetery of the poor at the hospital, as being unworthy of more honored sepulture.  He then makes various legacies of piety and charity.  Other bequests follow,  one of which is to his friend Major Angoville, to whom he leaves two hundred francs, his coat of English cloth, his camlet mantle, a pair of new shoes, eight shirts with sleeve buttons, his sword and belt, and a new blanket for the major's servant.  Felix Aubert is to have fifty francs, with a gray jacket, a small coat of gray serge, "which," says the testator, "has been worn for a while," and a pair of long white stockings.  And in a codicil he further leaves to Angoville his best black coat, in order that he may wear mourning for him.

His earthly troubles closed on the night of the sixth of May.  He went to his rest among the paupers; and the priests, serenely triumphant, sang requiems over his grave.  

NOTE.   Mezy sent home charges against the bishop and the Jesuits which seem to have existed in Charlevoix's time, but for which, as well as for those made by Laval, I have sought in vain.

The substance of these mutual accusations is given thus by the minister Colbert, in a memorial addressed to the Marquis cle Tracy, in 1665: " 

The papers cited are drawn partly from the Registres du Conseil Stipirieur, still preserved at Quebec, and partly from the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.  Laval's admirer, the Abbe' La Tour, in his eagerness to justify the bishop, says that the quarrel arose from a dispute about precedence between Mezy and the intendant, and from the ill humor of the governor because the intendant shared the profits of his office.  The truth is, that there was no intendant in Canada during the term of Mezy's government.  One Robert had been appointed to the office, but he never came to the colony.  The commissioner Gaudais, during the two or three months of his stay at Quebec, took the intendant's place at the council board; but harmony between Laval and Me"zy was unbroken till after his departure.  Other writers say that the dispute arose from the old question about brandy.  Towards the end of the quarrel there was some disorder from this source, but even then the brandy question was subordinate to other subjects of strife.