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Title: In the Heart of Old Canada
Author: Wood, William Charles Henry (1864-1947)
Date of first publication: 1913
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: William Briggs, 1913
   (first edition)
Date first posted: 4 November 2009
Date last updated: 4 November 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #409

This ebook was produced by:
Marcia Brooks, David T. Jones
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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by the Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries





IN THE HEART OF
OLD CANADA

WILLIAM WOOD




IN THE HEART OF
OLD CANADA

BY

WILLIAM WOOD

WILLIAM BRIGGS

TORONTO

1913



_Copyright by William Wood_



TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL GREY

G.C,B., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O.

GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA FOR SEVEN YEARS

AND FRIEND FOR LIFE




PREFACE


A country, like a man, is a triunion of body, soul and spirit.

Everyone knows Canada as a giant body for all the world to wonder at.
But how many know her as the home of an infinitely greater soul and
spirit, the inspiration of all who heed her best appeal?

This is her age of exploitation; and most ears are deafened to
everything else by the ceaseless roar of her clamorous statistics. The
higher call is only heard at large during some rare interlude between
the acts of the drama of dollars and cents. And yet this higher call
is the one essential element that can make any human drama really
live.

"Business is business" is an excellent definition of a most excellent
thing. And, using the word "business" to cover every form of honest
money-making, the definition becomes still better by reason of its
implications. We can no more exist without business than we can
without food. Business is always and everywhere indispensable for
every people and, to a greater or less extent, for every individual
man, woman and child in the world. Moreover, it supplies the necessary
material basis for all higher things. So I have nothing whatever to
say against business here, although I look at the life of our country
from quite a different point of view. On the contrary, I am always
ready to cry "business is business" with the best of them. But I do
this because I believe that business is really business, pure and
simple--the root of existence, not the flower of life.

The flower of life is Service--the service of God in Religion, and the
service of Man in Statesmanship, War and the Intellectual Life.
Service is greater than business, immeasurably greater; for it is the
soul and spirit of life, not the mere body of existence. But it is
mainly done on behalf of business people, who naturally form the bulk
of mankind. It is sometimes done by them; and then they deserve
greater credit, other things being equal, than people habitually
engaged in service, because they must first rise above their business,
while service itself exalts its devotees. Besides, there are kinds of
applied business which rise into service by virtue of their
application. So it is quite plain that service and business are as
intimately correlated in human affairs as mind and body are in the
individual man.

This may seem an absurdly trite and obvious point to argue in a
preface; little more than a formal way of saying that it takes all
sorts to make a world. But the point is worth some elaboration, since
devotion to any kind of service, and especially to the intellectual
life, is thought a poor "business proposition" in a generation so
materialized as to think one sort alone--and that a purely commercial
sort--will make any world worth having. Our people are apt to forget
what they owe to the sword and the cross, and what they may still owe
to the pen and the brush. And they are equally apt to be heedless of
the fact, and resent it when brought to their notice, that the service
of genius is the only thing that ever has or ever can make any people
great.

Most of them think a whole nation can live on business alone and that
it can buy service like any other "goods." But every people forms a
body corporate of all the human faculties; and the health of this body
depends on the due exercise of all its vital organs. There is
evolution by atrophy downwards as well as upwards. And disuse of our
higher organs will assuredly bring the Nemesis of reversion to a lower
type. Business is the food and stomach, service the head and heart. We
cannot exist without the one, nor live without the other. If Canada
was to be lost to-morrow, what inspiring memory of her would remain
the day after? Not her material wealth, natural and acquired: material
wealth is nothing, except in so far as it forms part of things above
and beyond itself. Not her millionaires: only two names are known for
their mere riches--Croesus, who, like some other men to-day, thinking
that victory could be bought, was defeated and slain; and Midas, who
turned everything he touched to gold, and was the King of Asses too.
Not even the most wonderful inventors of commercially applied science
would remain: they never do and never can: the original and creative
works of pure science alone remain: one Darwin, one Newton will
outlive a world of Edisons. But the heroes, saints and statesmen would
most certainly remain: Jacques Cartier and Champlain; Laval and La
Mre Marie de l'Incarnation; Frontenac, Montcalm, Wolfe, Carleton and
Brock; the Fathers of Confederation; the South African Contingents;
and the one great national work of art we have as yet achieved--the
Tercentenary of Quebec.

Body, soul and spirit--we ought to have all three to glory in. But
perhaps there never was a country so tempted as Canada is now to
pamper the body of life and starve its soul and spirit. For a hundred
years we have been protected from the international struggle for
existence by an armed and guardian Mother Land. And the sheltered life
has never yet been good for any grown-up child. We are revelling in
peace and plenty to-day; and we are exploiting our natural resources
more eagerly than ever. But the heroic age of pioneers is almost over.
And in an age of mere "development" a people is apt both to become
materialized and to find self-satisfaction in becoming so. Nothing but
a "divine discontent" can better us. The true intellectual life can
only grow out of a national yearning for it. It can not be bought: if
it could the United States and Argentina might have an intellectual
productiveness bearing some slight proportion to their trade returns.
But it can be stunted, deformed and starved to death in stony places.
Imagine Shakespeare in Chicago! Yet, imagining this, remember also
that Canada is not the most fertile spot in this intellectually
sterile New World. I know the phrase, "this intellectually sterile New
World," would be thought mere nonsense unless it was duly qualified by
proper definition. So I hasten to define the essence of the
Intellectual Life as being the production of original and creative
work in pure science and the five great branches of art--music,
literature, architecture, sculpture and painting.

But while we can only look forward with hope to the day when Canada
will yearn to express her soul and spirit by means of the Intellectual
Life, we can look back with pride on the days when many a glory was
won for her in those other three great forms of Service--Religion,
Statesmanship and War. These glories are the jewels of her history.
How gladly would I set them in her diadem to-day! But, since the power
lags too far behind the will, I merely try to make this book a thread
on which some few of them may be strung together, until the time when
abler hands than mine, working in a happier future, may set them in
her crown of life.




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


_The Landmarks of Canada, A Quebec Chronology_ and _The Quebec
Battlefields_ were first published as appeals at the time of the
Champlain Tercentenary in 1908. _Wolfe and Gray's Elegy_ was written
for the "Boston Transcript" in 1909, the year of the third jubilee of
the Battle of the Plains. _The Second American Invasion_ is taken from
an introduction to a collection of original documents on the siege of
Quebec in 1775 which was published by 'The Literary and Historical
Society of Quebec' in 1905, at the time that the Dominion commemorated
Carleton's defence by the erection of the bronze tablets for which the
author composed the inscriptions. _The Fortress City_ and _The First
Five-Nation War_ now appear for the first time; though free use is
made of a work to which the author contributed and of which only
seventy-four copies were printed--Dr. Doughty's _Fortress of Quebec_.
_Tercentennial Quebec_ is a lecture delivered before Bishop's College,
Lennoxville, in 1909. It formed the basis of the author's contribution
to "The King's Book of Quebec." _An Ursuline Epic_ and
_French-Canadian Folksong_ are monographs published in very limited
editions by the Royal Society of Canada and now out of print. _The
Habitant_ is reprinted from "The Guardian" for the 25th of June, 1902,
and _A French-Canadian Poet_ from "The University Magazine" for April,
1910.

The author hereby gratefully acknowledges the kindness of all those by
whose permission he is now able to reprint the various contributions
mentioned above.




CONTENTS


                                               PAGE

Preface                                         vii

Acknowledgments                                 xii

chapter

   I. The Landmarks of Canada                     1

  II. A Quebec Chronology                         4

 III. The Quebec Battlefields                    19

  IV. Wolfe and Gray's Elegy                     30

   V. The Second American Invasion               37

  VI. The Fortress City                          47

 VII. The First Five-Nation War                  58

VIII. Tercentennial Quebec                       65

  IX. An Ursuline Epic                          111

   X. The Habitant                              209

  XI. French-Canadian Folksong                  222

 XII. A French-Canadian Poet                    293

List of Works by the Author                     311


_IN THE HEART OF
OLD CANADA_




CHAPTER I

THE LANDMARKS OF CANADA


Canada to-day, exultant over a heritage of lands outstretching any
other in our world-wide Empire, exultant over their illimitable
riches, above ground and below; exultant, too, and with better cause,
over the abounding vigour of her home-grown breed of pioneers, and
over her native strength of dike and channel, to turn the inrushing
human tide into many fructifying streams before it floods her waiting
wilderness--this Canada, even to-day, can only draw the full depth of
inspiration for her future from the glories of that past which is the
very source of all her being.

And what a past is ours! Measured by mere lapse of time it is the
longest in the experience of any of the self-governing dominions
oversea; measured by its years of crowded life the most intensely
interesting; and by its moving incidents the most romantic of them
all. Through both _rgimes_ fortune has led us to be always first: in
discovery, in settlement, in mighty wars, in parliaments, and in
confederation. We are no new-transplanted stock; but scions of
deep-rooted generations, each working out its own well-wrought career,
yet all of them inevitably tending to unite free parts within a
nation, and, in its turn, this, with other free and equal nations,
within a free and guardian Empire.

And, wherever we go, some landmark reminds us who preceded or begat
us. Norseman and Basque; Indian of mountain, wood or plain; French of
the old _rgime_; French-Canadian as _coureur de bois_ and _voyageur_,
_seigneur_ or simple _habitant_; British Islander of every kin, United
Empire Loyalist, and Anglo-Canadian born and bred; explorer, trader,
missionary, priest; soldier and sailor; statesman and orator; and the
first promise of author, artist and the man of science--each has left
landmarks to tell his story to all who listen understandingly.

What is a landmark? _A landmark is anything preservable which is
essentially connected with great acts or persons that once stirred our
life and still stir our memory._ It may be a monument set up by pious
hands; a building, a ruin, or a site; a battlefield or fort; a rostrum
or a poet's walk; any natural object; any handiwork of man; or even
the mere local habitation of a legend or a name. But, whatever the
form, its spirit makes every true landmark a talismanic heirloom, only
to be lost to our peril and our shame.

And now, as we begin our work, in this tercentennial year of Canada's
foundation, we find our first opportunity in the proposed dedication
of the greatest of all our landmarks, that world-famous one where form
and spirit, heirloom and talisman, are blent, in complete perfection,
on the fields of battle at Quebec. Here stood seven undauntable
champions: Champlain, Frontenac, Montcalm, Wolfe, Murray, Lvis,
Carleton. Here--unique in universal history--lies the one scene of so
many mighty conflicts, which changed the destinies of empires, but
ever maintained the honour of all who met in arms. Here Americans
shared the triumph of one victory, British-born of two, French of
three, and French-Canadians of no less than four. And here and now is
the time and place for "Landmarkers," all over the Dominion, to unite
in spreading knowledge, arousing enthusiasm, concentrating interest,
and increasing the Battlefields Fund started by our Visitor, the
Governor-General, supported by our Honorary President, the Prime
Minister, and approved by His Majesty the King.

On the third day of this July we enter the fourth century of Canadian
life. Most have the overmastering desire to make our country rich: and
rightly--just so far as riches make strength. But remember that our
business depends on energy inherited and transformed; that warriors,
statesmen and divines made Canada Canadian; that all nations decay who
fail in arms and art; and that we are now particularly apt to mistake
comfort for civilization. We want no dead hand's constricting grip, no
landmark's bar to real progress--for landmarks themselves are signs of
progress. But our Canada does need the exalting touch of every
landmark that bears a living message, and that she can keep either in
substance or in souvenir; lest, seeking the whole mere world of
riches, she lose her own soul.




CHAPTER II

A QUEBEC CHRONOLOGY

IN THE XVITH--XVIITH--XVIIITH--XIXTH--XXTH CENTURIES


1535.--JACQUES CARTIER enters the St. Charles River on the 14th of
September and winters beside the Indian village of _Stadacona_, the
site of which is now included in the city of Quebec.

1540.--FRANCIS I makes ROBERVAL his Viceroy in New France.

1541.--CARTIER, sent out by ROBERVAL, builds a fort at Cap Rouge, a
few miles above Quebec, and winters there.

1542.--ROBERVAL arrives and winters at Cartier's fort.

1543-1607.--Basque and French fishermen frequent the Lower St.
Lawrence, and a few small trading-posts are established in different
parts of the country; but no town settlement of any kind has had a
continuous life from that time to this.

1608.--CHAMPLAIN founds CANADA by building his _Abitacion_ at Quebec.
Champlain was soldier, sailor, statesman and pioneer, equally at home
in an Indian wigwam or at the court of HENRY IV of France; and his
staunch and pious character is worthy of a Father of his country.

1620.--First _Fort St. Louis_ begun.

1625.--FRENCH MISSIONARIES arrive. Many suffer death by torture, but
others always take their place.

1629.--The KIRKES take Quebec in the name of CHARLES I of England, who
holds it three years in pledge for the dowry of his Queen, Henrietta
Maria of France, and who grants his friend, Sir William Alexander,
Earl of Stirling, "_The County and Lordship of Canada_"!

1632.--Quebec restored to the Crown of France.

1635.--CHAMPLAIN dies on Christmas day, just a century after the
landing of Jacques Cartier. Quebec contains hardly a hundred souls,
and only three small public buildings: the store belonging to the
trading company of the _Cent Associs_, _Fort St. Louis_, on the site
of the present Chteau Frontenac Hotel, and the parish church of
_Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance_, on the site of the present Basilica.
Champlain caused the Angelus to be rung three times a day, a custom
still observed in Quebec.

1639.--Arrival of the _Ursulines_ and _Hospitalires_.

1646.--On New Year's Eve the first play ever performed in Quebec,
Corneille's _Le Cid_, was given before the Governor and the Jesuit
Fathers in a store-room belonging to the _Cent Associs_ in Ste Anne
Street.

1647.--First _Chteau St. Louis_. Last one burnt 1834. This was the
residence of both French and British Governors, and stood near the
present Terrace.

1648.--The Governor in Council appoints Jacques Boisdon (bibulous
cognomen!) first and sole innkeeper of Quebec, on condition "that the
said Jacques Boisdon settles in the square in front of the church, so
that the people may go there to warm themselves; and that he keeps
nobody in his house during High Mass, sermons, the catechism or
Vespers."

1656.--GREAT IROQUOIS RAID and _massacre_ of the _Hurons_ in sight of
Quebec.

1659-1706.--Great episcopate of the first Bishop of Quebec, Franois
de MONTMORENCY-LAVAL.

1660-3.--CANADA threatened with _extermination_ by _Indians_, by
_famine_, by the complete _downfall_ of the whole Colony, and by the
most terrible _earthquakes_ in her history. LAVAL, the first _Bishop_,
and LA MRE MARIE DE L'INCARNATION, first Superior of the _Ursuline_
nuns, persuade Canadians that their country is at the beginning of a
great career and not at the end of a dismal failure. Laval founded his
Seminary during the seven months of continual earthquakes. The present
Ursuline convent went through four sieges in eighty-five years, and
never lacked nuns to risk their lives in trying to safeguard it under
fire, or to join the _Hospitalires_ in nursing the sick and wounded
of both sides.

1663.--The Chartered Company of the _Cent Associs_ lapses, and QUEBEC
is declared the CAPITAL of the ROYAL PROVINCE OF NEW FRANCE. The
population of Quebec is still only 500, of which 150 belong to
Religious Communities.

1665.--The new Royal Governor arrives; also the Great Intendant, JEAN
TALON, 212 persons of title or fortune, 12 companies of French
Regulars, and many settlers, who became known as _habitants_. DE
TRACY, the King's personal VICEROY, arrives and makes war on the
Iroquois.

1670.--In this year there are 700 births in the little colony,
representing a birth-rate three times as high as the average of
civilized peoples to-day.

1672-82 and 1689-98.--Governorships of FRONTENAC, who built the first
walls, defeated the Indians, repulsed the first American Invasion, and
upheld his authority against all rivals.

1688.--LAVAL, the first Canadian Bishop, founds a church, called
_Notre-Dame des Victoires_ after the saving of Quebec in 1690 and
1711. Taschereau, the first Canadian Cardinal, celebrated the
bi-centenary in 1888. This church is nearly on the same site as
Champlain's _Abitacion_. It has a relic of the True Cross, and one of
Ste. Genevive, on whose _fte_ the Chaplain blesses unleavened bread
for women who dread the pains of childbirth.

1690.--FRONTENAC repulses PHIPS and THE FIRST AMERICAN INVASION OF
CANADA.

1692.--FRONTENAC builds _the first walls_ round Quebec.

1711.--Sir Hovenden Walker wrecked on his way to attack Quebec.

1755-60.--Complete _inefficiency_ under the Governor-General,
VAUDREUIL, and _corruption_ under the Intendant, BIGOT.

1756-59.--French forces commanded by MONTCALM, the greatest Frenchman
of the whole New World, one of the most tragically heroic figures of
all time, and a most consummate master of the art of war.

1759.--SIEGE OF QUEBEC and BATTLE of the PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.

Inscription over Wolfe's death-place:


HERE DIED WOLFE VICTORIOUS.


Inscription over grave of Montcalm:


          HONNEUR A MONTCALM
              LE DESTIN
     EN LUI DROBANT LA VICTOIRE
            L'A RCOMPENS
       PAR INE MORT GLORIEUSE.


Inscription on Monument to Wolfe and Montcalm together:

          MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM
              FAMAM HISTORIA
          MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS
                  DEDIT.


_Montcalm_ was buried in the _Ursuline_ Chapel, where an _Anglican_
service was held a few days later in memory of _Wolfe_. The _Highland
Chaplain_ conducted the _Presbyterian_ memorial service in the
_Jesuit_ Barracks.

1760.--LEVIS defeats MURRAY in the _second battle of the Plains_. In
1860 a monument was erected AUX BRAVES who redressed the balance of
victory in favour of <sc>France</sc>.

1763.--Just 100 years after declaring Canada the Royal Province of New
France the FRENCH CROWN _cedes the sovereignty_ to GEORGE III.

1759-74.--Canada under the generous _military rule_ of MURRAY and
CARLETON at Quebec.

1774.--THE QUEBEC ACT passed by the _Imperial Parliament_.

1775-6.--FRENCH- and ENGLISH-Speaking British subjects, under
CARLETON, defeat THE SECOND AMERICAN INVASION OF CANADA.

Inscription where Arnold was repulsed:


                  HERE STOOD

          HER OLD AND NEW DEFENDERS

          UNITING, GUARDING, SAVING

                    CANADA

               DEFEATING ARNOLD

      AT THE SAULT-AU-MATELOT BARRICADE

              ON THE LAST DAY OF

                    1775

                 GUY CARLETON

                COMMANDING AT

                   QUEBEC.


Inscription where Montgomery was repulsed:


                     HERE STOOD

                THE UNDAUNTED FIFTY

                   SAFEGUARDING

                      CANADA

               DEFEATING MONTGOMERY

          AT THE PRS-DE-VILLE BARRICADE

                 ON THE LAST DAY OF

                       1775

                   GUY CARLETON

                  COMMANDING AT

                      QUEBEC.


1775-90.--Coming of the UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS, some of whom settled
in Quebec and have descendants there at the present day.

1782.--NELSON at Quebec in H.M.S. _Albemarle_. He frequented the house
on the site of the present No. 15, Ramparts, which belonged to a U.E.
Loyalist, a Mr. Woolsey. And it was from _Bandon Lodge_, on the site
of a house bearing the same name and numbered 55 Grande Alle, that he
was decoyed away by a Quebecer and one of his own officers, lest he
should marry pretty Mary Simpson, daughter of Wolfe's old Provost
Marshal.

1783.--The _first British fortification_ of Quebec. The remains of
those parts of this fortification which occupied Cape Diamond are
still pointed out as "Old French Works." As a matter of fact, there
are no old French works remaining anywhere.

1787.--His Majesty, KING WILLIAM IV, then a Naval Officer in H.M.S.
_Pegasus_, is THE FIRST MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY to visit Quebec. He
paid a visit to the Ursulines, who entered in their diary that they
were charmed with him and that they found him _so polite, although he
is a sailor_! It is said that this visit to Quebec might have changed
the history of England, as, by some unaccountable mistake, the
contractor made the Royal stand, to view the fireworks, over a powder
magazine! A Royal Review was held on the site of Wolfe's great
victory.

1791-4.--His Royal Highness the DUKE OF KENT, father of QUEEN
VICTORIA, spends three years in Quebec with his regiment, the 7th
Royal Fusiliers. A State Ball was given at the Chteau St. Louis in
honour of his twenty-fourth birthday. He is said to have been the
keenest dancer present, keeping the party up till five o'clock in the
morning. The elections for the first Canadian Parliament resulted in
some lively scenes; and it is said that the Duke, driving _incognito_
to Charlesbourg, a village near Quebec, and seeing a friend of his
attacked by two men and knocked down, doubled his royal fists and
himself knocked down, with a single right and left, both his friend's
assailants. From Quebec the Duke went to the West Indies, where he
greatly distinguished himself in action at Martinique, a name ever
afterwards dear to Queen Victoria, who was justly proud of being a
soldier's daughter.

1792.--THE FIRST PARLIAMENT IN GREATER BRITAIN, _under the direct
authority of a Governor General_, opens at Quebec. It was opened by
General Clarke, representing Carleton. It was held on a most historic
site; where the Bishops of the old _rgime_ always had their Palace,
where King Edward VII stayed during his visit in 1860, where the
Fathers of Confederation began their sessions in 1864,and where the
Dominion of Canada was proclaimed in 1867.

1793.--The Anglican see of Quebec established. The Bishop is cordially
welcomed by the French-Canadian Bishop.

1799.--MONSEIGNEUR PLESSIS, _Vicar-General of the French-Canadian
Roman Catholic_ diocese of Quebec, preaches a sermon in the Basilica
to celebrate NELSON'S victory at the Nile; and the _Bishop's
Mandement_ ordains a _General Thanksgiving_ for the blessings insured
to Canada by the just laws and protecting arms of the BRITISH CROWN.

1799-1804.--H.M. KING GEORGE III takes great interest in the building
of the _Anglican Cathedral_, as H.M. KING LOUIS XIV had done in the
welfare of the _Basilica_. Each King gave plate or vestments and other
objects for religious service to his respective church in Quebec.
There has always been a Royal pew in the Anglican cathedral, and it
has often been occupied by Royalty. The old colours of the 69th
Regiment, over the stalls, were replaced by new ones presented on the
Esplanade by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, then a lieutenant, and now
(1911), forty years after, the first Royal Governor-General. The
Archbishop of Canterbury preached the Centenary sermon here in 1904.
The Duke of Richmond, who was buried here in 1819, was
Governor-General at the time of his death. He was nephew to the
previous Duke of Richmond, who was an officer in Wolfe's old regiment,
whose guardians tried to get Wolfe to become his tutor in 1754, and
who actually did become the pupil of Carleton, who was himself a
Governor-General of Canada!

1812.--QUEBEC sends her full quota to repel THE THIRD AMERICAN
INVASION OF CANADA. The _French_ and _English_ heroes on the British
side at _Chteauguay_ and _Queenston Heights_ were both quartered at
Quebec at different times. The street across which _Montcalm's_ and
_Wolfe's_ men fired into each others' faces is called after _de
Salaberry_, and _Brock_ lived in the third house from the top of
Fabrique Street.

1823.--The present CITADEL and WALLS built after a plan approved by
WELLINGTON and completed in 1832 at a cost of $35,000,000.00, paid by
the Imperial Government. This was only one item of the more than a
_hundred millions sterling_, or $500,000,000.00, _spent by the Mother
Country on the actual work of fortifications alone_, apart from
troops, etc. And much of this wise and generous expense helped to
_keep Canada both British and Canadian_.

1824.--The LITERARY and HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF QUEBEC established by a
_Royal Charter_ granted by H.M. KING WILLIAM IV>. This is the _senior
learned society in Greater Britain_; and has had successive
Governors-General for its Patron since its foundation. Among its
curios are a piece of the ship from which Wolfe directed the attack on
Montmorency, part of the first Canadian printing-press, the last
Canadian pillory and the model of the _Royal William_.

1833.--In August the _ROYAL WILLIAM_, built in and sailing from
QUEBEC, makes the _first of all Transatlantic voyages entirely under
steam_. Under her new name, _Isabella Segundo_, she was the _first
steamer in the world to fire a shot in action_, on the 5th of May,
1836, in the Bay of San Sebastian, when helping Sir de Lacy Evans's
British Legion against the Carlists. She was built by James Goudie,
whose father built the British men-of-war for service on the Great
Lakes in the war of 1812.

1837.--Differences of opinion on national house-keeping cause a
Canadian Rebellion. Many loyal Volunteers raised in Quebec.

1838.--LORD DURHAM'S administration.

1839.--_The Durham Report._

1840.--The Union Act and RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT.

1852.--The _first French-Canadian University_ founded, and called
after _Laval_.

1854.--_Seigniorial Tenure_ abolished.

1858.--Raising of the 100th Regiment, the _Royal Canadians_.

1860.--H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, since His Majesty KING EDWARD VII,
lands at Quebec from H.M.S. _Hero_ on the 18th of August.

1861.--H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh at Quebec.

1864.--"THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION" meet at Quebec.

1866.--The First Fenian Raid. Quebec under arms.

1867.--The DOMINION OF CANADA proclaimed at Quebec. The original draft
proposed the title as "_The Kingdom of Canada_."

1869.--H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught at Quebec with his Regiment.

1870.--Second Fenian Raid--Quebec again under arms. H.R.H. the _Duke
of Connaught wears the Canadian General Service Medal_ for his
presence at the front _in defence of Canada_ on this occasion.

1870.--The _Red River Expedition_ under Colonel, now Field-Marshal
Viscount, _Wolseley_ has a contingent from Quebec.

1870.--A good many French-Canadians leave for Rome to join the Papal
Zouaves in defence of the Pope.

1871.--The _Royal Canadian Artillery_, the _first Regulars under the
Canadian Government_, has its _first parade_ at Quebec.

1872-8.--LORD DUFFERIN plans many improvements to commemorate Canadian
history at Quebec. He would have preferred for his new title, The
Marquess of Dufferin _and Quebec_.

1875.--Celebration of the 100th anniversary of the _Saving of Canada
by Carleton_ at Quebec.

1878-83.--H.R.H. the PRINCESS LOUISE often visits Quebec with H.E. the
_Marquess of Lorne_.

1879.--H.M. QUEEN VICTORIA takes great interest in, and contributes to
the cost of building, _Kent Gate_, as a memorial of _her father's
stay_ at Quebec, 1791-4.

1880.--H.R.H. the Duke of Albany visits Quebec.

1883.--H.R.H. Prince GEORGE OF WALES, now King George V, visits Quebec
for the first time. He revisits it in 1890.

1884.--_Canadian Voyageurs_ for the Nile Expedition rendezvous at
Quebec.

1885.--The _Royal Canadian Artillery_ and 9th Regiment _Voltigeurs de
Qubec_ leave for the front during the _North-West Rebellion_.

1889.--The _Ursulines_ and _Hospitalires_ celebrate the 250th
anniversary of their foundation in Quebec.

1890.--T.R.H. the Duke and Duchess of Connaught visit Quebec.

1897.--Lord Aberdeen unveils the _statue of the Queen_ in Victoria
Park in honour of her _Diamond Jubilee_, and the representative
_Canadian contingent_ sent to England for this occasion parades on the
Esplanade.

1899.--The FIRST CANADIAN CONTINGENT for the _South African War_
embarks at Quebec.

1901.--T.R.H. the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, now their
Majesties King George V and Queen Mary, visit Quebec on their
_Imperial Tour_.

1902.--The _First Canadian Coronation Contingent_ parades to embark at
Quebec. (France sends the _Montcalm_ to the _Coronation Naval Review_
in England.)

1905.--H.E. LORD GREY unveils the statue to those Quebecers who died
in South Africa


           FOR EMPIRE, CANADA, QUEBEC.

    Not by the power of commerce, art, or pen
    Shall our great Empire stand; nor has it stood;
    But by the noble deeds of noble men,
    Heroic lives, and Heroes' outpoured blood.


1906.--H.R.H. PRINCE ARTHUR OF CONNAUGHT, returning from _King
Edward's Garter Mission_ to H.I.M. the Emperor of Japan, is the
eleventh member of the Royal Family to visit Quebec.

1908.--TERCENTENARY of the foundation of Canada by Champlain at
Quebec. _Ftes_ presided over by H.M. KING GEORGE V.

1908.--_The national foundation of_ THE QUEBEC BATTLEFIELDS PARK by
KING GEORGE V.

1911.--H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT arrives as the _first Royal
Governor-General of Canada_. H.E. EARL GREY leaves, after the most
unusually long term of seven years, amid universal regret. Quebec
presents him with a silver model of the Wolfe-Montcalm monument.

The personal inscription is:


                        QUEBEC
                 CONDITOR--CHAMPLAIN
          CONSERVATORES--FRONTENAC, CARLETON
                  COMMEMORATOR--GREY




CHAPTER III

THE QUEBEC BATTLEFIELDS:[1]


     _An Appeal issued in French and English under the
     authority of the Headquarters of the Quebec
     Battlefields Association, Quebec, Saturday, 11th April,
     1908._


PREFACE

The Canadian Press patriotically gave the "Appeal to History" a
circulation of 3,000,000, by reprinting it _verbatim_ from the King's
Printer's advance edition of 1000 copies in each language, published
on Montcalm's birthday, the 29th of February. During March all the
questions, misunderstandings and suggestions which came to light in
any part of the French- or English-speaking world were carefully
considered; and the Headquarters Committee now submit the General
Appeal to the public in its revised, enlarged and final form.

The Committee can reassure the Public on a most important point. The
additions to the political and military sources of original
information on the Seven Years' War, and the introduction of complete
naval documents for the first time, have naturally invalidated every
account of Wolfe's Siege of Quebec written before the present century.

[Footnote 1: The quotations are from the author's own work, _The Fight
for Canada_.]

But, most fortunately, the effect of all this original research is to
heighten the glory of the four military chiefs--Montcalm, Lvis, Wolfe
and Murray--even though the overwhelming influence of Sea-Power on the
issue of the war in general is now brought home to the Quebec
campaigns in particular. And, as the collection of all the original
evidence is now practically complete, it is safe to say that the good
name of the soldiers and sailors engaged, and of the different peoples
they represented to such advantage, is secure for ever, and that, no
matter what probing question may be raised, the answer of history will
always be--_there is nothing to fear from the truth._


THE QUEBEC BATTLEFIELDS, 1690-1775 AN APPEAL TO HISTORY


I

The Plains of Abraham stand alone among the world's immortal
battlefields, as the place where an empire was lost and won in the
_first_ clash of arms, the balance of victory was redressed in the
_second_, and the honour of each army was heightened in _both_.

Famous as they are, however, the Plains are not the only battlefield
at Quebec, nor even the only one that is a source of pride to the
French- and English-speaking peoples. In less than a century
Americans, British, French and French-Canadians took part in four
sieges and five battles. There were decisive actions; but the losing
side was never disgraced, and the winning side was always composed of
allied forces who shared the triumph among them. American Rangers
accompanied Wolfe, and French-Canadians helped Carleton to save the
future Dominion; while French and French-Canadians together won the
day under Frontenac, under Montcalm at Montmorency, and under Lvis at
Ste. Foy.

There is no record known--nor even any legend in tradition--of so many
momentous feats of arms performed, on land and water, by fleets and
armies of so many different peoples, with so much alternate victory
and such honour in defeat--and all within a single scene. And so it is
no exaggeration of this commemorative hour, but the lasting,
well-authenticated truth to say, that, take them for all in all, the
fields of battle at Quebec are quite unique in universal history.

And is not to-day also unique as an opportunity of taking occasion by
the hand, to set this priceless ground apart from the catalogue of
common things, and preserve it as an Anglo-French heirloom for all
time to come? An appeal to history would be most appropriate to any
year within the final decade of the Hundred Years' Peace between the
once-contending powers of France, the British Empire, and the United
States. But 1908 is by far the best year among the ten; for it marks
the 300th birthday of that Canada which has become the senior of all
the oversea self-governing dominions of King Edward VII--and under
what king could we more fitly celebrate this imperishable _entente
cordiale d'honneur_?


II

The secret instructions sent out from France in 1759 were the death
warrant of Montcalm: _La guerre est le tombeau des Montcalm_ "...it is
indispensable to keep a foothold.... The King counts upon your zeal,
courage and tenacity." Montcalm replied: "...I shall do everything to
save this unhappy colony, or die." And he kept his word. He had
already done splendid service in a losing cause; stemming the enemy's
advance by three desperate rearguard victories in three successive
years. Now he stood at bay for the last time. The country was
starving. The corrupt Intendant and his myrmidons were still preying
on all that was left of its resources. The army had numbers enough,
and French and Canadian gallantry to spare. But the Governor added
spiteful interference to the other distractions of a divided command.
The mail that brought the final orders was the first for eight months;
and Old France and New were completely separated by a thousand leagues
of hostile sea, in whose invisible, constricting grasp Quebec had long
been held.

    *    *    *    *    *

In June Admiral Saunders led up the St. Lawrence the greatest fleet in
any part of the world. Saunders was a star of the service even among
the galaxy then renowned at sea. With him were the future Lord St.
Vincent, the future Captain Cook, who made the first British chart of
the River, and several more who rose to high distinction. His fleet
comprised a quarter of the whole Royal Navy; and, with its convoy,
numbered 277 sail of every kind. Splendidly navigated by twice as many
seamen as Wolfe's 9000 soldiers, the fleet and convoy made the
besiegers an amphibious force at Quebec, while also holding the River
eastward against all comers.

    *    *    *    *    *

Wolfe, worn out, half despairing, twice repulsed, at last saw his
chance, the only one he might ever have. He knew that disease was
wasting him away, and that he was about to stake his whole reputation
on a most daring venture. And he must have felt the full poignancy of
the now famous line, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," when
he repeated Gray's _Elegy_ to the officers in his reconnoitring boat
off Sillery Point the day before the battle. But he was a profoundly
apt master of the art of war; and his undauntable spirit soared with
the hope of death in victory. Planning and acting entirely on his own
initiative he crowned three nights and days of finely combined
manoeuvres, on land and water, over a front of thirty miles, by the
consummate stratagem which placed _the first of all two-deep thin red
lines_ across the Plains of Abraham exactly at the favourable moment.
And who that knows battle and battlefield knows of another scene and
setting like this one on that 13th morning of September?

"All Nature contains no scene more fit for mighty deeds than the
stupendous amphitheatre in the midst of which Wolfe was waiting to
play the hero's part. For the top of the promontory made a giant
stage, where his army now stood between the stronghold of New France
and the whole dominion of the West. Immediately before him lay his
chosen battlefield; beyond that, Quebec. To his left lay the northern
theatre, gradually rising and widening, throughout all its magnificent
expanse, until the far-ranging Laurentians closed in the view with
their rampart-like blue semicircle of eighty miles. To his right, the
southern theatre; where league upon league of undulating upland rolled
outward to a still farther-off horizon, whose wider semicircle,
curving in to overlap its northern counterpart, made the vast
mountain-ring complete. While, east and west, across the arena where
he was about to contend for the prize of half a continent, the
majestic River, full-charged with the right-hand force of Britain,
ebbed and flowed, through gates of empire, on its uniting course
between Earth's greatest Lakes and greatest Ocean. And here, too, at
these Narrows of Quebec, lay the fit meeting place of the Old World
with the New. For the westward river gate led on to the labyrinthine
waterways of all America, while the eastward stood more open
still--flung wide to all the Seven Seas."

Meanwhile, Montcalm had done all he could against false friends and
open enemies. He had repulsed Wolfe's assault at Montmorency and
checkmated every move he could divine through the impenetrable screen
of the British fleet. A week before the battle he had sent a regiment
to guard the Heights of Abraham; and, on the very eve of it, had
ordered back the same regiment to watch the path up which Wolfe came
next morning. But the Governor again counter-ordered! _There they are
where they have no right to be!_--said Montcalm, as he spurred on to
reconnoitre the red wall that had so suddenly sprung up across the
Plains. He had no choice but instant action. "...he rode down the
front of his line of battle, stopping to say a few stirring words to
each regiment as he passed. Whenever he asked the men if they were
tired, they said they were never tired before a battle; and all ranks
showed as much eagerness to come to close quarters as the British did
themselves.... Montcalm towered aloft and alone--the last great
Frenchman of the Western World...he never stood higher in all manly
minds than on that fatal day. And, as he rode before his men there,
his presence seemed to call them on like a _drapeau vivant_ of France
herself." He fought like a general and died like a hero.

Never were stauncher champions than those two leaders and their six
brigadiers. "Let us remember how, on the victorious side, the young
commander was killed in the forefront of the fight; how his successor
was wounded at the head of his brigade; and how the command-in-chief
passed from hand to hand, with bewildering rapidity, till each of the
four British Generals had held it in turn during the space of one
short half-hour; then, how the devotion of the four Generals on the
other side was even more conspicuous, since every single one of these
brave men laid down his life to save the day for France; and, above
all, let us remember how lasting the twin renown of Wolfe and Montcalm
themselves should be, when the one was so consummate in his victory,
and the other so truly glorious in defeat."

The next year saw the second battle of the Plains, when Lvis marched
down from Montreal, over the almost impassable spring roads, and beat
back Murray within the walls, after a most desperate and bloody fight.
At the propitious moment Lvis rode along his line, with his hat on
the point of his sword as the signal for a general charge, in which
the French-Canadians greatly distinguished themselves. He quickly
invested the town and drove the siege home to the utmost. "At nine
o'clock on the night of the 15th of May three men-of-war came in
together. The officer commanding at Beauport immediately sent Lvis a
dispatch to say the French ships had just arrived. But the messenger
was stopped by Murray's outposts. Lvis himself was meanwhile
preparing to advance on Quebec in force; when a prisoner, who had just
been taken, told him these vessels were the vanguard of the _British_
fleet!" Of course, he raised the siege at once. But he retired
unconquered; and Vauquelin covered his line of retreat by water as
gallantly as he had made his own advance by land. Thus France left
Quebec with all the honours of war.


III

There's the call of the blood--of the best of our living, pulsing,
quickening blood to-day--a call to every French and English ear--from
this one ground alone:--and therefore an irresistible appeal from all
the Battlefields together. The cause of strife is long since outworn
and cast aside: only its chivalry remains. The meaner passions,
jealousies and schemes arose and flourished most in courts, and
parliaments, and mobs, of different countries, far asunder. But the
finer essence of the fatherlands was in the men who actually met in
arms. And here, now and forever, are the field, the memory and the
inspiration of all that is most heroic in the contending races.

From Champlain to Carleton, in many troublous times during 167 years,
Quebec was the scene of fateful action for Iroquois and Huron; for
French of every quarter, from Normandy and Brittany to Languedoc and
Roussillon; for French-Canadians of the whole long waterway from the
Lakes and Mississippi to the St. Lawrence and Atlantic; for Americans
from their thirteen colonies; for all the kindred of the British
Isles--English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh, Channel Islanders and
Orcadians; and for Newfoundlanders, the first Anglo-Canadians, and the
forerunners of the United Empire Loyalists.

    *    *    *    *    *

Champlain, in 1608, first built his _Abitacion_ against the menace of
the wilderness. In 1629 the Kirkes sailed up and took his Fort St.
Louis in the name of Charles I, who granted the unconsidered trifle of
"The Lordship and County of Canada" to his good friend, Sir William
Alexander, Baronet of Nova Scotia! But in 1690 the summons of Sir
William Phips was victoriously answered by Frontenac--from _the mouth
of my cannon_. In 1759 Montcalm won his fourth victory by repulsing
Wolfe at Montmorency: then both died on the Plains, where Lvis and
Murray fought again next year. Finally, on the last day of 1775,
French and English first stood together as the British defence of
Canada, under Carleton, against the Americans under Montgomery and
Arnold. This is our true wonder-tale of war; _and we have nothing to
fear from the truth_.

    *    *    *    *    *

Is it to be thought of that we should fail to dedicate what our
forefathers have so consecrated as the one field of glory common to us
all? There is no question of barring modern progress--the energy for
which we inherit from these very ancestors; and no town should ever be
made a mere "show place," devoted to the pettier kinds of touristry
and dilettante antiquarian delights. But Quebec has room to set aside
the most typical spots for commemoration; and this on the sound
business principle of putting every site to its most efficient use. So
there remains nothing beyond the time and trouble and expense of
making what will become _The Quebec Battlefields Park_. This will
include the best of the Plains of Abraham, and the best of every other
centre of action that can be preserved in whole, or part, or only in
souvenir by means of a tablet. Appropriate places within these limits
could be chosen to commemorate the names of eleven historic
characters: Champlain, who founded Canada; Montcalm, Wolfe, Lvis,
Murray, Saunders and Vauquelin, who fought for her; Cook and
Bougainville, the circumnavigators, who did her yeoman service; and
Frontenac and Carleton, who saved her, in different ways, to the same
end, and from the common enemy.

But no historic sites will be obscured, much less obliterated; and no
incongruous features of a park will mar the appeal which the
battlefields make to the historic imagination. One distinctive name
is required to include the Plains and every other great war-landmark
round Quebec. Wolfe's quarters were seven miles below the Plains, the
point where Vauquelin made his last stand is twenty miles above. What
other single name could cover all three except _The Quebec
Battlefields_, which is both self-explaining and unique? The word
_Park_ is a mere official designation of an administrative entity: it
will never live in history or literature or everyday talk. And _The
Plains of Abraham_ will no more lose their name and identity in a
Battlefields Park than Quebec has lost either name or identity in the
Dominion of Canada. Instead, their identity will regain its full
extent, which will be an open book for all who come to read the story
of their hero-making fights. And, as for their own familiar
name--that, being immortal, can never suffer change.

    *    *    *    *    *

High above all, on a calm central summit of this field of double
victory and fourfold glory, the Angel of Peace will stand in
benediction of the scene. In her blest presence we heirs of a fame
told round the world in French and English speech can dwell upon a
bounteous view that has long forgotten the strange, grim face of war.
But remember!...the statue will rest upon a field of battle; and our
own peace rests on ancestral prowess. The very ground reminds us of
supreme ordeals. And though, in mere size, it is no more, to the whole
vast bulk of Canada, than the flag is to a man-of-war, yet, like the
flag, it is the sign and symbol of a people's soul.




CHAPTER IV

WOLFE AND GRAY'S _ELEGY_


Many good people resent any review of the facts about a picturesque
incident as a wanton attempt to lay sacrilegious hands on what they
secretly fear is almost too good to be true. And I am well aware that,
in this very matter of Wolfe and Gray's _Elegy_, I have been
repeatedly held up to fond believers, on both sides of the water and
the line, as a particularly cold, crafty and altogether heartless
iconoclast. But if these believers will only read the present article
they will see that I have really been fighting on their own side all
along, and doing my best to find some solid facts for them to base
their faith on. Indeed, I go farther than most of them; for I think
such incidents, when authentic, are very important from the strictly
historical point of view. War is an art as well as a science, and
every battle is a drama in the making. Personality is of the utmost
consequence at critical moments; and every personal touch adds to our
knowledge of its influence. So there are the most cogently scientific
reasons for trying to find out the true version of what is a most
characteristic episode in the great story of the whole Battle of the
Plains.

Hundreds of writers have told millions of readers how Wolfe turned to
Midshipman Robinson, who was steering the first boat down to the final
attack on Quebec, and asked him how old he was. "Seventeen, Sir!" Then
follows whatever remark is supposed to be most appropriate to the
occasion and to the respective positions of a midshipman and
major-general. After this there is generally some local and temporary
colour, with the inevitable purple patch duly worked in. And then
Wolfe recites more or less of the _Elegy_, lays the strongest emphasis
on the line--"The paths of glory lead but to the grave," and ends by
assuring his audience, "I would rather have written those words than
take Quebec to-morrow." There are plenty of minor variants of this
current version. But the above contains the gist of them all.

Now, is it likely that any general would recite poetry at such a time?
In surprise attacks by night soldiers must keep silence, on pain of
death. Would Wolfe, the strict disciplinarian, who always set his men
the best example, be the first to break the rule? He was sitting
beside men who knew they were going on some desperate venture, and
whom he naturally wished to encourage. Would he choose this
opportunity for telling them that their own path of glory was sure to
lead them to the grave? And is it likely that he would distract the
attention of the man on whose handling of the principal boat so much
depended--especially after giving distinct orders that no one was to
interfere with the naval officers in the execution of their duty?
Besides, would he use the word "to-morrow" when he knew he was going
to fight on that very day, and within a very few hours of the time at
which this recitation is supposed to have taken place?

But, apart from all questions of mere likelihood, there is abundance
of actual evidence against this theatrical perversion. "Midshipman
Robinson" was not a midshipman. He was not even a naval officer. His
name was not Robinson. He was not seventeen. And he was not in Wolfe's
boat at all. There is no confusion of identity, as all accounts, false
and true, agree upon the same individual as the original authority for
the story. Yet this man never said he was a midshipman, or a naval
officer of any kind, or seventeen years of age; nor did he ever say he
steered Wolfe's boat down to the attack, or heard Wolfe recite the
_Elegy_ in it; nor did he ever claim to have been in any of the boats
on that occasion. This evidence is fully substantiated by the original
documents quoted by Professor E. E. Morris in _The English Historical
Review_ for January, 1900, by those given as references in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ (vol. xlix, p. 57--John Robison,
1739-1805), and by those I am about to quote here.

It is not hard to see how the popular perversion arose and has
flourished to the present day. The tale was a strikingly fine one in
itself. The feat of arms which its hero performed has made his name
immortal. What more natural than that the public, which never knew the
facts, should presently blend both tale and feat of arms together; for
all myths have a tendency towards unifying time and place in relation
to any crisis in their hero's life. Wolfe's case, however, involves no
quarrel between history and literature, fact and imagination. On the
contrary, it reconciles them; for anyone can see now that the common
version is bad history, and, in the light of the true version, equally
bad art--the offspring of mere theatrical fancy and not of dramatic
insight.

The true story is this. The author of it is John Robison. The Rev.
Morison Bryce, of Baldernock Manse, Milngavie, Glasgow, and minister
of the parish in which Robison was born, says that the family name is
pronounced with the _i_ long, Rob_i_son. Now Robison, like his son,
Sir John, who died in 1843, was a well-known Scottish worthy of high
distinction. He was born in 1739, graduated at Glasgow in 1756, and
came out to Quebec in 1759 as tutor to the young son of Admiral
Knowles. Everyone has to be accounted for on board ship, either by
holding actual or relative rank, and Robison was "rated as a
midshipman"--a very different thing from being one. Thirteen years
later he held the relative rank of colonel in Russia, while employed
as professor of mathematics in the Sea Cadet Corps of St. Petersburg.
But this no more implies the command of a Russian regiment than his
local and temporary rating at Quebec implies the command of a British
boat. He was a civilian, pure and simple, and no one familiar with the
original facts ever mistook him for anything else. He was again
employed at sea in 1762, when the Board of Longitude put him in charge
of Harrison's chronometer for the voyage to Jamaica; but this no more
made him a naval officer than his previous service afloat had done.
For almost the whole of the latter half of his life he was professor
of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He was an
intimate friend of the famous James Watt and many other men of
science. But the most important point for us to know is that he was
always recognized, in every relation of life, as a man of unblemished
veracity. Therefore, we may presume that he would neither alter facts
nor invent fictions about the most dramatic incident which ever befell
him.

What was his own version of the story? There can be little doubt; as
we have three independent and credible witnesses, who all agree, and
whose evidence is admirably marshalled by his own great-grandson,
Father John Gerard, S.J., in the _Scotsman_ for the 29th of June and
the _Athenum_ for the 9th of July, both in 1904. The first is Sir
Walter Scott, whose letter to Southey on the 22nd of September, 1830,
was quoted from the original manuscript by Mr. Birrell in _The Times
Literary Supplement_ for the 27th of May, 1904. Scott says he heard
the tale "at very first hand," Robison telling him that Wolfe, after
reciting the _Elegy_, declared he would sooner have written those
lines than win the battle "we are to fight to-morrow morning." The
second is Professor Playfair, Robison's successor at Edinburgh
University. Playfair's sketch of Robison is to be found at page 495,
in Volume VII of the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_
for the 20th of February, 1815. He refers to the story as one that
Robison "used to tell" about Wolfe's saying be would rather have
written the _Elegy_ than "have the glory of beating the French
to-morrow." The third is William Wallace Currie, who gives his own
version in a letter of the 10th of February, 1804, which is printed on
page 248, Volume II, of his life of his father, James Currie. He says
he heard Robison tell the story himself only the week before. There is
a slight variant here, as Currie understood that Robison was in
another boat alongside Wolfe's. But the rest is practically the same
as in the accounts of Scott and Playfair. "Mr. Robison heard him
(Wolfe) say, 'I would rather be the author of that piece than beat the
French to-morrow'; and from his remark he (Robison) guessed that the
attack was to be made the next day."

Such is the direct evidence on the subject. The circumstantial
evidence points the same way. Young Knowles would not get much actual
coaching while the siege was in progress. Robison, who was a good
mathematician, was more often employed as an expert surveyor. In this
capacity he would naturally be told off to map work, and so would have
been a likely man to have accompanied Wolfe on the final
reconnaissance of the 12th of September, the day before the battle.
Now, we know that Wolfe reconnoitred from a boat, we know that he was
a great reader and fond of poetry, we know that a strain of melancholy
ran through his character even as a younger man, we know that disease
left him little hope of a long life, we know that the story of the
_Elegy_ became current at once and remained so throughout the lives of
those present at Quebec who could best judge of its truth, we know
that Robison's own version was never contradicted, we know his
reputation for veracity, we know that he was not with the boats that
took Wolfe's army down to the Foulon on the morning of the 13th of
September, and we know that all authentic accounts of his version
agree that Wolfe was in a boat when he recited the _Elegy_, and that
he said he would sooner have written the poem than beat the enemy
"to-morrow." The only possible conclusion is that Wolfe recited the
_Elegy_ when he was in a boat, reconnoitring the north shore of the
St. Lawrence, above Quebec, on the 12th of September, the day before
the Battle of the Plains. And this conclusion seems to be as near a
moral certainty as any fact based upon the testimony of any single
witness can ever be.

I wish we could go on to point out the exact spot. But there is little
chance of finding such precise information. I am inclined to think the
most likely place would be a few cables above Sillery Point and rather
more than half channel over. In any case, the visitor to the Quebec
battlefields who looks upstream can be almost sure that his eye is
resting on the very reach of the river where this famous incident
really occurred. And what a satisfaction it is to know that, while the
popular perversion is as weak and theatrical as it is unproved and
improbable, the true version, on the other hand, is a strong, dramatic
and altogether worthy episode in one of the world's great epic tales
of war!




CHAPTER V

THE SECOND AMERICAN INVASION

     [The first being the one under Phips, an American
     commander who acted entirely on American initiative and
     whose success would probably have prevented Canada from
     being either British or Canadian to-day.]

_An Account of the Erection of the Tablets to commemorate the repulse
of Montgomery and Arnold at Quebec on the 31st of December, 1775._


All true Canadians will be glad to learn that a great and
long-standing national reproach has now been fittingly removed. During
no less than one hundred and twenty-seven years--from 1775 to
1902--nothing had been done to mark the spot where Canada stood at bay
against the combined assault of Montgomery and Arnold on Quebec. Yet
this assault was the turning point in the most momentous crisis which
our country has ever been called upon to face. The American invaders
had overrun the whole colony. They had taken every post along the
frontier. Montreal, Sorel, Three Rivers and the long line of the St.
Lawrence were all at their mercy. Quebec alone was left--the last hope
of British arms, the last stronghold of British power in those
troublous times, and the one sure promise of any British Dominion
remaining in the Western World. On Quebec hung the fate of half a
continent, as well as the distinctively Canadian name and fame of many
million people in the future. One false move by Carleton, one
successful act of treachery in the beleaguered town, one moment of
weakness among the little garrison, one battle lost against
Montgomery, and all would have been over. But Quebec stood fast, and
Canada was saved.

Four generations after this field of honour had been fought and won
the first practical proposal was made to commemorate our victorious
defenders. At a meeting of the Literary and Historical Society of
Quebec, on the 19th of March, 1902, it was resolved: "That the time
has come for the erection of historic tablets at Prs-de-Ville and the
Sault-au-Matelot, in the Lower Town of Quebec, relating to the events
of the 31st December, 1775, which were so important to the destiny of
Canada."

As such memorials would be battlefield monuments the Dominion
Government was petitioned by the Society for means to erect suitable
historic tablets at these places. The request was generously answered,
and acceptable memorials in statuary bronze have been erected, one on
the rock where Montgomery was defeated and killed, and the other on
the St. James Street end of the Molsons' Bank, as near as possible to
the site of the Sault-au-Matelot barricade, where Arnold was defeated
and over 400 of his men made prisoners. Both tablets were placed in
position on the 29th of December, 1904, just two days before the 129th
anniversary of the assault.

In the present connection all that is necessary is such a brief
general sketch of the operations at Quebec as will give the reader
some idea of the reasons for the erection of the tablets and for the
special wording of the two inscriptions.

When the American Congress had decided on an invasion of Canada
Montgomery was sent by Lake Champlain to attack Montreal. Meanwhile
Arnold marched from Cambridge in Massachusetts by the _Voyageur_
trail, up the Kennebec river and across the height of land, to the
head waters of the Chaudire. He then went along the Chaudire to Ste.
Marie. From there he followed the road to Levis, where he arrived in
full view of Quebec on the 8th of November, after his long and arduous
march. Having crossed the St. Lawrence in whatever canoes could be
found he appeared on the present Cove Fields on the 14th, was fired
on, and at once retired up to Pointe aux Trembles, where the arrival
of Montgomery from Montreal was awaited. The Kennebec route was not an
unknown one; for in 1760 Captain Montrsor passed over it with
dispatches from Murray to Amherst, and made a good map, of which
Arnold obtained a copy fifteen years later.

Montgomery carried all before him, taking Sorel, Montreal and Three
Rivers. Carleton, who was in Montreal, knowing the importance of
Quebec, and that for divers reasons Montreal could not then be
defended, destroyed the Government stores and started with several
schooners to descend the St. Lawrence. Being held up by head winds he
took a boat, and, being paddled past the enemy's batteries at Sorel in
the dead of night, arrived on the 19th November at Quebec, where
Colonel MacLean, who had preceded him, was actively preparing for
defence.

He at once issued orders that--"the suspected and all who are
unwilling to take up arms in its defence must leave the town within
four days." This cleared the place of foreigners and traitors. On the
30th of November there were only 127 British regulars in garrison. But
these--together with the crews of two small men-of-war, the _Lizard_
and _Hunter_, and of several merchantmen that happened to be in port,
as well as 230 "Royal Emigrants" and the loyal inhabitants, who
willingly enrolled themselves--raised the force at his disposal to
1800 men. The Quebec merchants, to their lasting honour, were the
first to volunteer; and no one did better service among the citizen
soldiery. The defences were strengthened and barricades erected and
armed in the Lower Town in Sault-au-Matelot Street and the present
Sous-le-Cap; also at Prs-de-Ville, just beneath the centre of the
Citadel cliff.

Montgomery arrived on the 1st of December with his army, which raised
the attacking force to 2000 men. The enemy then proceeded to take
possession of St. Roch's, and erected batteries on the high ground
commanding St. John's and St. Louis' Gates. The town was well
provisioned for the winter; so Carleton, profiting by Murray's
experience, would run no risk. The siege began with a considerable
amount of daily bombardment and shooting at our sentries. But
Montgomery, finding his guns did little harm, resolved to storm the
town by night. This decision was reported to Carleton by a prisoner
who escaped from the besiegers, so the garrison kept continually on
the alert for the expected attack.

To frighten the inhabitants, but without avail, Montgomery's general
orders of the 15th of December were sent into the town. A copy is now
to be found in the Dominion Archives at Ottawa (Q. 12, page 30):--

Headquarters, Holland House,
Near Quebec.
_15th December, 1775._

_Parole_--Connecticut.   _Countersign_--Adams.

     The General having in vain offered the most favourable
     terms of accommodation to the Governor and having taken
     every possible step to prevail on the inhabitants to
     desist from seconding him in his wild scheme of
     defence, nothing remains but to pursue vigorous
     measures for the speedy reduction of the only hold
     possessed by the Ministerial troops in the Province.
     The troops, flushed with continual success, confident
     of the justice of their cause, and relying on that
     Providence which has uniformly protected them, will
     advance to the attack of works incapable of being
     defended by the wretched garrison posted behind them,
     consisting of sailors unacquainted with the use of
     arms, of citizens incapable of the soldier's duty, and
     a few miserable emigrants. The General is confident a
     vigorous and spirited attack must be attended with
     success. The troops shall have the effects of the
     Governor, garrison, and of such as have been acting in
     misleading the inhabitants and distressing the friends
     of liberty, to be equally divided among them, each to
     have the one hundredth share out of the whole, which
     shall be at the disposal of the General and given to
     such soldiers as distinguished themselves by their
     activity and bravery, and sold at public auction. The
     whole to be conducted as soon as the city is in our
     hands and the inhabitants disarmed.

               The General at Headquarters,
                    Ferd. Weisenfels,
                        _Major of Brigade._


The detachment, about 600 strong, which was to attack Prs-de-Ville
assembled at 2 o'clock a.m. of the 31st December, at the enemy's
headquarters, Holland House, and, headed by Montgomery, marched across
the Plains of Abraham, and descended into the beach path, now
Champlain Street. Those who were to make the attack by the suburbs of
St. Roch's, headed by Arnold, were about 700 strong. Another party,
under Livingstone, was sent to make a feint against the walls south of
St. John's Gate, and try to force the entrance; but these soon
withdrew. The plan was that Montgomery and Arnold were to meet at the
foot of Mountain Hill and storm the Upper Town.

A heavy north-east snowstorm was raging at four o'clock that dark
morning when Montgomery descended the cliff and advanced along the
narrow ledge which was flanked to the left by the perpendicular crags
of Cape Diamond and to the right by the St. Lawrence.

The Prs-de-Ville barricade and blockhouse, at the narrowest part of
the road, was defended by Captain Chabot, Lieut. Picard, 30
French-Canadian militiamen, Captain Barnesfare and 15 seamen, Sergeant
Hugh McQuarters of the Royal Artillery (with several small guns), and
Mr. Coffin; 50 in all. This post was on the alert and saw the head of
the column approach and halt some fifty yards from the barricade. A
man then came forward to reconnoitre. On his return the column
continued its advance, when it was received by cannon and musketry.
The first discharge killed Montgomery, his aides-de-camp, and ten men.
Thereupon the rest of his 600 turned and fled, pursued by the bullets
of the Canadians till there was nothing more to fire at. The story of
carpenters sawing the pickets, which Montgomery then tore down with
his own hands, took shape in the imagination of a Major Meigs, who was
one of Arnold's party. No one behind the leading sections knew what
had happened. The slain, left as they fell, were buried by the
drifting snow, whence their frozen bodies were dug out later in the
day.

Arnold's column penetrated the barricade across Sous-le-Cap street,
situated beneath the Half-Moon battery; but was stopped by the second
barricade, at the end of that narrow lane, quite close to where
Molsons' Bank is now. This second barricade was defended by Major
Nairne, Dambourges and others, who held the enemy in check until
Captain Laws, coming from Palace Gate with a strong party, took them
in rear and caused the surrender of 427 in all. This completed the
victory of the British arms. Arnold was put out of action early in the
fight by a ball from the ramparts near Palace Gate, and was carried to
the General Hospital.

General Wooster took command, and the besiegers were reinforced to
over their original strength; but no further assaults were made.
Batteries were erected at Levis, but did little damage. A fire-ship
was sent against the shipping in the Cul-de-Sac, the site of the
Champlain market, but without effect. The blockade lasted until the
arrival of the British man-of-war _Surprise_ on the 6th of May, 1776,
when the garrison, thus reinforced, at once made a sortie, only to
find that the Americans had already decamped in the utmost confusion,
leaving their dinners, artillery, ammunition and baggage behind. On
the arrival of more vessels and troops Carleton advanced to Three
Rivers, beat the enemy there, and then continued his march without a
check to Montreal. In a few more days the last of the invaders had
been driven off the soil of Canada for good and all.

Both inscriptions were approved by the Society's Patron, the then
Governor-General, the Earl of Minto, who took the keenest personal
interest in the whole undertaking, from first to last. The tablets, in
shield form, are of statuary bronze, with the lettering in relief. The
large one, on the rock under Cape Diamond, measures six feet three
inches by five feet nine inches, and weighs about 1000 pounds. It is
thus inscribed:


                    HERE STOOD
                THE UNDAUNTED FIFTY
                   SAFEGUARDING
                      CANADA
               DEFEATING MONTGOMERY
          AT THE PRES-DE-VILLE BARRICADE
                ON THE LAST DAY OF
                       1775
                   GUY CARLETON
                  COMMANDING AT
                      QUEBEC


The wording is designed to bring out the notable fact that there were
only fifty men on the British side, defending this barricade against
Montgomery, who had a force at least ten times as strong. These fifty
are described as "undaunted," because, apart from their gallantry in
repelling the assault, they had been long exposed to the invaders'
threat of treating them with the utmost rigour of war if they
persisted in their allegiance. They are also said to have been
"safeguarding Canada," because, although they could not have foreknown
so great a destiny, they were then a part of the real and the only
safeguard of the Dominion we live in now.

The tablet on the Molsons' Bank measures two feet ten inches by two
feet six inches and weighs about 200 pounds. Its inscription is as
follows:

                      HERE STOOD
              HER OLD AND NEW DEFENDERS
               UNITING GUARDING SAVING
                        CANADA
                   DEFEATING ARNOLD
          AT THE SAULT-AU-MATELOT BARRICADE
                  ON THE LAST DAY OF
                         1775
                     GUY CARLETON
                    COMMANDING AT
                        QUEBEC


The men of the Sault-au-Matelot barricade are called "Her old and new
defenders" because the different racial elements of both the old and
new _rgimes_ were here "uniting" for the first time in history, and
thus "guarding" and "saving" the Canada of their own day and of ours.
Among them were Frenchmen, French-Canadians, Englishmen, Irishmen,
Scotchmen, Welshmen, Channel Islanders, Newfoundlanders, and those
"Royal Emigrants" who were the forerunners of the U. E. Loyalists. And
on this sacred spot each and all of these widely different ancestors
of the present "Canadians" took their dangerous share of
empire-building, in the very heart of a crisis which must then have
seemed to offer them no other reward than the desperate honour of
leading the forlorn hope in a great cause all but lost for ever.




CHAPTER VI

THE FORTRESS CITY


The Indian made a stronghold at Quebec before the white man came. The
white man has been building forts there in five different centuries
already. And he is still building forts there to-day.


1ST FORTIFICATION. 1535.

Jacques Cartier was the first of the whites in fort-building, as he
was first in everything else. His first fort was a mere stockade
beside the St. Charles, where he and his men spent the miserable
winter of 1535-6. Overlooking this stockade was the Indian town of
Stadacona, on the Quebec cliffs of the valley of the St. Charles.
Cartier took possession for the Crown of France, sailed home with
Donnacona, the Indian Chief, and left a cross standing, to mark the
French claims, with the inscription--


             FRANCISCUS PRIMUS
          DEI GRATIA FRANCORUM REX
                  REGNAT


2ND FORTIFICATION. 1541.

Five years later Jacques Cartier built another fort, this time at Cap
Rouge, nine miles above Quebec. The next year Roberval wintered here,
as miserably as Cartier had beside the St. Charles.


3RD FORTIFICATION. 1608.

Two generations passed before the French again took possession and
began another fort. In 1608 Champlain built his famous _Abitation de
Quebecq_ on the narrow piece of flat ground under the present Terrace.
This tiny fort could hardly hold a hundred men, women and children,
even as a tenement house. And it probably never had a fit-for-duty
garrison of more than twenty men. But twenty men with muskets and a
few small cannon could hold out well against mere bows and arrows. For
the _Abitation de Quebecq_ had some pretensions to scientific
construction. Champlain was a naval officer and knew what he was
about. The guns were well placed at the salients, and, as a gallery
ran round the upper story, two tiers of fire could be brought to bear.


4TH FORTIFICATION. 1620.

In 1620 Champlain began his Fort St. Louis in the Upper Town, on the
site of the present Terrace, and overlooking his old _Abitation_. For
six years he persisted in making the little Colony work at this fort
in order to assure its safety. Like many a leader of far vaster
numbers he found plenty of Colonists ready to be content with much
less than real safety. In his own account he says: "J'tablis cette
demeure en une situation trs bonne, sur une montagne qui commandait
le travers du fleuve Saint-Laurent et qui est un des lieux les plus
troits de la rivire; _et tous nos associs n'avaient pu goter la
ncessit d'une place forte pour la conservation du pays et de leur
bien_." After discussing a possible attack from hostile whites as
well, he adds significantly, "Il n'est pas toujours  propos de suivre
les passions des personnes qui ne veulent rgner que pour un temps: il
faut porter sa considration plus avant." How very like these
"personnes" are to some disarmamentarians of a much later day!

In 1621 there was a little hard feeling between the old Company of
Rouen and the new Company of Montmorency. Champlain then put an
officer and some men into the fort as a garrison. Thus M. du Mai can
be justly credited with the honour of being the first Fortress
Commandant of Quebec--though he was his own adjutant as well and
probably never had a permanent officer's party in barracks, all
together! In 1624 a hurricane "enleva la couverture du bastiment du
Fort Saint-Louis plus de trente pas par dessus le rempart, parce
qu'elle tait trop haulte leve." The same year Champlain began to
replace his old _Abitation_ by a sort of "fortified place" occupying
the whole of the point of land now traversed by Sous-le-fort Street.


5TH FORTIFICATION. 1626.

On his return in 1626, after an absence of two years, Champlain was
disgusted to find his forts exactly as he had left them, except that
they were out of repair. He immediately knocked down the fort of 1620
and began a much larger and better one. This new fort was the Fort St.
Louis which surrendered to the Kerkes in 1629, which was held by
Charles I in pledge for the dowry of Henrietta Maria, which was
restored to the Crown of France in 1632, and which was used by
Champlain himself from 1633 till his death there in 1635.


6TH FORTIFICATION. 1636.

In 1636 Montmagny--(whose Latinized patronymic, _Mons Magnus_,
translated by the Missionaries, made the Indians call him, and all
succeeding French Governors, _Onontbio_)--rebuilt Fort St. Louis in
stone. Before that it was only in "fascines, terres, gazons et bois."


7TH FORTIFICATION. 1647.

In 1647 a fortified residence for the Governors was begun, very much
in the same place, and named Chteau St. Louis. Under this name, and
in the same place, stood the Governor's residence, both in the old and
new _rgimes_, down to 1834. "The Castle of St. Louis" was used as the
English equivalent. But the old name persisted locally. In 1694 this
first Chteau was demolished. In 1784 a stone belonging to it, and
bearing a Maltese Cross with the date 1647, was dug up and set into
"the cheek of the gate now building" for "le chteau Haldimand." This
stone is now (1911) over the footway main entrance to the Chteau
Frontenac Hotel.

It must be understood that the Chteau stood within the Fort, and,
though forming part of it, was yet a separate building. So that, up to
the time of Frontenac, the fortifications of Quebec consisted of a
fortified Governor's residence inside of a stone fort, situated about
where the Terrace and its immediate hinter-ground lie to-day, and
also of a "strong place" in the Lower Town, beside the St. Lawrence,
and occupying the ground on each side of the present Sous-le-fort
Street.


8TH FORTIFICATION. 1692.

In 1667 the great Colbert recommended the re-fortification of Quebec.
But in vain. In 1681 Frontenac wrote home to say that the Chteau was
in a deplorable state and that the walls round it were literally
tumbling down. In 1690 the Quebecers of the day became so alarmed that
they proposed building walls on their own account. The authorities in
France at once seized the opportunity of overworking the willing
horse, with the usual disastrous results. There was no "frowning
citadel" and only the worst of walls when Phips came thundering at the
gates.

It was only in 1692 that Frontenac's great scheme was put in execution
by the dilatory Government at home. Frontenac's walls were the first
that ever encircled the Upper Town. They crowned the water front for
nearly three-quarters of a mile. They started from the present
Frontenac Hotel, along almost the whole length of which they ran. Then
they crossed the top of Mountain Hill and followed the present
Ramparts to Palace Hill, where they stopped in the westward direction.
On the landward side, starting again from the Hotel, they ran westward
between Mount Carmel and St. Louis Streets, crossed Haldimand Hill,
and then curved into St. Louis Street on reaching the corner of Ste.
Ursule Street. Thence, running north-westward, or down, inside the
line of Ste. Ursule Street, and trending slightly in a northerly
direction, they ran nearly through the intersections of Ste. Anne and
Ste. Angle Streets, and thence down to the lower end of St. Stanislas
Street, whence they curved towards Palace Hill, where they joined the
circuit again. The total circuit was about a mile and a half. The area
enclosed was about half as much as is enclosed by the present walls,
exclusive of the Citadel. The landward faces were weak; but the
seaward ones were fairly strong against the armaments of the time.

Frontenac was a born soldier and leader of men, brave to a fault, yet
of consummate skill in action and the necessary preparation for it. He
threw himself heartily into the great work. But he was absolutely
incorruptible--and the contractors were not. From this time on there
is one long tale of growing corruption, which eventually culminated
under Bigot and hurried New France to her ruin. The great commanders,
Frontenac and Montcalm, and indeed all the leading soldiers and
military engineers from France, stand out in honourable contrast to
the whole vile brood of jobmasters in the Civil Government. The
deviosities of Public Works in Canada can claim a quite respectable
antiquity--not quite, perhaps, "from the earliest times," but
certainly down "to the present day."


9TH FORTIFICATION. 1720

By 1703, when Frontenac's scheme had been finally carried out in a
perverted and dishonest way, new walls were beginning to be required.
But it was not till 1720 that another scheme was put in operation
under the malign influence of bad engineers and worse Intendants. The
works were done badly and bit by bit. They never provided for any real
"citadel," but only for a citadel redoubt. And, as already stated
elsewhere in this book, they never extended to the up-river face of
Cape Diamond. The cliff faces followed the lines of Frontenac's
scheme; naturally so, as there was no other line to follow. The land
faces were extended beyond Frontenac's line, and eventually reached,
in many places, the extent of the walls that are standing to-day. But
not one French stone remains in place. The work was too badly done for
that, even if there had never been any wars at all.


10TH FORTIFICATION. 1752.

Patchwork went on till 1746, when both the French Government and the
people of Quebec got tired of expensive works that were of no earthly
use, except to the pockets of the contractors, engineers and
administrative middlemen. An order came out to discontinue everything.
Then the Canadian Government, with its middlemen, contractors and
engineers, returned to the charge and contrived to get several
estimates passed, which were moderate in amount, but exorbitant with
respect to the work which resulted from them. Franquet, a good French
army engineer, came out and saw at once that the Canadian engineers
were almost as great fools at their work as they were knaves in
charging for it. Later on, after the war which ended with the conquest
of Canada had been raging for some time, Pontleroy, another excellent
French army engineer, came out. But the works of the Canadian
engineers, bad as they were, had taken shape too definitely, even in
Franquet's time. And all that he and Pontleroy could do was to put the
best finish possible on bad works made with bad material by bad and
corrupt engineers, who were on the side of Vaudreuil, the spiteful owl
of a Governor, and Bigot, the knavish fox of an Intendant, and who
consequently were against Montcalm, the ablest hero that ever drew
sword for France across the sea. On the very eve of 1759 Montcalm
wrote home in despair:--"Les fortifications sont si ridicules et
mauvaises qu'elles seroient prises aussitt qu'assiges."


11TH FORTIFICATION. 1759-82.

Murray had no more faith in the French walls than Montcalm had. But
the British Home Authorities were almost as dilatory as their rivals
were before them. So from 1759 to 1782 Quebec had to stand a French
and an American siege with temporary British works thrown up well
outside of the old French ones. Lvis in 1760 and Montgomery in 1775
both thought a siege would be an easy affair. And so it would have
been, had they not been far more stoutly opposed by flesh and blood
than by the rotten walls.


12TH FORTIFICATION. 1783.

After four years' work a British scheme of re-fortification was
finished in 1783. But it was by no means complete. The citadel was
only a makeshift, and some parts elsewhere could not be thoroughly
done for lack of funds. This was the time at which the so-called "old
French works" on the Cove Fields appeared. Their remains are easy to
make out to day, following the contours of the up-river face of Cape
Diamond. They entirely disappear from the great permanent plan of
1823.


13TH FORTIFICATION. 1790-1803.

After a complete survey in 1790 some more patchwork was done, but
nothing of much consequence.


14TH FORTIFICATION. 1804-23.

During this period the Martello Towers were built. Nos. 1 and 3 were
not finished till 1810, No. 2 till 1818 and NO. 4 till 1823.


15TH AND GREATEST FORTIFICATION. 1823-32.

But meanwhile the Imperial Government were preparing for the immense
works which still stand to-day, which were approved by the Duke of
Wellington, and which cost over seven millions sterling, or
$35,000,000.00. And it should be remembered that this sum represents
only a small fraction of the more than a hundred millions sterling
which were spent by the Imperial Government at different times to keep
Canada both British and Canadian. Not a shot has ever been fired
against the present walls, and they are now quite obsolete. But on at
least two occasions they played a principal part as a deterrent in
preventing any idea of attacking them from being converted into deeds.

All that is best in Quebec, in Canada, and indeed in the whole Empire,
takes pride in these splendid monuments of watch and war. They have
the priceless advantage of making Quebec absolutely unique among the
cities of America, where sameness and tameness are only too common.
And yet there are people mean-spirited enough to want to throw them
down! It may be that if Quebec were to lose all claim to be the one
walled city of this New World she would still remain a queen among her
sisters. For she was throned here in beauty by Nature, ages long ago.
But it was Man who came and crowned her. So it would be a double
desecration to discrown her now. Her walls are more than meets the
eye. They saw no mighty wars themselves; but they serve to recall
great deeds and the great men who did them. And their own mute appeal
is more eloquent of living honour than all the vain words that could
record them after they had gone for ever.


16TH FORTIFICATION. 1865-71.

With the progress of military science it was found necessary to begin
building much further away from the central point to be defended.
Three large forts were therefore built on the South Shore, facing
south and east. They have a magnificent natural _glacis_ for many
miles; and they were good forts in their day. They were the last
legacy of the Imperial Government. When they were finished and paid
for Canada undertook her own defence, got them for nothing, and has
left them unarmed ever since.


17TH FORTIFICATION. 1911.

Forty years later military science has changed still more. Now,
instead of rising above the ground, the engineer tries to burrow into
it. There are excellent new works down at Beaumont, on the South
Shore, eight miles below Quebec, and they would, if properly manned
and armed, command the South Channel of Orleans in a way which would
make it exceedingly hard to pass, even if the enemy was in great
force, well handled, and trying to run through at night.




CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST FIVE-NATION WAR

1899


Quebec has already lived so many hours of glorious life that she can
no longer make new history except on old historic ground. But, even in
Quebec, there could hardly have been a stranger coincidence than that
the first men to represent the Dominion in an all-Imperial war beyond
the seas should have sailed from the very spot where their racial
ancestors first united to keep Canada within the Empire. The Allan
wharf, where the First Canadian Contingent embarked for South Africa
in 1899, is close beside the base of the Citadel cliff, where
Montgomery fell defeated in 1775, while attacking the Prs-de-Ville
barricade, which was defended by "the undaunted Fifty" French- and
English-speaking British heroes who stood there at bay, "safeguarding
Canada."

But the attention of the expectant patriots thronging the Esplanade
was wholly centred in the moving present. The one historic fact they
thought of was that Canada's first Imperial thousand had mustered,
armed and sworn allegiance in the world-famous Citadel, and that no
knight of old had ever made his vows at any shrine more sacred to the
God of Battles than their own Quebec. The war had kindled the fire of
their new national pride. The start of the First Contingent fanned it
into flame. Every part of Canada was represented in arms; and every
form of her national life was equally represented by those who had
assembled at Quebec to give the Contingent a befitting farewell. Lord
Minto, representing the Sovereign, was himself a veteran of the North
West Rebellion, the Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and the
Minister of Militia, Sir Frederick Borden, had both taken arms in
defence of Canada against the Fenian Raids, and the General, Sir
Edward Hutton, had served through the previous Boer War. All four
addressed the troops in stirring words, and the General rightly
reminded them that they were expected to wipe out the shame of the
surrender after Majuba.

It was certainly one of the greatest, and perhaps one of the most
significant, scenes ever witnessed in Quebec. But, for me, it was, and
always will be, little more than the setting of another scene, which
holds only the single figure of my greatest chum. Jack Ogilvy had
already done well in the Yukon Field Force, which was sent up to keep
order in the mining camps during the first great gold-fever in the
Klondike. He had returned just in time for the war, and was appointed
Assistant-Adjutant, a greater honour than such a very subordinate
position would have been under other circumstances. There were more
than ten covetous applicants for every vacancy, and at least twenty
officers anxious for each appointment; and Jack was only a junior
subaltern of twenty-five, with barely six years' service. There was
no mistaking his delight at going on his first campaign; for he was
every inch a soldier, through and through his whole six feet of eager
youth. When the column marched on to the wharf he laughingly pointed
his sword at the _Sardinian_ and said, "It's--


    'A _British ship_ sailed down the River'


this journey, and it's the _real thing_ it's sailing to." This was in
allusion to the old song he used to lead off with his splendid
baritone at canoeing picnics on the Lower St. Lawrence--


    A Yankee ship sailed down the River.
    Way-ho! the rolling River!


How often its resounding chorus had floated in to shore on moonlight
evenings, or echoed along the overhanging crags of Cacouna Island!

    *    *    *    *    *

All Canada remembers Paardeberg, and how well her men upheld her
honour there and wherever else they fought till the end of the war.
Jack marched on to his first battlefield as Adjutant, his predecessor
having been invalided some time before. He did his duties thoroughly,
and coolly as any veteran. The Canadians were keen for close action
and not easily held in leash. So the men and moment were well mated
when the time came for a rush, and Jack sprang to the front with an
inspiring "Come on, Canada!" At Israelspoort he took the Boer
General's flag, a Transvaal _vierkleur_ four yards long, which hangs
beside me as I write these lines. By the end of his first campaign he
had undoubtedly won his honours well. He was one of the first two
Canadian officers recommended for the D.S.O., which the King in person
presented to him early the following year. And he was the first
Canadian in the world to receive a direct commission as Captain into a
regiment of the Imperial Army. No touch of distinction was wanting,
for the regiment was no other than the famous Gordons; and every
Lieutenant in both of its battalions had written to the Colonel to say
how pleased they would be to have Jack come into it over their heads.

After spending his leave in England and Canada he went back to the
front, this time as a Major in the South African Constabulary. He was
now twenty-seven; with both feet on the ladder of promotion and every
promise of a successful career. His letters kept showing his anxiety
to "do something," so that he might justify the confidence which had
been shown in him. But an accident that had nothing to do with the war
very nearly cut him off before his opportunity. One wild night his
scared riderless horse galloped madly up to his quarters; and his men
naturally thought this told the usual tale of a good life stealthily
taken by a sniper's bullet. But they presently found him lying dazed,
though unwounded, where a stroke of lightning had hurled him from the
saddle.

At last his chance came, and he took it with both hands. He found out
that a slippery and mischievous little commando was in the
neighbourhood; and he immediately set to work to get within sure
striking distance and make a complete roundup. His scheme was
carefully planned and skilfully executed. His widely extended line was
riding warily through sparse scrub when it began to close in on the
Boer position. This, as so often happened, was well concealed and
placed considerably in front of where an attacking force would have
naturally expected to find it. But the sudden sharp crackling of
hidden Mausers did not take him unawares, when it burst out just in
front of where he was leading his centre. Some of the Boers began to
bolt, others were evidently determined to stand their ground. In the
twinkling of an eye Jack chose the only proper course. Rising high in
his stirrups he shouted the one word "_Charge!_" His nearest men
cheered; and in an instant his whole line quickened responsively to
right and left and swept forward at full gallop. He saw the enemy
divided in opinion and lost. He felt his charge would carry home,
while his wings would certainly outflank and perhaps envelop them. Now
he knew he had "done something." This was _his_ plan, _his_ battle and
_his_ victory. For one vivid moment his ardent spirit blazed with the
joy of triumph. The next, he and his horse crashed prostrate against
the little stone sangar, both shot by the same bullet. An old
grey-bearded Boer had marked him down as the leader and let him get so
close that the bullet went mortally deep into his groin after passing
through his horse's neck. The Boer ran for cover as soon as he had
fired. But one of Jack's subalterns was too quick for him, riding him
down and shooting him straight through the heart.

The doctor shook his head when he saw where Jack was hit, and at once
pronounced the wound fatal. But the heroic heart still beat with the
wings of victory. "They got me," he said, "but I got them"; and he
laughed. Then his mind turned to her who was giving up a newly-won but
assured career as one of the world's great singers to marry him, a
junior Captain, as poor as he was gallant. And, with the words of this
dying message on his lips, the last spark of his conscious life went
out.

None but a very few have ever heard of Klipgat in the Transvaal. It
is, indeed, no more to the world at large than any other obscure,
outlandish name that appears among other minor items of war news, and
is forgotten as soon as read. And, even of those who followed the
fortunes of the war at the time, how many remember now what happened
there on the 18th of December, 1901? Only a handful of friends know
this for the place and date of that far-off little skirmish. But
these, who feel, most of all, that their loss was untimely, are yet
the very friends who can never regret the manner of it. For this was
Jack's own battlefield. And he fell victorious.

    *    *    *    *    *

At the time of his death Jack held commissions in three different
corps, all of which paid his memory such honour as they could. The
South African Constabulary escorted him to the Gordon Highlanders, who
buried him at Pretoria, in the plot of ground where so many more of
their officers were laid to rest with the wail of the pibroch for
their requiem. And the Royal Canadian Artillery in Quebec wore
mourning for a month.

But he received even greater distinction on the 15th of August, 1905,
when the Quebec South African Soldiers' Monument was unveiled by Lord
Grey, the Governor-General of Canada, in the presence of Prince Louis
of Battenberg and the officers and men of his Cruiser Squadron, of the
whole garrison of Quebec, and of a concourse of people as great as
that which had bidden the First Contingent farewell on the same spot
six years before. Here the last honours were paid to one officer and
eleven men, who, in life, would have saluted and waited for the orders
of anyone of the leaders present--naval, military or civilian; but
who, by the transfiguration of heroic death, had now won the
unquestioned right of themselves receiving the salute of the greatest
in the land.

Jack's friend and mine, Frederick George Scott, wrote the quatrain on
one bronze shield:--


    Not by the power of commerce, arts or pen
    Shall this great Empire stand; nor has it stood;
    But by the noble deeds of noble men,
    Heroic lives, and heroes' outpoured blood.


And I wrote the four words at the head of the
other, which was the roll of honour containing the
names of the twelve who died:--

          FOR EMPIRE, CANADA, QUEBEC.




CHAPTER VIII

TERCENTENNIAL QUEBEC

1908


A century hence, when Canada will be celebrating her four hundredth
birthday, our successors will undoubtedly quote the precedents
established at the Quebec Tercentenary, and recognize, better than we
can to-day, the profound significance of that unique event. I shall
use the word unique several times this evening; and I beg leave to
assure you that I shall use it only in its proper meaning, by
confining it strictly to those facts in the story of Quebec which are
entirely unparalleled either in Canadian, Imperial or universal
history.

To begin with what was unique in Canada. This was the first time that
both races and all Provinces free-willingly united to make the history
of one place the centre of a Dominion celebration. Next, it is not too
much to say that here, for the first time, Canada stood forth in the
eye of the world as a nation self-realized, from past to present and
from sea to sea. Then, thirdly, the first organized Canadian army that
ever gave any promise of preparing for war in time of peace was the
one at the Royal Review on the Plains of Abraham. To these three
unique Canadian features we may add two of Imperial extent. The Quebec
Tercentenary was the first celebration of its kind in all Greater
Britain: it was the coming-of-age of the eldest daughter-nation of the
Empire. It was also the first occasion on which the whole Empire
joined in commemorating the deeds that shaped the destiny of any one
part. The King was the Patron, and took an active personal interest
both in the preparation and the execution of this most complex
undertaking. The Vice-Patrons were the Heir to the Throne, whose
presence emphasized the true greatness of this epoch-marking
celebration in the opinion of every British subject, the Duke of
Connaught, who wears a medal won in defence of Canada, and his son,
Prince Arthur of Connaught, who went over the whole scene very
thoroughly two years before. The President, always foremost among the
hardest workers, was Lord Grey. And the Vice-Presidents, who were by
no means a mere collection of figureheads to swell the list with
conventional prestige, included all our own Provincial Governors and
the Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition in every part of the
Empire that has a parliament. Among them are names familiar to anyone
who ever followed a public question of Imperial interest:--Mr. Asquith
and Mr. Balfour, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mr. Borden, Mr. Deakin, Sir
Joseph Ward, and two more, whose common membership in His Majesty's
Privy Council is alone a lesson in British statesmanship--Dr. Jameson
and General Botha. We shall hear more of General Botha later on.

Thus we see that there are three Canadian and two Imperial points in
which our national _fte_ was quite unique. But even more striking are
the two points which are equally unique in universal history. Quebec
is the only place in the world where the fleets and armies of three
Great Powers have met so often and shared the honour of such alternate
victory and such glorious defeat. And Quebec is, again, the only place
in the world where the modern representatives of three historic
opponents have ever met to unite in honour of their own and one
another's prowess.

I venture to assume that a subject which is sevenfold unique is worth
a lecture. And I take this so much for granted that I actually dare to
divide my lecture into three parts, which is usually a fatal method of
procedure, as it arouses mixed memories of long-winded homilies and
the opening schoolboy stages of Csar's _Gallic War_. But I make bold
to do this because the mere facts, however badly they may be set
before you, cannot fail to be full of the most significant interest to
every member of the audience here to-night. The three parts are,
I--Preparation; II--The Celebration; and III--The Pageant. This may
seem like pretending to give you an epitome of all things
tercentennial, from the earliest times to the present day! But my
pretensions are really much more modest. The proverbial full, true and
particular account will require the co-operation of many authorities;
and I can only speak for myself. Besides, I am not nearly so high an
authority, nor did I ever wield nearly so deep an influence as the
introductory remarks of your over-generous Principal might lead you to
suppose. I was only a fly on the wheel; though, by some peradventure,
I did happen to be a fly on the hub of the wheel. And it was from that
point of view that I saw then what I shall try to tell you now.


I--PREPARATION

What could be stranger than that the true story of the conquest of
Canada, which took place in the eighteenth century, should have
remained untold till the twentieth! And it is all the stranger because
of the deep and world-wide interest excited at the time, and the more
than a thousand accounts which have appeared in the hundred and fifty
years since. Every one of these accounts written before the present
century is inevitably wrong: because history can only be written from
an impartial study of all the original evidence, and the original
evidence did not approach completion till Dr. Doughty, the Archivist
of Canada, began his work in 1900. Even the military documents were
not completed till 1903. The naval ones were practically unknown, even
to professed students, till quite recently; and the logs of those
men-of-war whose sea-power alone made the conquest possible will only
appear in print for the first time in the summer of 1909.

All this may seem to have very little to do with Tercentennial Quebec.
But, as a matter of fact, it has everything to do with it. The finding
and telling the truth of history is always of profound importance to
the national life, because it is sooner or later bound to affect the
public point of view, even among masses of people who hardly read
anything but the daily paper. Many hard problems of to-day would be
simplified, some might even be removed, by a true appreciation of the
great crises in our history. And let us bear in mind that we
English-speaking Canadians have as many distorting half-truths to
forget and as many new whole-truths to remember as have our
French-speaking fellow-countrymen. It is not too much to say that ten
years ago it would have been infinitely harder to get light without
heat on the subject of the Battlefields. Ten years ago Vaudreuil would
have been exalted as a French-Canadian hero and represented among the
historic families whose living heads were the guests of the Dominion.
Ten years ago Montcalm would not have been the national hero he was
one year ago; and French-Canadians would naturally have exalted Lvis
far above him, to the utter violation of historic truth. Ten years ago
Wolfe might have been robbed, like Montcalm, of the highest honours as
a consummate general; and who could have given proof positive to
gainsay the detraction? Ten years ago the British Navy would not have
been generally recognized as the determining factor in both campaigns.
In short, it is doubtful whether there could have been a really great
Tercentennial Quebec at all had the anniversary fallen only ten years
earlier than it actually did.

The story of the celebration begins with the century. In 1901 there
was a prospect that the eighty-eight acres still shown to confiding
tourists as the whole Plains of Abraham were to be cut up into
building lots. This ground was not the scene of action between Wolfe
and Montcalm, and only a portion of it touched the battlefield of
Lvis and Murray. But, most fortunately for the success of the present
magnificent scheme, the Dominion bought it, as it is an essential
link between the two real fields of honour.

In 1902 an unavailing protest was made against the building of the
Ross Rifle Factory on the spot where Montcalm drew up his left and
Lvis entrenched his right. The public did not know what was being
done, or had been done when the gaol was built beside the spot where
Wolfe died, till a flood of light was shed on the whole subject by the
publication of Dr. Doughty's documents and plans.

In December, 1904, the Dominion Government gave the Literary and
Historical Society of Quebec a grant to erect tablets to mark the
spots where Montgomery and Arnold, who led the second American
invasion of Canada, were decisively repulsed at the Prs-de-Ville and
Sault-au-Matelot barricades, on the last day of 1775, by Carleton's
French- and English-speaking forces. The inscriptions tell their own
tale. At Prs-de-Ville the words are _Here stood the undaunted Fifty,
safeguarding Canada_, and at Sault-au-Matelot, _Here stood her old and
new defenders, uniting, guarding, saving Canada_. This reminds us that
it is not one battlefield but all the Quebec battlefields that are to
be handed down to posterity, in substance, so far as possible, and in
commemorative souvenir where no more can be done. 1775 is, of course,
most important, as the crisis which first drew French- and
Anglo-Canadians together under one free flag. Lord Minto, who took a
lively interest in the wording of the inscriptions, unfortunately left
before the tablets were erected. The public does not connect his name
with Tercentennial Quebec. But they certainly would if they knew how
clearly he foresaw the importance of the battlefields to our national
life, what an able memorandum he wrote about them, and how he urged
their preservation by every means in his power.

So far, what public interest there was had been centred entirely in
the battlefields. But in the same month that the heroes of 1775 were
being permanently honoured for the first time, Mr. Chouinard, the city
clerk, was writing for the Christmas number of the "Quebec Daily
Telegraph" the first suggestion of a Champlain Tercentenary for the
3rd of July, 1908. Nothing more, however, was done in this direction
for the next fifteen months. In the meantime Lord Grey took up the
work of preserving the battlefields. He visited Quebec in June, 1905;
and, after examining the scene of both battles of the Plains, he
paused at Wolfe's monument and said he would never rest until such
sacred ground became the heirloom of all Canada. Only three persons
heard this. But many millions know to-day how magnificently that
purpose has been put in operation.

In 1906 the St. Jean Baptiste Society of Quebec took up Mr.
Chouinard's suggestion for a Champlain Tercentenary and proposed that
the celebration should be a Dominion one. A subsequent citizens'
meeting, called by the mayor, proposed that the rest of the British
Empire, as well as France and the United States, should also be
invited to participate, and that steps should be taken to secure the
patronage of His Majesty the King. In September the mayor appointed a
Quebec Landmark Commission of three members, under the chairmanship of
the Chief Justice, Sir Franois Langelier, to study the best way of
permanently marking the celebration. The Commission reported in favour
of nationalizing the Quebec Battlefields. They felt that Champlain, as
the far-seeing founder of Canada, was pre-eminently a man of the
future, that he was the first of a long line of Canadian heroes, and
that the Canada he founded was kept Canadian by the French and British
who won equal honour, first as opponents and afterwards as the joint
defenders of a common country.

In January, 1907, a Quebec deputation waited on the Dominion
Government and proposed a Canadian historical museum as a fitting
permanent memorial of the coming _fte_. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, however,
suggested that the Quebec Battlefields, preserved as an open book for
posterity to read, would be better still. You will thus see that a
society of French-Canadians were the first to propose making the
Champlain Tercentenary a _fte_ for the whole Dominion, that a
Commission of three, with two French-Canadians on it, reported in
favour of keeping the Battlefields to commemorate this _fte_ forever,
and that another French-Canadian, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, determined the
action of the Government in the same direction. This most generous and
far-sighted action does infinite honour to French-Canadian
statesmanship. While this great scheme was developing, Lord Grey had
become an enthusiastic supporter of the Champlain Tercentenary. Then
he and Sir Wilfrid Laurier made the masterstroke which united the
Battlefields with the Tercentenary and carried both to a triumphant
issue before an applauding world.

In April, 1907, it was decided to postpone the celebration till 1909,
and to open the Quebec Bridge in conjunction with it. This attempt to
mix two incompatible things was frustrated by the awful accident to
the bridge in August. For the rest of the year there was considerable
doubt whether the celebration would ever take place on a great scale
at all. But in November the appointment of a commission to study the
commemorative features of the field of Gettysburg encouraged the hope
that the Battlefields, at least, would not be forgotten. And in
January, 1908, Lord Grey came to Quebec to see if the Tercentenary
could be held that very summer, which was, of course, its proper time.
At first, all except a very few declared this to be impossible--but a
good many seeming impossibilities were successfully performed before
that summer was over. Yet the prospect was undeniably appalling. A day
before we thought there would be eighteen months for preparation; and
everyone agreed that this was none too long. Now we thought we might
at least have eight. The enormous difficulties which had to be
surmounted before most of the actual work of preparation began
consumed two of these short eight months. And then, in March, we
suddenly found that the whole scheme, on a scale far vaster than we
ever dreamt of, had to be worked out in only four!

I shall not trouble you with any more dates. But I must state the main
elements of the problem which was in the throes of solution this time
last year. It was a triple problem. Each part was extremely complex in
itself. And all three parts were made more complex still by their
interaction on each other.

First, the Battlefields. I cannot remember how many times I was asked,
"How are you going to get round the French-Canadians"? and how many
times my invariable answer, "Simply by telling the whole truth," was
met by a stare of blank amazement. There certainly was some excuse for
this astonishment; as the whole truth was very little known. It was
very hard at first to get the _s_ at the end of _Battlefields_ into
the public mind. A good many English-speaking people only knew that
Wolfe beat Montcalm. They had, apparently, never heard of the second
battle of the Plains when Lvis beat Murray in 1760. I doubt whether
most French-Canadians felt the full strength of their own history.
Montcalm was maligned in his lifetime and has been much misrepresented
in Canadian history since. He is not well enough known, even now, as
the hero of four desperate victories over the British forces in four
successive campaigns. And it is not thoroughly understood that he
provided against every possible contingency up to the very day before
the first battle of the Plains, when he ordered the regiment of Guieme
to go and guard the path up which Wolfe came next morning. Nor is it
thoroughly understood that he was constantly thwarted and finally
undone by the machinations of enemies on his own side. It was
Vaudreuil, the spiteful pettifogger, who countermanded, as
Governor-General, this and many other wise orders given by the great
Montcalm.

Then, there was much confusion of thought about Phips's attack in
1690, which was really the first _American_ invasion of Canada. It was
not generally realized that when Frontenac, the Frenchman, repulsed
it he was preserving our own Canada as surely as Carleton, the
Englishman, was when he repulsed the second American invasion in 1775,
or as Brock and de Salaberry, when they repulsed the third American
invasion during the war of 1812. And nearly everyone seemed surprised
that the French-Canadians shared the triumph of more victories than
any other race did in all the battles round Quebec. The Americans,
through the presence of two battalions of the Royal Americans, had
their part in the glory of the first battle of the Plains. The British
enjoyed two victories of their own, Wolfe's and Carleton's. The French
had three, Frontenac's, Montcalm's at Montmorency, and Lvis's at Ste.
Foy. While the French-Canadians shared these three with the French and
Carleton's with their British-born fellow-subjects.

A synopsis of this was embodied in a general appeal on behalf of the
Battlefields. You all know the result--how the Dominion voted an
initial subscription of $300,000, how Quebec and Ontario headed the
provincial subscriptions with $100,000 each, how the Mansion House
Fund in London realized $50,000, how far-off New Zealand sent one of
the most generous contributions, how individual collecting went on in
every part of the French- and English-speaking world, and how the
Battlefields were finally dedicated as an heirloom of Canada for ever.

Now that we have arrived at this point in these really great matters I
must crave your kind indulgence for a moment to intrude a little
personal remark of an exculpatory nature, because it has some bearing
on the amenities which should subsist between lecturer and audience. A
friend of mine warned me to be very careful what I said about
Frontenac and Carleton, as there might be a good many Americans
present, and they wouldn't like to hear about any American defeats.
But, as you have just seen, I actually bring in Brock and de
Salaberry, our victorious heroes against the third American invasion
as well. In justification of this I respectfully beg to offer one
trifling personal excuse and four really important reasons. I have the
honour of being one-quarter American myself--and of ultra-American,
New-England, Puritan stock at that. Having said this, might I venture,
without too much offence, to intrude the further item of petty
personal information, that I am also one-quarter French by descent and
have French-Canadian blood-relations; so that the mere accident of
birth, and no merit of my own, naturally pre-disposes me to sympathize
with all the four races whose blood I share--British, American,
French, and French-Canadian?

But this is a mere trifle, and I apologize for even mentioning it, as
a lecturer's personality ought to be of no consequence whatever when
he is dealing, as I am here, with facts and not opinions. Of the four
reasons the first is that history has nothing to do with anything
except historic truth, and the defeat of the three American invasions
is certainly true. The second is that any complimentary perversion of
historic truth would be a studied insult to intelligent Americans,
who, of course, know better. The third is that Americans can bear the
record of a few defeats quite as well as the British, French, or
French-Canadians, none of whose own defeats are either hidden or
glossed over. And the fourth will surely appeal to all good tourists
from beyond the line. What do they come to Quebec for at all? Why, to
see what they can't see at home, of course. They say they love Quebec
because it is so unique. Then, what could be more assuredly unique,
and what more flattering because unique, than the only place in the
world where Americans have been twice defeated on the spot, and from
which other victors have set out to defeat them twice elsewhere?

The Tercentenary was not open to quite the same misunderstanding as
the Battlefields; but it was intricate enough. Two foreign Powers were
to be duly represented, France and the United States; also eleven
Canadian governing bodies--the Dominion, the Provinces, and the City
of Quebec; also the whole of the rest of the self-governing Empire.
There were many bilingual committees--general, special and
executive--which sat continually to deal with a multiplicity of vexed
questions. The outcome of their labours speaks volumes for the harmony
which prevailed in their councils. Then, there were three fleets of
three Great Powers to be provided for, also the first approximation to
a complete Canadian army ever brought together in time of peace, also
an influx of visitors outnumbering the entire native population, also
the representatives of the three historic Empires, of all the great
historic families, of the historic places connected with Quebec, of
the British Army, of many other interested bodies, and, finally, of
the King himself. And everything to be completed in four short months
of intense preparation, where a single mistake might ruin all!

Then, it had been decided to have a Pageant--the first of its kind
ever held in the New World and greatest ever held anywhere. It took a
full year to prepare the Oxford Pageant. The Quebec one was carried
through in these four months. Let anyone who has ever managed amateur
theatricals imagine what it meant to raise and train 5000 amateurs for
a performance the like of which had never been seen before in Canada.
Fortunately, very fortunately, the London Pageant was postponed and
Quebec secured the originator and greatest master of the modern
Pageant, Mr. Frank Lascelles. He too, in the sense that he gave his
services free, was an amateur, as was his secretary, Mr. Ernan Denis.
To our discredit as Canadians many persisted for a long time in
believing that these two patriotic benefactors were making a small
fortune in some surreptitious way. And, to our further discredit,
every jobmaster in the proper sphere of influence held out his itching
palm for the usual illicit share of the spoils. We Canadians are
unhappily forced to acknowledge that some ugly words of American
origin and use are quite as applicable to much of our own public life,
no matter what party happens to be in power. But, on the other hand,
it was one of the finest features of this great success that the body
of devoted public men on the National Battlefields Commission, under
the chairmanship of Quebec's upright and indefatigable Mayor, Sir
George Garneau, gave their services as freely as Mr. Lascelles, and
saw to it that the funds at their disposal were honestly spent to the
best advantage.

Of course, the Pageant gave occasion for some French-and-English
misunderstanding, which was, equally of course, accentuated by the
mosquito press and sundry petty busybodies, who were by no means all
French-Canadians. But here again the truth emerged in time to save the
situation. When it was found that a Pageant managed by an Englishman,
and at first performed by an unduly large proportion of
Anglo-Canadians, was yet so French and French-Canadian that not a word
of English was spoken in it from first to last, except by Phips's
discomfited envoy, no reasonable suspicion could any longer be kept
alive. The French-Canadians saw the matter in its true light and
joined _en masse_. And when they did join they easily took the honours
of the scene. They caught the spirit of it at once; and they excelled
in the dramatic parts, both individually and collectively. They were,
of course, quite at home, playing the favourite rles of their own
heroic history.

Since all ended so happily, and since every critical question only
served to strengthen the growing friendship of the two races, thus
brought into such intimate contact, there is no need to disguise the
fact that the fate of the historic armies, and with it the fate of the
Pageant and whole celebration, hung in the balance for several anxious
days. The arguments in favour of having these armies were simply
unanswerable. Some timid folk asked why should we have a Pageant with
a celebration on a world-wide scale at all. But, two years before, the
exclusively French-Canadian St.-Jean-Baptiste Society of Quebec had,
of its own free will, invited the whole Dominion to take part; a
meeting of Quebec citizens, in which French-Canadians greatly
preponderated, had unanimously asked that the invitation should be
extended to include the whole British Empire, France and the United
States; and the French-Canadian Prime Minister of Canada had brought
in an Act of Parliament to nationalize the very fields on which the
original armies met in alternate victory and defeat. Under these
circumstances, no Pageant could stop short of, much less omit, the
heroes of both battles of the Plains. All the world knew Wolfe and
Montcalm. If they were left out, would not the world think there was
something that had to be hidden? To the obvious objection that the
world might only notice the first battle, the obvious answer was that
here was the one golden opportunity to teach it about the second, and
to draw its willing attention to all the other French and
French-Canadian glories of Quebec. And to the final objection that the
ultimate result was a French defeat, the answer was that the French
Canadians and the British never fought each other alone, that, on the
contrary, when they were alone together in Quebec, they fought and
conquered, side by side, and that nothing could be more insulting to
French-Canadians than to suppose that all their professed contentment
with this ultimate result was mere lip-service to curry favour with a
conqueror.

The historic armies were accordingly incorporated as the crowning
scene of the Pageant. But then it took another week to decide how they
were to march on and manoeuvre. Some knave had started, and some fools
had believed, an idiotic newspaper nonsense-tale about a sham battle!
The leaders of both races of course knew better. But that portion of
the public, French- and English-speaking alike, which is always ready
to believe any false news that happens to be bad enough, began to get
excited. However, quite apart from the temporary mischief caused by
this poisonous lie, the problem was sufficiently knotty at first
sight. The French army could not march on from the Quebec side and the
British from the opposite, without suggesting the first battle and
Wolfe's victory. Nor could the position be reversed without suggesting
the French victory of the following campaign. At last an idea struck
one of the four nonplussed survivors of an interminable sitting that
both armies should march on, side by side, and at right angles to the
lines of advance and retreat of each army in either battle. This was
immediately adopted; and two friendlier forces never met or parted on
better terms.

To complete the significance of this crowning scene, Carleton and his
French- and English-speaking defenders of 1775 stood on one flank,
while, on the other, stood de Salaberry, the French-speaking hero of
1812, with his _Voltigeurs de Chteauguay_, among whom was a Quebec
contingent, and Brock, the English-speaking hero of the same war, who
was long in garrison at Quebec before he left to die in victory on
Queenston Heights.

I have purposely dwelt with considerable insistence on the
French-and-English question, because I am thoroughly convinced that
there is nothing to fear from the truth. On the contrary, I am sure
that the Pageant, the Battlefields and the whole Tercentenary have
promoted a better mutual understanding than ever existed in our joint
history before. And I certainly think that due credit has hardly yet
been given to the French-Canadians for their share in bringing about
this devoutly wished-for consummation.

We must remember how naturally the mass of any people shrinks from
being merged in constantly increasing bodies different from itself. It
is not very easy for minorities to be generous. Is it always so easy
for our own Anglo-Canadian minority in the Province of Quebec to be
generous to the French-Canadian majority? Should we then be so ready
to resent an occasional narrowness among the French-Canadian minority
in the Dominion or the Empire? On the whole, it may be truly said that
while there was a genuine and hearty desire, in all responsible
English-speaking quarters, to give French-Canadians the fairest field
and fullest favour, the French-Canadians, on their part, were at least
the equals of the Anglo-Canadians, and under more difficult
conditions, in losing prejudice and gaining generosity throughout the
trying periods of the tercentennial year.

To give you a quite honest account of all that was planned and carried
out I should confess our failures. But as they were mostly in details
of organization I suppose you would not care to hear them catalogued.
The moral of all failures is always the same: that the only way to
organize any victory is to give experts time and means to lead
disciplined enthusiasts to the desired end. In my humble opinion only
three really important mistakes were made. Whenever you have
thousands of amateurs you should have a good professional staff to
keep touch between leaders and followers, and between each part and
the whole. We had generals and regiments enough; but we might have had
a stronger staff. Then, it seems a decided mistake ever to have
contemplated a postponement till 1909, a doubly objectionable year,
and ever to have thought of dragging in the incongruous opening of the
Quebec bridge. The third mistake was probably a moot point to many far
abler minds. But to my own it always seemed, and still seems, a
detraction from the whole celebration to have left out the greatest of
all the historic characters, William Pitt, the Empire-maker.

Taken for all in all, however, the Tercentenary was an unchallengeable
triumph--brilliant to the eye, moving to the heart, deep to the
understanding, and fraught throughout with untold significance.

The longest and driest part of my discourse is now over; and we shall
be able to turn, not perhaps without some relief, to the actual
celebration and the living story of the Pageant.


II--THE CELEBRATION

By Wednesday, the 22nd of July, Quebec was astir with the concentred
life of a whole people. The meeting of the scions of her mighty past
with the international representatives of a mighty present had already
quickened her to many-sided interest. Wolfe and Montcalm, Lvis and
Murray and Carleton, once more trod her streets, in the persons of
their living next-of-kin. The Mayor of Brouage, the old French town
which gave birth to Champlain, now looked on the capital of a New
France to which Champlain himself gave birth. Admiral Jaurguiberry
was as worthy a representative of France and her Navy to-day as his
distinguished family had been of both in historic times; and, for this
double reason, he was _persona gratissima_ in Quebec. Mr. Fairbanks,
as Vice-President of the United States, had the official status of a
Crown Prince. Clan Fraser, so justly noted for its soldiers and
settlers, was represented by its Chief, Lord Lovat. And as Lord Lovat
may be called the Scotch representative, so the Duke of Norfolk may be
called the English one and the Earl of Ranfurly the Irish. It was not
without its significance that the representatives of the two
Protestant countries were Roman Catholics, that the Fraser name and
blood are current among the French-Canadians, that the Duke of Norfolk
is the Premier Peer of the British nobility, that both he and Lord
Lovat served in the Boer War, and that Lord Ranfurly was a most
popular Governor-General among the ultra-democratic New Zealanders. He
was one of the three British Proconsuls present, the other two being
the Earl of Dudley, once Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, now
Governor-General of Australia, and, of course, Canada's own good
friend and Governor, Lord Grey. Then, Newfoundland, eldest of all the
British Colonies, was represented beside United South Africa, youngest
of all aspirants to Confederation.

So here were representatives of the whole self-ruling Empire; while
the turbans of some Indian officers reminded us of that other Empire,
where more than three times as many people as there are in the United
States are governed by Lord Minto, who served with distinction against
the North West Rebellion, the first purely Canadian campaign, and who
was our Viceroy when the first Canadian Contingents were sent to fight
for the Empire beyond the sea. It was a great pity that India was not
fully represented by some of her ruling princes. This was no fault of
Lord Grey's, none of Lord Minto's, and, as was found out later on,
none of the princes' own. Had another than the "official channel of
communication" been used, or usable, we might have had all the
Oriental splendour we wanted, coming at its own expense. And what a
lesson in the width, depth and variety of Imperial grandeur and
responsibilities! You will remember how the destinies of East and West
were intertwined even so far back as the retrocession of Louisburg and
the retention of Madras.

To crown all, the Fleet and Army, which the Mother Country still
maintains almost alone for the defence of all, were represented by a
squadron of her battleships and cruisers, and by her greatest living
soldier, Lord Roberts, the only man who has ever commanded forces from
every part of the Empire united for a single war.

But this was not all. Though thousands of visitors had been flocking
in for a week, though fleets had been entering the harbour, though
troops had been marching into camp without a break by night or day,
though from the Heights you could see ships, tents and battlefields,
and though every street and open space was swarming with eager
crowds, Quebec was still vibrant with expectation. Was not the Heir to
the King of an Empire as large and thrice as populous as the whole New
World coming to honour the founder of a country the size of Europe,
and to dedicate the most sacred spot within it, where the fate of
nations was decided?

He came in the full splendour of a perfect summer day; and his arrival
befitted the occasion. He came by sea, as British rulers should. His
ship, that all were waiting for, was the _Indomitable_, the latest
model of combined strength and speed in the oldest and greatest Navy
in the world; and therefore the best to fly the Royal Standard of a
sailor Prince. On the greatest of all tidal rivers the British, French
and American Squadrons lay at anchor to receive him. On the wharf
where he was to land, and on and up from there to the topmost heights
of walled and citadelled Quebec, stood double lines of Canadian
soldiers, still immature as an organized army, but having a long and
very honourable military past, and standing on ground made immortal by
the two races from which they were descended. Suddenly, over the low
foreshore of Point Levis, the tops of the escorting cruiser _Minotaur_
appeared; and the next minute her long, clean-cut hull glided swiftly
into view. As suddenly, the immense crowds, clustering round every
point of vantage, stirred a moment, swayed intently forward, and
changed from a concourse of individuals to a single expectant mass of
humanity. One minute more, and the _Indomitable_ herself also glided
into view, the very embodiment of tense force held in leash.
Immediately the fleet in the harbour manned and dressed ship from
stem to stern. Then the British, French and American flagships led the
thunderous salute, which was instantly repeated by every vessel
present, and by the grey fastness of the Citadel, crowning the heights
more than three hundred feet above. Into this magnificence of welcome
the _Indomitable_ advanced, stateliest of all: her armoured
shapeliness along the water-line, her well-trained crew on deck, and
her multitudinous flutter of flags aloft, making her a sea-throne fit
for a Prince whose finest title is The Lord of the Isles. Having
reached her berth there was a heavy plunge and splash, as her huge
anchor was let go, then the hoarse roar of her chain cable rushing
through the hawse-hole, and then, almost before this ceased, the first
strains of the National Anthem, rising from ship after ship. Thus, in
the presence of his Heir and special envoy, the King's Majesty arrived
in Tercentennial Quebec.

Thursday was devoted to Champlain. And it was much more than
officially appropriate that the Prince should lead the ceremonies in
honour of the founder of Quebec. Both have Norman blood, and both are
known as good seamen afloat and statesmen ashore. Champlain sailed up
the harbour in his famous _Don de Dieu_, with the flood tide flowing,
a favouring breeze, and every stitch of canvas drawing. This little
vessel, of only 120 tons, was as nearly a facsimile of his own as
human wit could make her; and his crew was also the same in numbers,
in dress, and even in blood, as that of three hundred years ago. There
was a curious contrast when she berthed next the gigantic
_Indomitable_, which, being of 18,000 tons, was just one hundred and
fifty times her size. But there was an equally interesting coincidence
in the fact that both vessels held the transatlantic record of their
day. Champlain made the quickest passage then known when he went from
Honfleur to Tadousac in eighteen days. And the _Indomitable_ holds the
present record, for having speeded home, from land to land, in
sixty-seven hours. Another link between Champlain and our own day is
that he was the first to propose a Panama Canal.

The Indians were on the look-out. They put off in their war canoes,
and a parley ensued overside. Then they paddled the strange, kind
Palefaces ashore. Unfortunately, not many people saw the Indians in
their canoes close enough to appreciate the scene. Nothing could have
been finer in its way. These Indians were no suburban human curios,
but the genuine, full-blooded red men, two hundred strong, brought
down from the Far North and West, both to learn and teach at the
Tercentenary. Whoever loves canoes and the strength and beauty of the
human form--and what Canadian worth his salt does not love
both?--would have seen at least one perfect crew here to gladden his
delighted eyes. Crested with waving war-plumes, and stark naked to the
waist, everyone of its eight six-footers was straight as an arrow and
full of supple vigour as a bow. No sculptor could have wished for
better models than these sinewy living bronzes, driving their canoe
ahead with that perfect harmony of rhythm between craft and crew which
made them part of the very poetry of motion.

On landing, Champlain first went into an exact reproduction of the
_Abitation de Kbeck_, which stood near where the original had been
built three centuries before. When he came out he took his place in
the long procession of Canadian history, which immediately began to
file off. As it mounted the hill and marched past his statue--one of
the very few public works of art in Canada--the spectator could see
the whole line of our history in five centuries, from the sixteenth to
the twentieth. First came the Heralds-at-Arms and Men of the Watch,
exactly as in medival times. Then Jacques Cartier and his three
crews, 110 men strong, the same as when he discovered Quebec. Then a
gay, many-coloured cavalcade, the mounted court renowned in the annals
of historic pageantry at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At their head
rode Jacques Cartier's King, Francis I. with his Queen and his
bewitching sister, Marguerite of Angoulme. Next came Champlain's
King, the equally famous Henry of Navarre. You all know the old
refrain:--


    Vive Henri Quatre!
    Vive ce roi vaillant!
    Ce diable  quatre
    A le triple talent
    De boire et de battre
    Et d'tre un vert galant!


He excelled in arms and arts, as every national hero should excel; and
was admired and loved by women, as men who excel in arms and arts
deserve to be.

Then came Champlain himself, de Monts, Pontgrav, and their men, the
founders of the country and its pioneers, greater even than the first
discoverers. Next, Dollard and his sixteen heroes of the Long Sault,
who, as every Canadian knows, saved the infant Colony by an act of
self-sacrifice which can never be surpassed, because they fore-knew
their earthly doom from the very moment they set forth to stay the
furious invasion of the Iroquois. These were succeeded by explorers
and founders of towns. And here we are reminded that the Anglo-Saxon
is not the only adventurous race of modern history. The French were
often original in their ideas and brilliant in their first moves into
the unknown world. The pathos of their daring lives is that they were
leaders without a national following, without the security of
sea-power behind them, and without a free-growing colony beside them.
But take them for what they were themselves, and they well deserve our
lasting admiration. I could wish their names were better known in
English-speaking Canada--La Violette, de Maisonneuve, Bienville,
Iberville, La Salle, Marquette, La Vrendrye. Look at the portrait of
La Salle if you want to see the spirit of exploration shining through
the veil of the flesh!

A new era began in 1665, with the arrival of the Marquis de Tracy and
the Rgiment de Carignan-Sallires, fresh from its victorious campaign
against the Turks. These, like their predecessors and
successors--except Duluth, St. Lusson and Mdlle de Verchres--will be
met again in the Pageant. Duluth headed some _Coureurs des Bois_,
those adventurous spirits whose vagaries used to make their paternal
Government get as anxious as a hen that's hatched a brood of
ducklings. But the Government were right in objecting to their real
excesses and the unsettling effect of their example. Then came St.
Lusson and the men who took possession of the illimitable West in
1671. Then Frontenac, whose striking personality dominates one of the
best scenes in the Pageant. Then the female counterpart of him and
Dollard--Mdlle de Verchres, who held the Iroquois at bay with a
courage as undauntable as that shown at Rorke's Drift against an
equally pitiless foe. Finally, there came the historic armies of Wolfe
and Montcalm, Lvis and Murray, Carleton and Brock. As there were a
few old people who could remember the Canadian Rebellion, and many
more who could remember the proclamation of the Dominion, on the
ground at the head of Mountain Hill which the procession passed on its
way up, it was literally true that every single great phase of our
history was present to the eye or living memory, from the sixteenth
century to the twentieth. I say the twentieth advisedly, because the
Tercentenary was not only commemorating history but actually making it
as well.

That evening the illuminations blent all the work of Nature and Man
into one vivid picture traced in fire. Against the intense darkness
the characteristic contours of Quebec stood out in bold
relief--heights, slopes and levels--with emphasis of concentrated
brilliance on every salient feature. The outline of the Levis shore
was revealed, in the same way, by tier upon tier, cluster after
cluster, and many sinuous connecting lines of lights. While between
the sheer black of its banks, from which these latticed myriads of
diamonds were flashing, the dark St. Lawrence gleamed with a fleet so
phantom-like in all but its mere brightness that you would have
thought the dread leviathans of day had been replaced at night by
ships from fairyland.

On Friday morning all roads led out to the Plains of Abraham, where an
international force of twenty thousand men was drawn up for the Royal
Review. It was an inspiring sight in more than met the eye; though the
sight itself was surely inspiring enough: all that disciplined human
strength, trained for the noble duty of national defence, standing on
part of the stage of universal history, and in the midst of a vast
natural amphitheatre which is one of the scenic wonders of the world.
Here were three Great Powers, once more represented in arms on their
old field of honour; but this time in the rivalry of peace, and side
by side with Canada's new army. I say army, not militia, to mark the
transformation that is taking place, none too soon and far too slowly,
from a mere collection of isolated units to something more nearly
approaching a cohesive whole. The old militia had not even the
isolated units for many necessary branches of an army; and an army is
a living organism, continually undergoing waste and needing repair. So
it was an excellent object-lesson to have the medical, transport,
commissariat and other necessary non-combatant departments represented
on parade.

The troops just filled the ground, drawn up, as they were, in two
lines of quarter columns, infantry in front and mounted men in rear.
The contour of the Plains made every man visible to the spectator;
and, as you looked at the parade, you saw something of all the forces
which have made, and which must maintain, the Empire. The Heir to the
Throne represented the King, from whom all officers receive their
commissions, and to whom all that take arms swear allegiance by land
or sea. The British Navy, that still protects Canada without receiving
any support from Canadian resources, was represented by a Naval
Brigade, some thousands strong, under Sir John Jellicoe, the hero of
the relief of the Pekin Legations. The British Army was represented by
the last soldier to hold the office of Commander-in-Chief and the
first to appear in Canada as a Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts of
Kandahar, Pretoria and Waterford. Every rank was also represented,
from his down to the junior subaltern's, as well as every great part
of the Empire, East and West, North and South, Old World and New. Of
course the Naval Brigade, as belonging to the Senior Service, took the
right of the line. Next to it, mass upon mass, came the Canadian
infantry, so drawn up, according to its territorial districts, that,
as you ran your eye down the dense ranks of red, khaki, or Rifle
green, you saw Canada in arms from every single quarter of the land,
all the thousand leagues of way between the Atlantic and Pacific.

The march past was managed with an almost German or Japanese
exactitude. The three Naval Brigades went by first. Perhaps it is
prejudice, but I always think the British sailors look more to the
manner born than any moustached foreigners; and they certainly should,
being the heirs of so many naval ages. First on their own element they
were a good second on the soldier's, when they passed with just that
well-balanced sway which distinguishes men who have to use their
sea-legs. The best march past of all was decidedly that of the Royal
Canadians, who, as you know, constitute the Infantry arm of our
Permanent Force. Their step, swing, dressing, distances and general
precision left little to be desired. The Highlanders naturally excited
the greatest sumptuary interest, and drew a hot and continuous fire of
snap-shots from hundreds of cameras. And, after all, there _is_
something in the philosophy of clothes, and a sartorial touch of
distinction, with a great tradition behind it, is by no means to be
despised, in its proper place. There was not much to choose between
the best of the red, green, or kilted corps; and there was nothing
worse than second bests on parade. The mounted troops naturally labour
under disadvantages as compared with infantry; and their appearance
was certainly less smart. But, on even terms, they would at the very
least have held their own. The Royal Canadian Dragoons, who are
regulars, were different; and the turn-out of their Royal Escort was
practically perfect. The three men who most deserved the well-earned
honours of this occasion were the Minister of Militia--Sir Frederick
Borden; the Inspector-General--Sir Percy Lake; and the Chief of the
Staff--General Otter. But the great personal military feature was, of
course, Lord Roberts, who rode past early in the Review as Honorary
Colonel of the Queen's Own Rifles, to the great delight of the immense
concourse of spectators. He is also Honorary Colonel of the Royal
Canadian Artillery, and, as you all know, an old gunner officer
himself. He certainly had no reason to be ashamed either of his old
Arm of the Service or its new Canadian representatives. When the last
corps had cleared the front, after passing the saluting base, the two
regular batteries of Horse Artillery formed up at the extreme end of
the Plains; and then down they came, at full gallop, as hard as the
horses could lay hoof to the turf, and swept past the Prince in
faultless order, from the first line of guns to the last flying
limber.

The Celebration continued throughout the last twelve days of July,
and, as you see, I have only mentioned three days so far, and only one
feature on each of these! But if I am to keep within the hour and a
half so kindly allowed me, and still tell you something about the
Pageant, I must greatly reduce the number of events to be described
and condense my remarks about those selected. I could easily talk of
fifty interesting things. But I shall take only five, and say very
little indeed about each one. They do not lack variety:--Lord Roberts
on the Quebec Battlefields, Lord Grey's Empire Dinner, The _Messe
Solenelle_ on the Plains, the Prince at a French-Canadian village, and
the Historical Ball.

There was little anyone could teach Lord Roberts about the
Battlefields. Very few Canadians know them half so well after seeing
them as many a recent distinguished visitor has known them before. We
might well do more to learn our great history on the spot. When King
Edward's Garter Mission was in Japan some of its members, who made a
genuine "surprise visit" to an historic spot, were astonished at the
ready answers given by any casual inhabitant. Now, it is within the
bounds of truth to say that surprise visitors might possibly find less
local information in certain spots in Canada. Students of military
history might like to know that Lord Roberts accepts as final the
evidence which proves the victory to have been due to Wolfe's own
initiative, secrecy and skill, working out a consummate plan based on
British sea-power. There was a fine touch in his getting out of the
carriage to walk up the hill in Wolfe's footsteps, and a still finer
when he stood for some time all alone in the Ursuline Chapel, under
the Lamp of Repentigny and half-way between the grave of Montcalm and
the pulpit from which Wolfe's funeral sermon was preached by the
chaplain of the British flagship a fortnight after the battle. You
might also like to know that an Ursuline, now perfectly clear-minded
at ninety-four, spent several of her early years in the convent with
Mother St. Ignatius, who, as a girl, stood beside the grave when
Montcalm's shattered body was lowered into it, that dreadful midnight,
a hundred and fifty years ago.

The Governor-General's Empire Dinner at the Citadel gathered round one
table, as never before in Canada or in all Greater Britain, a Prince
of Wales, three great Proconsuls, several Prime Ministers, and many
leaders in the main pursuits of life. Lord Grey, who has done more
than anyone else to promote the personal touch across the North
Atlantic, made a happy remark in the same connection when proposing
the Prince's health. "Sir, in making yourself acquainted with every
portion of the Empire you have given an example which it would be
well if those subjects of the Crown who have the time and money would
increasingly follow." The Prince's reply was short and happy, with
good points, well driven home. It was a pity that the Tercentenary
hardly gave him full scope for his power as a public speaker. There is
a prevalent idea that kings and other royalties never compose their
own speeches, and could not if they tried. Sir Thomas Browne might
have entered this among the _Vulgar Errors_ of his day, and we might
apply it as such to our own. The man who composed and delivered the
"Wake up, John Bull!" speech at the Guildhall in 1901 is much fitter
to compose other people's speeches than they are to compose his. And
it is no fulsome compliment, but a critical truth, to say that George
V gives a new distinction to the old expression of "the King's
English."

There was an effective Imperial moment when Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in
proposing the health of self-ruling Greater Britain, drew out of his
pocket a letter from General Botha, who said, in allusion to the
Conference of the Fathers of Confederation in South Africa, "it is our
intention to follow in the footsteps of Canada as soon as possible."
Here were two British Prime Ministers, one a French-Canadian, wearing,
like the Prince's uncle, a medal won in defence of Canada, the other a
Boer, who, only six years before, had been Commander-in-Chief of the
hostile forces which Lord Roberts went to fight.

The _Messe Solenelle_ on the Plains of Abraham was marked by
unaffected sincerity and grandeur, from the first strains of the
Priests' March, as a processional, to the final elevation of the
Host, when all those tens of thousands


    ...knelt upon the simple sod
    And sued in _form pauperis_ to God.


The Duke of Norfolk and Lord Lovat, two great Roman Catholics from
Protestant Great Britain, were present as worshippers. M. Louis
Herbette, Conseiller d'tat of the France that used to be "le soldat
de Dieu" in Canada, was most conspicuously absent.

On Monday the 27th the Prince went down to spend an informal morning
at the Chteau Bellevue, thirty miles below Quebec. Here he strolled
about freely, meeting the _cur_ and _habitant_ in familiar
intercourse, with such lively satisfaction on both sides as to prompt
the suggestion that another and longer Royal visit of an intimate kind
could hardly fail to have the happiest results.

On Tuesday the Parliament Buildings were given over to the Historical
Ball, where every period was illustrated, from Jacques Cartier's
discovery to the war of 1812. Two classes of people were a little more
self-conscious than the rest--those who merely had "real" costumes and
those who appeared as their own ancestors. Real brocades and ornaments
cost money; and the former class was therefore as interesting as money
in clothes can make one. The latter had the flesh and blood of the
makers of their country to think of as well; and that might possibly
be considered some small distinction for, one night only, even in the
present age.

Is there any moral to my story? I think there is; but, when I have
pointed it out, I think you will say it is so very trite and obvious
that you would have been just as wise without it. However, I shall
venture to draw it, for all that.

Who is not stirred by Milton's thrilling apostrophe to
Parliament?--"Ye Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it
is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow
and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to
invent, subtile and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any
point the highest that human capacity can soar to." That Parliament
had nine generations of political wisdom less than ours; and it knew
nothing of what a blatant public calls up-to-date civilization. Yet
its members will bear favourable comparison with ours to-day in many
essentials. What a damning indictment it is against the mass, when we
have to commend individually our personally honest men! Free
self-government before all else; but it will never answer our higher
purposes unless we can produce a higher type of leaders. Another point
in statesmanship that should touch us all most intimately is the
relations between our two races. I have dwelt insistently on this
already; but I return to it, to ask why more of our educated
Anglo-Canadians will not try to see how French-Canadian questions
appear to French-Canadian people. Remember that though
French-Canadians often make English the language of the head, they
always keep French as the language of the heart. Lastly, though some
might think this beneath the dignity of statesmanship, why did we miss
the golden opportunity of giving the children an object-lesson for
life? The Germans send their brightest school children to Kiel, to
see the High Seas Fleet; and their Reichstag votes their Navy Bill.
The Japanese put their children in the front row whenever there is
anything of national importance to see; and they have come into the
circle of great World-Powers at a single spring. Why did we have no
cadets at our Royal Review? There was nothing the Prince would have
seen more gladly. Why were a few picked school children not sent from
every Province to see Tercentennial Quebec?

The world is still passing through a phase of evolution in which war
is a determining factor. Patriotism is therefore the first of national
duties. It is profoundly scientific in essence. It is also the most
exalting national duty, being based on discipline, which, in its turn,
is based, in the last analysis, on self-sacrifice. And we boast not a
little of our Canadian patriotism. Yet the Review suggested just a
suspicion of the modern football match, where thousands who never play
the game look on and yell and criticize, while a handful provides the
mob of them with entertainment. No one that loves Canada wants her to
be taxed in purse and person beyond what is reasonable for national
insurance. But no patriot can think we do our duty when our Permanent
Force is far below one per thousand of our population, and when our
Active Militia is far below one per hundred, has only twelve days'
training, and is habitually short of a third of its officers. Cheap
and nasty criticism of the Militia can be had in plenty without the
asking. But the true spirit of service can not. And if it is objected
that the force is only playing at soldiers, the unanswerable
rejoinder is that no public service in a free country can take itself
more seriously, as a whole, than the electorate takes it.

As for the intellectual life--what is to be said of that which hardly
exists? By the intellectual life of a country I mean pure science--not
commercially applied science, good as this is in itself--and the art
that grows naturally out of a people's life and is racy of the soil.
We have the borrowed, the imitated and the hothoused varieties in
abundance; but not the native art in literature, music, painting,
sculpture and architecture. And the native cannot be forced: you can't
get genius by Act of Parliament, not even at Ottawa, nor yet by puffs
in the Press, not even at Toronto, Montreal and Quebec. It must grow
from congenial soil; and when Canadians really want it they will get
it, as others have, but not before.

Quebec is a thing of beauty, if ever there was one. And the
architecture composes delightfully, in the mass. But all the
architectonics are Nature's. Man's individual works are hardly art.
The Basilica is rather quaint, the Anglican Cathedral looks like an
essay in geometrical drawing, and most of the public buildings are
only etiquette in stone. An hotel is the most impressive structure;
but it could not be even advertised as the result of inspiration.
Painting and sculpture are not much better, though fine statues are
beginning. Music has something to its lasting credit in the air of _O
Canada_! which has the open breadth, the strength and the soaring
quality of sound that suits the nobility of a national anthem. That
it may find some great Anglo-Canadian poet to make it appeal, with
the essential difference, to the larger part of our people, and that
it may then entirely supplant _The Maple Leaf_--the flattest, stalest
and most unprofitable tune and jingle ever squawked in public--are two
consummations devoutly to be wished. But the Tercentenary called forth
no music of its own, no poetry, and nothing in prose that was at all
like original and creative literature. Well, we must try again. We
must try as a whole people, yearning for that fit expression of
aspiration and achievement which genius alone can give us.


III--THE PAGEANT

Eight hundred miles from the open sea the mighty lift of an
eighteen-foot spring tide will carry you through those Narrows of the
St. Lawrence which the Indians called Kebeck. Here an ocean meets a
continent, the Old World meets the New; and all the approaches are
surrounded with befitting majesty. For a hundred miles you have been
coming up a water avenue ten miles wide, bordered by the sheer
Laurentians on the north and by gentler hill-horizons on the south.
Then, thirty miles below the port, you enter the Orleans Channel,
where the narrow view is closed in by lesser heights, and humanized by
bright scenes of cultivation and white little villages. Suddenly the
scene becomes vaster than before. As you pass the West Point of
Orleans you can hardly believe that the leaping flash of Montmorency
Falls, to the right, is a hundred feet higher than Niagara. But in
front is the Citadel, another hundred higher still. The Bason is like
a lake, its farther shore--the well named _Cte de Beaupr_--continues
down the North Channel of Orleans into the blue distance; and behind
and beyond all are the Laurentians again, sweeping round, from where
you left them below the island, in an enormous semicircle of eighty
miles. But even this is only one-third of the panorama that greets you
from the Plains of Abraham, whose tableland forms a long, narrow
promontory between the St. Lawrence and the Valley of the St. Charles.
For there you find yourself on a natural stage, in an amphitheatre
two-thirds of which are formed by the far-spreading uplands that
stretch away to the corresponding curve of the mountains on the south.

Like an ancient Greek choosing a site for a theatre that was to be
part of the scenery surrounding it Mr. Lascelles chose the best among
the good. His open stage for five thousand performers and auditorium
for fifteen thousand spectators stood between the fields of the first
and second Battles of the Plains, overlooking a magnificent and most
historic reach of the St. Lawrence. Wooded ground, sloping down to the
right, afforded cover to the multitude of actors, without hiding the
view beyond. Through it runs the path up which Wolfe climbed to
victory. A half-mile further up stream is Sillery Point, where the
French first challenged him. And half channel over is where he recited
Gray's _Elegy_ when making his last reconnaissance in a boat the day
before the battle. Close in under the cliff is Champlain Street,
along which Montgomery led his Americans to death and defeat in 1775.
And a few yards from where he fell is the wharf where the first
Canadian Contingent embarked for South Africa in 1899.

But the River, the great, fleet-bearing River, which has been the
highway of history since Canada began, calls up more memories than the
land, and remains the strongest of all links between the past and
future of the country. Where Jacques Cartier sailed by in 1541 to
build his fort at Cap Rouge, where many another eager pioneer, haunted
by visions of the golden East, went seeking that westward New-World
passage to Cathay which is still commemorated in the place-name of La
Chine, now ocean liners go by with the hosts of immigration, equally
eager, in a more sober way, but set upon finding homes where their
forerunners only saw an obstructive waste. Such was the setting of the
Pageant.

The scene opened with an empty stage, except for the wigwams of
Stadacona, the Indian village that preceded Quebec. The farthest point
of the stage overlooked the river a bow-shot from the auditorium.
Presently a single Indian scout appears on it and scans the St.
Lawrence. Suddenly he sees three sail, unlike what he had ever dreamt
of. He calls out the alarm, and is immediately surrounded by the
Braves. While this strange apparition holds the Indians spellbound
Jacques Cartier and his men land and mount the hill, singing a
folksong of _St. Malo, beau port de mer_, known then in Normandy and
still in Canada to-day. Jacques Cartier is dignified and gracious,
and distributes gifts freely. The Indians are wonderstruck and
friendly. They gaze in awe at the White Man's sign as his crew raise a
huge cross, thirty-five feet high, with a king's escutcheon on it, and
the legend _Franciscus Primus, Dei gratia, Francorum Rex, regnat_.
Jacques Cartier then reads a few verses from the Gospel of St. John.
The simple savages take him for a god; and their chief, Donnacona,
leaves for France with him, amid the farewells of the whole assembled
tribe.

After a pause, all eyes are suddenly drawn to the distant glittering
advance of a royal cavalcade, as it issues from the dense Forest of
Fontainebleau on to the glad light-green of the sunlit grass. For
nearly half a mile it winds its brilliant length along, all gaiety of
movement, colour and gallant life, from glinting hoof to quivering
plume. The King and Queen ride under a canopy, while the hundreds of
cavaliers and ladies of the court rein up in a respectful semicircle.
There must be some diversion for the pleasure of such a Court; and the
semicircle is hardly formed before the bushes are all astir with fauns
and satyrs; who dance onward round the triumphal car of their own
Queen, whose face--aglow with youthful loveliness of classic feature,
Southern colour, a lustrous eye and flashing smile--gave this
interlude a dominant charm that raised it into perfect harmony with
the other glory of the scene. Then the courtiers are more curious
still, as the first Indian they have ever seen steps forward, makes
obeisance, and, in the clear ringing tones of a man who is himself a
king, tells of his own people and their vast dominions, stretching out
from Kebeck, which is the Narrows of a stream so unchallengeably
first in all that land of waterways that _The Great River_ is its only
name.

The next scene shows Henry IV giving Champlain a commission to take
possession of the country discovered by Jacques Cartier for Francis I.
The whole aspect of the stage has been changed in the twinkling of an
eye. This Court is in the Presence Chamber, enclosed by walls of high,
white tapestry, inwrought with the golden fleur-de-lis. A smooth blue
carpet is spread for the Pavane, which is danced by a hundred
courtiers to the original music, before the King and Queen, who have
entered with their guards and suite and taken their seats on the
throne of France.

Again the scene is completely changed; and the inhabitants of the
infant colony of Quebec are seen waiting for Champlain's return in
1620. He is received with unbounded joy by French and Indians alike.
Champlain has left us such minute descriptions that it was easy to
reproduce this scene exactly as it happened in reality--the ox-cart in
which he and his girl-wife were drawn home in triumph, the pow-wow and
calumet dance, and the songs that carried the colonists back in fancy
to _la belle France_.

The arrival of La Mere Marie de l'Incarnation and her Ursulines in
1639, and the Marquis de Tracy and the regiment of Carignan-Sallires
in 1665, made two scenes which showed effectively the continuity of
the Roman Church. Every other participant in these and all other
scenes was obliged to put on what we absurdly call a "fancy dress"
when we mean an historical costume. But Bishop Laval and his suite, as
well as the Ursulines and Jesuits, were not. The present hierarchy
took the keenest pleasure in ensuring a worthy representation of the
religious scenes, in which many priests took the parts of their
spiritual forefathers. Owing to this pervading seemliness everything
was carried out amid an atmosphere of respect that speaks highly for
the vast throngs who were looking on. It was almost as if the modern
audience became the historic one that actually stood by to see the
sword of France receive the welcome of her cross.

A salvo of artillery from the River announces that Phips, with his
American invading squadron, is summoning Frontenac to surrender Quebec
in 1690. His blindfolded envoy presently appears, and is amazed to
find himself, not among a few cowering citizens, but in the presence
of the Viceroy and his officers, who have just arrived after a
splendid forced march. However, Lieutenant Thomas Savage is a stout
fellow, too; and he pulls out his watch and gives Frontenac an hour to
answer. Then Frontenac, whose personator, M. d'Artois, was the best
single character in the whole Pageant, takes fire and rejects the
summons with the historic words: "Tell your master he shall have my
answer at once, and from the mouth of my cannon!"

The parting shots of Phips and Frontenac have died away. The acred
stage is once more empty; and all is silence. But it is the silence of
eager expectation and suspense. The culminating moment has at last
arrived for a sight such as no man has ever seen before, since history
began. Nothing is visible beyond the stage. But everyone in the
auditorium knows and feels that the French and British armies of the
two Battles of the Plains in 1759 and 1760, and the united French-
and English-speaking armies that saved Canada from the American
invasions of 1775 and 1812, are waiting on the slope between the edge
of the stage and the edge of the cliffs for the bilingual words of
command which will set them marching on to the actual scene of their
immortal deeds, and in the actual presence of their great leaders'
living next-of-kin and of a future King-Emperor George, the heir of
the two Sovereigns in whose similar name Canada was made and kept a
British land. The sharp commands float up; there is the stirring roll
of drums and blare of bugles, with the measured tread of advancing
feet. Then, for just one second, the standards of France and Britain
appear over the crest, waving proudly, side by side. Next instant,
Wolfe and Montcalm, Levis and Murray, ride into view with their staffs
and mounted standard bearers; then, with French and British shoulder
to shoulder, in corresponding columns, the four armies of the three
wars, twenty-seven regiments strong.

Montcalm's Grenadiers marched with Wolfe's Grenadiers of Louisburg;
and so on, two corps together, from front to rear. Wolfe himself was
personated by one of his next-of-kin, Lieutenant Passy, of the Royal
Canadian Engineers, who, curiously enough, is of French blood on his
father's side. The prevailing colour among the French was white, among
the British, red. The Royal Roussillon, that stood the longest, fought
the hardest, and lost the most, of course wore blue, as a royal
regiment. And the Canadian Militia had coloured tuques and grey,
_toffe-du-pays_ coats. Fraser's Highlanders had the old short kilt
and plain Tam-o'-Shanter bonnet with a single ostrich feather. The
Royal Americans were, in many ways, the most interesting corps, as
being the military ancestors of every Rifle Regiment in the British
service, and as thus perpetuating, in the present Rifle Green, the
original British-American backwoodsman's green jacket, in which the
recruits joined when the regiment was first raised, in 1755, in the
Colonies which now form part of the United States. The most
interesting flag was the Regimental Colour of the 7th Royal Fusiliers,
which was the only regiment of regulars with Carleton at Quebec in
1775. The original colour was taken by the Americans in the
Revolutionary War and is now at West Point. When the Duke of Kent came
out to Quebec in 1791, in command of the regiment, he brought a
facsimile made by the Royal Princesses and presented by his father the
King. This is still preserved and was copied exactly for the Pageant.
So the Prince of Wales, who is the present Honorary Colonel of the
7th, saw here the facsimile of the colours made for his own
great-grandfather, and made in imitation of those belonging to the
same regiment which helped Carleton to save Canada for the British
Crown.

This whole scene formed a most thrilling sight; and one that was
deeply appealing to those of either race and tongue. And it was most
significant to see Wolfe and Montcalm, Lvis and Murray, together in
the centre, with Carleton and Voyer on one flank, and de Salaberry,
Brock and Tecumseh on the other. But more thrilling, more appealing,
and more significant than all else was the call of the blood across
the centuries. And who that then felt it stir his pulse can ever deny
that the crowded hours of glorious life which really make a man or a
nation are the ones best worth the living, and that, by our answer to
this ancestral call, on the very ground from which it came, we have
gone far toward exalting our own day above the catalogue of common
things?




CHAPTER IX

AN URSULINE EPIC


I

In the heart of Quebec is an oblong block of houses, about a quarter
of a mile long and half as broad. The streets on three sides of it
bear the names of St. Ursula, St. Louis and St. Anne. But saints'
names alone are nothing unusual in Quebec. It is only the crooked
little street cutting off the fourth corner that shows you the sole
point of contact between a convent and the outside world. This oblong
is the property of the Ursulines; the houses in it all face outward;
behind them stands the convent wall; and within the wall the cloisters
and a garden of some seven acres.

You wonder what the nuns think and talk about during their few spare
moments in that little life apart, when they never go outside the
precincts, and papers are so scarce inside. True, their friends and
pupils tell them what is going on in the world; so a good deal of
innocent gossip passes in to them through the double cloister
_grille_. This, however, is only an interlude. But since before
Confederation they have had one topic of absorbing interest to their
whole community. And now they are on the very tiptoe of expectation
for the first rumour of decisive news from Rome, about the
long-sought beatification of their first and greatest superior, La
Mre Marie de l'Incarnation. They explain how many, many difficulties
they have had to overcome; how dishearteningly slow their progress was
for so many years, because they did not know the proper method of
procedure; and how often they had to begin over and over again. At
last the assessors appointed by the Court of Rome appeared to put the
nuns through the final cross-examination. One sister, who had made a
special study of La Mre Marie's life, can tell you how she occupied
the witness box for thirteen days; and that it is the hardest thing in
the world to get the very best of women made a saint. But now even
Rome itself must be satisfied; and the Holy Father will soon proclaim
a saint throughout both worlds. Yes: the Ursulines have something to
talk about, after all!

But why should La Mre Marie become a saint; and what did she really
do for Canada? The following pages are an attempt to answer this
question from French and French-Canadian sources and a Roman Catholic
point of view. They are, in fact, her eulogy. There is no devil's
advocate to plead against her; no outside public in the jury; no
doubting critic on the bench. But the well-attested evidence in her
favour is so strong that it would be worth stating for its own sake;
while, quite apart from every question of the beatific life, she
claims attention from all Canadians because she was the prophetess, as
Laval was the prophet, whose steadfast inspiration upheld Canada
through the Three Years' Horror that began with the Iroquois fury of
1660 and ended with the seven months' earthquake of 1663. It is only
fair to add that, _eulogium_ though these pages are, they are written
by one who is only a quarter French by blood, not French-Canadian at
all, and far from being Roman Catholic.


II

When Louis XI lay on his death-bed, in his chteau of
Plessis-les-Tours, he wished to send the holiest man he could find to
bring the greatest saint of Christendom to console his last days on
earth. Courtiers and populace all agreed on the same individual, the
great-great-grandfather of La Mre Marie, who was accordingly sent to
Rome and on to the wildest part of the Calabrian coast, whence he
brought back the famous ascetic, St. Franois de Paule. No members of
the family prized this signal honour more than the parents of Marie
Guyard. Her father, who was a silk merchant, had such a reputation for
piety and justice that his decisions carried more weight than those of
the courts of law; while her mother was his equal in devotion and his
helpmeet in good works.

Marie was born on the 18th of October, 1599, in the old royal city of
Tours, amid _ce doux pays de la Touraine_, which Belleforest has
called _le jardin de France et le plaisir des Roys_. "Do not ask me
why I love Touraine!" exclaims Balzac, when describing the valley of
the Indre from Azay to Montbazon. Here, and along the Loire, are all
the finest chteaux: Amboise, with its terraces and chapel;
Chenonceaux, with its gardens, its white walls, its towers rising
sheer from the water, and its romantic memories of Diane de Poictiers
and Catherine de Medici; Azay-le-Rideau, a vision of beauty, set in
the woods beside the winding river; Loches, with its ancient towers
and ramparts massively rooted into its steep hill; and Chinon, where
the statue of Rabelais looks down on the market-place and over the
quiet quays beside the Loire, where Henry II breathed his last, and
where Charles VII was called to the relief of Orleans by Joan of Arc.
And the heart of Touraine is Tours, calm and beautiful on the southern
bank of the Loire, which lingers past in slow meanderings. Here stood
an archbishop's palace, here soared a great cathedral; and here was
set that exquisite little gem of Gothic architecture, La Psalette, all
aglow with the sacred music which so took the ear of the young Marie
and wrought her heart to ecstasy.

But her deepest and most thrilling form of ecstasy came to her in
visions of divinity. She had always been a religious child, and every
predisposing influence carried her on toward the fulness of
self-surrender and devotion. The piety of her family was a Touraine
tradition; the first words she could articulate were _Marie_ and
_Jsus_; she had hardly learnt to read before she showed a marked
preference for books of edification; her favourite work was succouring
the poor; her favourite amusement was "playing nun"; and her favourite
holiday was paying a visit to the Benedictine abbey of Beaumont, where
the abbess was her mother's cousin. Her first vision was in a dream,
when, as she afterwards wrote, she saw Heaven open and Christ come
toward her in human form: _Ce plus beau des enfants des hommes, avec
un visage plein d'une douceur et d'un attrait indicibles, m'embrassa,
et, me baisant amoureusement, me dit: "Voulez-vous tre  moi?" Je lui
rpondis: "Oui"; et, ayant eu mon consentement, nous le vmes remonter
au ciel._

No wonder that a child like this longed for the life of the
Benedictines whom she saw so often and who were so kind to her; nor
that her cousin willingly promised to intercede with Madame de
Beaumont for her future admission to the order. She then confided in
her mother, who also encouraged her. But there the matter stopped. She
was meditative, timid and reserved; and it never occurred to her to
open her mind in the confessional beyond what she thought a penitent
should say there. She knew nothing of private spiritual directors, who
would certainly have led her on. So the Benedictines lost a nun, to
Canada's great advantage.

When she was seventeen her parents wished her to marry a silk
manufacturer, almost as pious as her father. Her answer was
idiosyncratic to the last degree: _Ma mre, puisque c'est une
rsolution prise et que mon pre le veut absolument, je me crois
oblige d'obir  sa volont et  la vtre. Mais si Dieu me fait la
grce de me donner un fils, je lui promets, ds  prsent, de le
consacrer  son service; et si, ensuite, il me rend la libert que je
vais perdre, je lui promets de m'y consacrer moi-mme._ Both vows were
afterwards fulfilled.

Nevertheless, her marriage was a happy one. Madame Martin, as she had
now become, was a very practical mystic, and a most capable partner in
her husband's business. At the same time she lost no opportunity of
shepherding his employees into the one true fold and making them her
daily congregation. Doubtless, her pilgrim soul was often grieved by
their stay-at-home contentment with the good green earth of rich
Touraine, where many a Mimnermus probably went to church, even in
those ardent days, when religion was a _casus belli_ for the whole of
Europe.

At nineteen she was left a penniless widow by her husband's sudden
death and failure. Tall, handsome and of commanding presence, capable
in management and pious in every thought and deed, she had no lack of
eligible suitors. But she would never consider re-marriage for a
moment; and she only remained outside the cloister for the next twelve
years in order that her son should be old enough to be left with the
Jesuits before she made her vows. Never for a moment did she relax her
self-imposed ascetic rules for the mortification of the flesh. She
literally clothed herself in sack-cloth, and practised so many other
physical discomforts that her spiritual directors always had great
difficulty in keeping her penitential macerations within due bounds.
During four years she lived in utter self-abasement, as the servant of
the servants at her brother-in-law's. This relative, who was at the
head of a great forwarding business, was only too glad to promote her
at the suggestion of her director; and she suddenly passed from below
the menials to the local superintendence of sixty horses and a hundred
men. For eight years the business prospered exceedingly; and she
completed an apprenticeship in practical affairs which served her well
during her pioneering life in Canada.

But none of these alien years of successful business management saw
any worldling interlude in her religious life. They were, indeed, only
more steps up the _Scala Sancta_ of her soul. Her visions were no
longer childlike dreams, but such as led her Spanish prototype, St.
Theresa, through the seven abodes of the spiritual castle--_el
Castillo Interior o las Moradas_--and so toward divine espousal with
the Son of Man. On the eve of the Incarnation, in 1620, she had
recommended herself to God's providence in her usual formula--_In te
Domine speravi, non confundar in ternum_--and had set out for her
daily work. Then, as she walked beside the city moat, came the flash
of apparition. Her whole being stood at gaze; while the panorama of
her past was unrolled before her, with all her sins standing out in
the shamed dark, against the accusing whiteness of the light of truth;
and with the life-blood of her crucified Saviour pulsing to her feet.

The vision over, she entered the nearest church and begged the first
priest she met to hear her full confession. Returning next day for
absolution she determined that her true conversion was to be counted
from this anniversary of the Incarnation; a circumstance which
suggested her name in religion, La Mre Marie de l'Incarnation.

Some years after, in a re-birth of unquestioning hope, she was at last
caught up again within the highest rapture of heavenly delight; as
once before, in her first dream-vision when a child. _Je conversais
familirement avec Notre-Seigneur, et mon coeur s'lanait par un
mouvement extraordinaire vers ce bonheur que je ne pouvais comprendre.
Jsus-Christ me dit distinctement ces paroles: Sponsabo te mihi in
fide, sponsabo te mihi in perpetuum--Je t'pouserai dans la foi, je
t'pouserai pour jamais._

Divine espousals are so essentially characteristic of convent visions
that they are always the favourite point attacked by those who sit in
the seat of the scornful outside the cloisters. The adverse formulary
says that the devotion of all celibates is only the parental instinct
of self-sacrifice gone astray, and that a Divine Spouse is only a
nun's hysterical substitute for a more carnal object of affection. But
this contemptuous view shuts out one obviously common-sense point of
refutation, which is almost too profanely worldly-wise for mention
here. It simply is that no woman would make it the object of her life
to bring in as many other brides as possible for her own beloved
spouse, unless her affections were truly spiritual and the object of
them divinely infinite.

Opinions will always differ about the signs which mark the calling of
a life apart. But all the world agrees that the essential fitness of
such a life for the higher aspirations of mankind can only be tested
by its resultant actions. So we, who are bent merely on estimating the
good influence that La Mre Marie exerted on Canadian history, might
judge her by her works alone, if it were not that her visions, faith
and works together made a triune all-in-all. This being so, we cannot
hope to understand any one part of her life if we wrest it from the
whole. We must reckon with faith and vision as practical determinants
at every turn. And, to gain a still further insight into her peculiar
case, we must call such a supremely competent witness of the beatific
state as St. Theresa, whose evidence goes far to prove, by sympathetic
analogy at least, how close the psychic correlations are, even if the
visions are only subjectively existent. In the 28th chapter of her
autobiography she gives her conclusion of the whole matter: "Like
imperfect sleep, which, instead of giving more strength to the head,
leaves it only the more exhausted, mere imaginings only weaken the
soul.... A genuine heavenly vision yields her a harvest of ineffable
spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. I gave
these reasons to those people who so often accused my visions of being
the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination.... I
showed them the jewels which the divine hand left with me--they were
my actual dispositions. All those that knew me saw that I was
changed.... As for myself, it was impossible to believe that if the
devil were the author of this change he could have used means so
contrary to his own interests as the uprooting of my vices and the
filling me with masculine courage; for I saw clearly that a single
vision was enough to enrich me with all that wealth."

When she was thirty and her son twelve, La Mre Marie committed him to
the Jesuits and entered the Ursuline convent of Tours. The nuns were
eager to hear her expound her visions, especially one of the Trinity,
which is strangely like Dante's in the final canto of the _Paradiso_:


        Nella profonda e chiara sussitenza
        Dell' alto lume parvemi tre giri
        Di tre colori e d'una contenenza:

                                  In that abyss
    Of radiance, clear and lofty, seemed, methought,
    Three orbs of triple hue, clipt in one bound;
    And, from another, one reflected seemed,
    As rainbow is from rainbow: and the third
    Seemed fire, breathed equally from both.


She freely told all that she had seen beyond the veil of the flesh;
and by her human aptitudes, no less than by her other-worldliness, was
soon in perfect harmony with the life around her.

The Ursulines were originally founded on St. Catherine's Day in 1537;
two years after Jacques Cartier's discovery of Quebec; a time when the
full flood-stream of Renaissance and Reformation was beating against
every bulwark of the Roman faith and government. Ignatius Loyola and
Angela of Merici hurried to the defence of the dangerous breach made
in Catholic education, and set to work to rebuild it under fire. In
1540 Loyola drew up the constitution of the Jesuits, in which the
education of boys stood first of all in relative importance. Four
years later the Sovereign Pontiff approved the constitution of the
Ursulines, in which the first place was given to the education of
girls. "I have just given you sisters," said Paul III to St. Ignatius,
after signing the document. How this Pope would have rejoiced to see
his famous dictum so signally borne out a century later, in the
distant mission field of Canada!

The novitiate over, La Mre Marie chose the conversion of St. Paul for
her profession; and accordingly, on the 25th of January, 1633, she
made her final vows. At the time she seems to have chosen this day
only because it reminded her of her own conversion, and not from any
sense of missionary zeal. But two years later she dreamt of meeting a
lady she had never seen before, and of taking her by the hand and
going a long journey into a strange country, pointed out by an apostle
who met them by the way. An idea that she was not to spend her life
among the Ursulines of Tours kept on recurring; but it seemed so
impious that she kept on as continually repulsing it. The other nuns
began to notice her obsession; and one day she broached the subject to
Father Dinet. This famous Jesuit, soon to become the King's confessor,
said he thought the hand of God was pointing her to Canada. She had
never even heard of such a country before; but it quickly filled her
whole imagination. _Je ne vis plus d'autre pays pour moi que le
Canada; et mes courses ordinaires taient parmi les sauvages, avec les
missionaires._ A pilgrim's staff from Notre Dame de Lorette and a copy
of the _Relations des Jsuites_--both coming anonymously from an
unknown Canadian missionary--still further inflamed her zeal. But the
convent life went on around her as usual; and she was at a loss to
know whether or not she had been called elsewhere.

At this juncture another unknown friend was coming to her side. Madame
de la Peltrie, _ne_ Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, was of the _haute
noblesse_ of Normandy. She had been well married and left a widow,
though her own inclinations had always been toward the cloister
rather than the world. One day she read Father Le Jeune's appeal for
a devout woman to convert the Indian girls of Canada: _et depuis ce
temps_, says La Mre Marie, _son esprit fut plus en Canada qu'en
elle-mme_. But her road thither bristled with worldly obstacles. She
had run away from home and taken refuge within a convent in a vain
effort to escape her first marriage; and now her family were bent on
making her contract another. She was noble, rich, attractive, and much
sought after; and she was at her wits' end what to do. In her
extremity she asked a consummate Jesuit director, who advised her to
tell her troubles to M. de Bernires, a man devoted to the cause of
missions, and throw herself upon his protection as her husband. This
pious layman, who also desired a life-long celibacy, was astounded at
her proposal. But his own spiritual director was of the same mind as
hers; and many common friends were instant in proving how desirable it
would be to take such means to reach so good an end for the sake of
the missionary cause. Finally, as both parties were equally unwilling
to marry, it was agreed that no marriage should take place, but that
the world should be allowed to believe them man and wife, in order
that M. de Bernires should manage Madame de la Peltrie's large
property in France, while she went out to Canada as the benefactress
of the Ursulines. A visit to the holy man already known as "the
archangel of human charity" made her resolve irrevocable; and so the
great St. Vincent de Paul must be reckoned among the founders of the
convent in Quebec.

Meanwhile M. de Bernires was writing to La Mre Marie about Madame
de la Peltrie, and Father Poncet, who had sent the pilgrim's staff,
was writing to Madame de la Peltrie about La Mre Marie. The two women
were thus brought together under the happiest auspices, and
immediately became fast friends. A third now appeared, La Mre Marie
de St. Joseph, an Ursuline who also had read the _Relations des
Jsuites_ with awakening devotion to the same cause. Her whole
family--de la Troche de Savonnires--rose in horrified protest against
the idea of her going out to the dreadful heathen wilderness. But the
three women stood together; and presently arrived in Paris, where the
wildest rumours about their proposed Canadian mission had preceded
them. They became the vogue; and when the Archbishop refused to let a
Parisian Ursuline go with them he was besieged by great ladies, headed
by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon; and when he fled the capital to escape
this importunity, the Queen herself pursued him with royal messengers,
though in vain. La Mre Marie had a long audience of the Queen, who
seemed much interested in this daring religious venture beyond the
outer seas. Anne of Austria might well have sighed for some of the
peace of mind which the Ursuline leader wore like a suit of living
armour, for her own life was the unhappy sport of a king and two great
worldly cardinals. The King treated her with cold neglect, Richelieu
pressed her with unwelcome amorous advances, and Mazarin, whom she
really loved, used her heart as a stepping-stone to power. Her
harmless flirtation with Buckingham, told with such gusto in the
immortal _Trois Mousquetaires_, was turned to malicious account by
Richelieu when first presenting Mazarin at court: "Your Majesty will
like him: he has quite the air of a second Buckingham."

Several troubles beset La Mre Marie while still in Paris. M. de
Bernires fell seriously ill, and her son came to implore her not to
leave for Canada. The young man had been leading _la vie  vingt ans_
for a few months, though his wild oats would have made a very absurd
little handful in the eyes of any genuine _viveur_. The mother's
influence soon prevailed; and he afterwards became the Benedictine Dom
Claude Martin, of pious memory. But new troubles followed M. de
Bernires' recovery and the arrival of the party at Dieppe. The de la
Troche family sent post-haste to arrest the daughter they thought so
mad. The trading company of New France said they had no more room left
aboard their vessels. And the third Ursuline had not yet been found.
But La Mre Marie persuaded the alarmed family to let La Mre de St.
Joseph go, with their blessing on her undertaking. Madame de la
Peltrie chartered a vessel of her own. And a most devoted third nun
was found in La Mre de Ste. Croix, who joined from the convent at
Dieppe.

On the 4th of May, 1639, the little flotilla set sail with ten
passengers for the service of God in Canada: three Jesuits, three
Hospitalires to found the Htel-Dieu in Quebec, our three Ursulines,
and Madame de la Peltrie. They had hardly cleared the harbour when a
new danger appeared, in the form of a hostile Spanish fleet coming up
the Channel. The French were only just in time to sheer off, stand
over for the English coast and hug the shore there till the enemy got
hull-down astern. The voyage was long and stormy; and just as the
last verse of the office was being sung on Trinity Sunday an alarm of
'_Ware ice_! brought all hands on deck to see a berg threatening the
destruction of the ship. Father Vimont even gave the general
absolution. But La Mre Marie never flinched for a moment. Her letters
tell us how carefully she arranged her dress, "so that it might befit
her modesty when the end came;" and other witnesses relate how, with
one arm round Madame de la Peltrie, she stood foremost to face
apparent doom. At the last moment the vessel veered just enough to
graze past the berg.

On the 1st of August the nuns were rowed up from the Island of Orleans
in the Governor's barge and landed in Quebec amid the acclamations of
the whole assembled colony.


III

The landing of La Mre Marie de l'Incarnation was indeed an event of
deep national importance. She is unquestionably one of the five
founders of New France, and her fame with posterity is quite as secure
as that of Champlain, Laval, Frontenac or Talon. The little band of
colonists could not foresee this; but they recognized her at once as
their fellow-pioneer, the leader of the first _religieuses_ to answer
the call of their new, wild, far-off home. Canadians were then in dire
need of men, money and material from the _Mre Patrie_ to safeguard
their country's infant life against stark, constricting circumstances.
Yet they freely gave a heartfelt welcome to a woman who brought no
other wealth than that which is the only inheritance of the saints on
earth. Their hopeful faith in her was amply justified by history, both
before and since her time. For, besides being one of the five founders
of New France, she was the third of three great nuns whom the three
great Latin races brought forth in the service of the Church of Rome
at three most critical epochs. All three had a close affinity of
devotion; but this was made effectual in the widest diversity of
environment. The Italian, St. Catherine of Siena, was the last of the
really medival saints; the Spaniard, St. Theresa, was the first great
woman leader against the Reformation; while in La Mre Marie colonial
France found the Moses and Joshua of what proved to be the Promised
Land of Canada.

St. Catherine of Siena is one of the most intimately human and
intensely sympathetic of all the saints. She was all things good to
every man and woman she could influence; and no one that met her could
fail to be influenced by her magnetic moral genius. Her letters are
full of plain speaking against ugly sins; yet none are more
wonderfully persuasive. She did in very truth become the spiritual
"dearest sister" of each correspondent, and the "Slave of the servants
of Jesus Crucified"; and no one better understood how many different
ways of holiness could lead to the one Heaven, adapted to every
variety of character: "in my Father's house are many mansions" was her
favourite refrain. The world had need of her in that lax age of
sundering strife, which is only too well described in the chronicle of
Neri di Donato for 1373: "...The Brothers of St. Austin killed their
Provincial at Sant' Antonio, and in Siena was much fighting. At
Assisi, the Brothers Minor fought, and killed fourteen with the knife.
The Brothers of the Rose fought and drove six away.... So all
Religious everywhere seemed to have strife and dissension among
themselves. And every Religious, of whatever rule, was oppressed and
insulted by the world.... It seems there are divisions over all the
world. In Siena loyalty was not observed; gentlemen did not show it
among themselves or outside; nor did the Nine among themselves, nor
with people outside, nor did the Twelve. The people did not agree with
their leader, nor exactly with anyone else."

The youngest of the twenty-five children of a common dyer of Siena,
St. Catherine was only sixteen when she had already lived down the
opposition excited by her precocious ecstasies, her visions, her vows
and her ascetic practices. Devoted followers began to gather round
her; and she threw herself into the work of rescuing errant souls from
this mad flux of evil, with all the effectiveness of the practical
mystic. It was characteristic of her that when she started on a
pilgrimage, at the age of eight, she took bread and water with her,
lest the angels might forget her on the way. Her success in personal
persuasion was the wonder of her own age, as it has been of all
succeeding. The consummation of her visions came on the last day of
the carnival of 1367, when she was divinely espoused to her Redeemer.
Henceforth she knew herself "bought with a price." She had previously
become a Dominican tertiary, one of those devout women who live at
home under religious rule. She never sought the cloisters; but, on
the contrary, became more active in domestic and social life as time
went on. She quickly got into touch with people of all classes, all
occupations, all opinions. There never was a wider correspondence:
with two Popes, several cardinals and many humbler "religious" of both
sexes; with the King of France and the concupiscent Giovanna, Queen of
Naples; with the reclaimed Brother William of England, and with that
redoubtable freelance, Sir John Hawkwood; with the members of her own
humble family and with others as various as they were many. Yet it was
only in 1377, when she was thirty, that she learnt to write. Before
this she had been dependent on the secretaries who willingly came to
her from every walk of life. She became an ambassador in bonds for the
Pope. She went to Pisa and Lucca to persuade these towns not to join
an anti-papal league. For the same purpose she went to Florence, where
a Papal Legate was flayed alive, and where she just missed martyrdom
herself in 1378, to a regret as poignant as Togo felt because
Tsu-shima denied him a victorious death. She was sent as an Envoy
Extraordinary to and from the Papal Court, on what were practically
international affairs; and at Avignon in 1376 she certainly became a
self-appointed Minister Plenipotentiary, and gained her ends by sheer
moral suasion. This alone fixes her historical position firmly within
medival times. It would almost be a modern parallel if the Tsar
Alexander II had sent Father John of Kronstadt to check-mate Lord
Beaconsfield at the Congress of Berlin, and if Father John had
nominated himself into the chair for the two Peace Conferences at the
Hague.

By the irony of fate she failed only in world-politics. She bent all
her energies, she literally gave her very life, in a vain attempt to
unite Italy and the rest of Christendom round the universal Church,
centred in Rome and reformed from within. She did, indeed, do more
than anyone else to bring back Gregory XI from Avignon; and Urban VI
began with a fury of reform. But the one had the velvet glove without
the gauntlet, and the other the gauntlet without the velvet glove.
Besides, the times were hopelessly out of course for the nice
readjustment of temporal and spiritual affairs from the obsolescent
medival point of view. She was too late and too early for the work on
which she had set her heart. She was too late, because the age of St.
Francis was the last when any such scheme would have had a chance of
acceptance throughout all Christendom. She would have made an
excellent Franciscan in all departments of woman's aid, from the
revivalizing tours with the saint--which did, within the Church, what
Methodists and Salvationists have since done outside it--to the royal
interview between "Beatus gidius" and St. Louis, whom she would have
found a far more kindred spirit than the other King of France to whom
she wrote. She was too early, because no Luther had yet roused Loyola
and Theresa to lead a counter-reformation in that part of Christendom
which was naturally Roman Catholic by temperament and circumstances.
And, in her own generation, she could have little affinity with the
intellectual Joachites, the followers of the holy Joachim da Fiore,
who thought the Church had not always been the same, and that it
should develop dynamically in adaptation to the needs of a changing
world. The Joachites were, in fact, empirical evolutionists, and not
favoured by the upholders of static religion. Had they published a
manifesto it might have waited till our own day before getting the
stamp of _Nihil obstat_, _Imprimatur_. Protestants might suppose this
privilege would never have been granted at all. But let them look at
_The Priest's Studies_ of Dr. Scannell, which actually recommends
works based on the theory of evolution as applied to theology, and
which passed the censor with flying colours in the very year of the
"Modernist" Encyclical.

And so this most human of saintly women died at thirty-three, the very
age of Christ, heart-broken at having failed in her Church and State
reform; but leaving an example of mediating service between God and
man that will quicken individual effort to the end of time.

St. Theresa's worldly circumstances were entirely different. She was
born in 1515, of aristocratic family, at Avila, in gallant, proud,
sententious Old Castile. As a child she had the true Don Quixote love
of books about knight-errantry. At seventeen she was a pretty
_dbutante_; and doubtless spoke the language of mantilla, fan and
eyes as well as others of her sex and people. Even when she entered
the local Carmelite convent of the Incarnation, she acquiesced, though
with qualms of conscience, in the rather worldly intercourse that went
on there. "For twenty years I was tossed about on a stormy sea in a
wretched condition; for, if I had small contentment in the world, in
God I had no pleasure. At prayers I watched the clock to see it strike
the end of the hour. To go to the oratory was a vexation, and prayer
itself a constant effort." It was only in her fortieth year, after her
father's death, that the sight of her Saviour's wounds struck her so
intensely that she fell in tears before the crucifix, while every
worldly emotion died within her. In vision she saw herself as a clear
but formless mirror, which shone with the inner light of Christ. She
felt his bodily presence so constantly that she named herself Theresa
of Jesus. An angel then appeared and pierced her heart with a
fire-tipped lance: a mystic act which became a favourite subject with
religious artists and is still represented in the frontispiece of all
her books of devotion. She immediately began reforming the Carmelite
practice, and, of course, met with strong opposition. Finally, in
1562, she opened a little house of her own in Avila, with four poor
women living under the strictest rule. Here she spent her five
happiest years, following every self-denying precept, and writing her
immortal works. Philip II valued her manuscripts so highly that he
kept them in the richest cabinet in the Escorial, and always carried
the key about his person. She died in 1582, and was canonized by Pope
Gregory XV forty years later.

There are many curious links, historical and psychological, connecting
these three saintly women with each other and with their religious
affinities. St. Theresa, who did so much of the woman's work in aid of
the Jesuit effort against the Protestants, was canonized in the same
year as Ignatius Loyola. La Mre Marie has been the accepted _Ste.
Thrse de l'Amrique_ ever since Bossuet first called her so; Pope
Paul III told the Jesuits he was giving them sisters when he approved
the institution of the Ursulines; and Jesuits and Ursulines worked
together as the pioneers of education and conversion in the early days
of Canada. St. Catherine of Siena is the true psychological link
between St. Theresa and St. Francis, and the Franciscans were the
first of all missionaries to America, whither they went with
Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493.

Instances might easily be multiplied; and many comparatively trifling
coincidences added, such as that Diego de Yepez, Philip II's
confessor, published the Life of St. Theresa in 1599, the year La Mre
Marie was born. But what is most significant to the Church's universal
work is that the three women were not really so much alike as
complementary. St. Catherine was of lowly origin, only learnt to read
after she was grown up, and to write three years before her death. She
embodied the best traditions of medival sanctity, and yet was almost
Pauline in her exhortation and persuasiveness. St. Theresa was highly
born, well educated, and the first of modern female saints. She did
not write so much to exhort and persuade directly as to reveal and
justify. She did not live in the tumultuous world as St. Catherine
did, and her only statesmanship took the special form of expanding and
consolidating her Theresian Carmelites. The St. Catherine we know from
her quick-worded letters is a woman appealing to soul after soul to
help the Mother Church with their own salvation and re-union. The St.
Theresa of the autobiography and _El Castillo interior_ is a steward
of the mysteries of God, a high priestess who enters the Holy of
Holies alone, and afterwards re-tells to the faithful the message
revealed to her beside the Ark of the Covenant, in presence of the
Cherubim.

La Mre Marie was neither highly nor lowly born, though very well
connected on her mother's side. She was more statesmanlike than St.
Catherine, more practical in worldly matters than St. Theresa. They
were of medival and modern Europe: she was a pioneer and missionary
in the sternest of the New-World wilds. There, when the colony was
still in its impressionable youth, her cunning hand fashioned the
moulds for the same work that her two sister saints had done within
their own spheres of usefulness, and fashioned them in a spirit at
once akin to and adaptively different from theirs. Her pen, too,
completed their accounts of Church activities, from a nun's
standpoint, by telling the first story of convent life in North
America. It is true that she wrote no formal work, and that her
letters are rather documents than history. And it must be admitted
that her writings are not, and never will be, French classics, as St.
Catherine's are Italian classics to a certain extent, and St.
Theresa's are Spanish classics altogether. They are just a little like
very good dispatches, and by just so much they miss the saving grace
of a native style. They were generally written under great pressure
of time, amid many distractions, and partly as reports. So their very
nature prevents vivid presentation, and keeps them on the lower
literary level of description. The spiritual passages are always
excellent; but here the lack of a sustained context and of the
instinct for the one inevitable word combine to prevent the expression
from doing full justice to the ideas. The saint, in fact, was greater
than the author.

It is her life, rather than her letters, that is the important point
even to-day. And this was of still more importance at the time she
came to Canada. For she came as the inheritor of a great tradition, as
the third of a trio of nuns who played a great interdependent part in
the history of their Church, as the foundress of the first convent, as
the first educator of Canadian girls, and as the first white woman to
evangelize the Indians. And what heightened the importance of all this
was that the French-Canadians were then, as they are now, by
tradition, training and consent, the most Roman Catholic community in
the world. She had no dire troubles within the Church to strain her
heart to death, as St. Catherine had; no challenging Protestants to
confute, like St. Theresa. Her spiritual warfare was the universal one
against the powers of evil, and her earthly work was against savagery
and the forces of nature. In both she was prepared to acquit herself
excellently well. And her landing at Quebec was indeed an event of
profound significance.

IV

Quebec was then but a tiny outpost on the edge of an unknown,
illimitable wilderness. It had been in precarious existence for only
some thirty years. Its founder, the staunch and pious Champlain, had
died a little over three years before, leaving it with barely a
hundred inhabitants. It had only three small public buildings, Fort
St. Louis, the storehouse of the _Cent Associs_ and the parish church
of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, from whose belfry he caused the
angelus to be rung three times a day--a custom still religiously
observed in Quebec. Beyond this one narrow foothold of France, on the
mighty river which came from no one knew what vast inland wilds,
Canada was little but a name. Only ten years before La Mre Marie
arrived the Kirkes had taken Quebec without a blow; because they had a
handful of men to serve the few tiny guns aboard their two little
ships, while Champlain despaired of standing a siege on a barrel of
fish and half a dozen sacks of potatoes. New France had hardly become
even a footnote to history. With what an airy charm of royal
condescension does Charles I add the unconsidered trifle of "The
County and Lordship of Canada" to the _other_ estates of good Sir
William Alexander, Earl of Stirling and Baronet of Nova Scotia!

But, among her few, Quebec counted almost as many heroes as early Rome
or Sparta. And bravest of the brave, the Jesuits. Here was an untamed,
new, defiant world to wrestle with. And here the Church, Antus-like,
rose stronger from each fresh contact with the primal earth. Nothing
could stop her indomitable pioneers; neither cold nor heat, hunger,
thirst and fatigue; not the lurking danger which dogged their every
step, nor the fiendish death by torture which so many of them
suffered; nor yet the silent, awful isolation in which their work was
done. They crossed a waste of waters to enter an even wilder waste
ashore. Quebec was, in fact, as much a point of departure and landfall
for an inland journey as a coast sea-mark is for an ocean voyage.
Within each new horizon, far and near, the forest veiled the mysteries
of Earth as closely as the sea; and, like the sea, lay still in calm,
or surged in wash and back-wash of green surf beneath the storm. And,
whether in calm or storm, it closed impenetrably round each man who
ventured within its labyrinthine depths. The Iroquois--so tiger-like
in craft, stealth, spring and wild ferocity--filled with mortal dread
everyone else whose way led through the woods. But not the Jesuit. He
had no human hand to help him there; yet the bravest soldier was never
more confidently eager at the front. As, in the time of Csar, every
Roman legionary knew that the might of a whole Empire lay waiting for
his call at need; and as, in Nelson's day, every blockading British
man-of-war went boldly into action, single-handed and against any
odds, sure that every consort would soon be sailing to the sound of
the cannonade; so every Canadian Jesuit pressed forward undauntedly,
among all the ambushes and strongholds of a pitiless foe, ever upheld
by the confident belief that he was no mere lost and isolated man, but
one of the pioneers and vanguard of the advancing army of the Lord of
Hosts.

The Ursulines held their first triennial election, and their choice
naturally fell on La Mre Marie. Their first convent was a mere hovel,
near the site of the present Notre Dame des Victoires, and their first
Indian school in it was broken up by a terrible attack of smallpox. In
1641 the first stone was laid on the site of the present convent. But
the next spring Madame de la Peltrie, burning to carry the cross still
further into the wilderness, followed Maisonneuve to the founding of
Montreal and left the Ursulines of Quebec almost penniless in their
half-finished building. Even M. de Bernires answered La Mre Marie's
appeal by advising her to send away her pupils and workmen, give up
everything and come home, unless Providence should raise up a second
benefactress. However, she immediately wrote back to say that having
once put her hand to the heavenly task she would never give it up
alive. She kept her Indian pupils, urged on her workmen, and, in every
detail of duty and leadership, plainly showed how fully confident she
was that Canada was only at the beginning of assured success, instead
of at the end of utter failure.

After an absence of eighteen months Madame de la Peltrie came back,
never again to leave Quebec. She found the new convent inhabited, the
school open, and La Mre Marie as full of determined hope as ever.
There was little comfort in the new home, a building 92 feet long and
28 feet wide. Two open fires barely took the frost out of the
air--stoves were only introduced twenty-six years later. Yet the
devoted life went on with increasing vigour. New nuns came out: some
from the mother-house at Tours; another from Plormel, in the Breton
"Land of Pardons." In 1648 the convent was at last finished, after
seven years of hard work and much anxiety from lack of funds.

Meanwhile, Quebec grew slowly: half mission, half trading post, and
wholly bureaucratic. On New Year's Eve, in 1646, the first play
performed in Canada, Corneille's _Le Cid_, was given before the
Governor and the Jesuit Fathers. Two years later the
Governor-in-Council appointed Jacques Boisdon--bibulous
cognomen!--first and sole innkeeper, on the following
conditions:--"That the said Jacques Boisdon settles in the square in
front of the church, so that the people may go in to warm themselves,
and that he keeps nobody in his house during High Mass, sermons,
catechism or vespers." In 1663, the population had increased to 500
souls, of whom 150 belonged to religious communities.

The thirteen disastrous years from 1650 to 1663 were the nadir of
Canada's fortunes. More than once the colony nearly lost its
flickering life altogether. The Iroquois scourged the land like a
plague. Not a man was safe outside a fort. All that were left of the
once powerful Hurons crouched miserably under the protection of
Quebec. La Mre Marie was ever foremost in succouring them and
bringing their children into her school. She took lessons herself in
Huron from Father Bressani, who had escaped death at the hands of the
Iroquois as by a miracle, after having suffered the extremity of
torture. But, just as her classes were well established, the convent
was burnt to the ground. The nuns hardly escaped with their lives,
running out barefooted and half-clad into the intense midwinter cold.
La Mre Marie issued her orders as calmly as if going through her
regular routine. She went all over the building to make sure that
everyone was safe, paused one reverential moment before the altar, and
then walked out as the flames met behind her.

Next day the Hurons assembled in full council to see how they could
help the "Paleface Virgin Saints." To their grief they found that the
whole merchantable wealth of their nation now consisted in two long
strings of porcelain beads, each containing twelve hundred. But,
headed by their chief, they went in procession to the Htel-Dieu,
where they were received by La Mre Marie, surrounded by her
Ursulines, the Hospitalires, and Father Raguenau, who records the
address delivered by Taiearonk. "Saintly sisters, you see here but the
walking corpses of a mighty nation, which is no more. In the country
of the Hurons we have been eaten and gnawed to the bone by famine, war
and fire. Alas! your misfortune recalls our own, and with your tears
we mingle ours. In our old home the custom was to give one present to
unfortunates like you, to dry their tears, and then another to fortify
their hearts anew. All that we have we offer you. First, a string of
beads to comfort you, and root your feet so firmly in this land that
all your friends across the great water will never be able to draw
them out and take you away. And next, another string, to plant a new
House of Christ to outgrow the old one, and be a place of prayer and
teaching for our children." After the chief had ended there was a
long, sad silence, before La Mre Marie responded in words which
breathe the very spirit of the Book of Ruth. She told the Hurons how
she would never desert them, but fill her days with willing service
for their need, and how, when she died, her body would remain among
them in Quebec, as her heart and soul did while she was alive.

Other friends pressed to her aid. Father Vignal, her chaplain, though
now an old man, set to work on the Ursuline farm near the famous
Plains of Abraham, and was rewarded by a bountiful harvest, which fed
the teachers and scholars for the succeeding winter. Madame de la
Peltrie sheltered the whole community in her own house, which was no
more luxurious than the convent, though she was a very rich woman. The
Governor, the Jesuits, in fact the whole colony, did everything in
their power. But their power fell far short of their good will. Men
were scarce, money scarcer; so La Mre Marie and her zealous nuns
cleared away the dbris with their own hands, and prepared the site
for rebuilding. The new convent rose quickly from the ruins of the
old. Within a year the nuns were back: all except La Mre de St.
Joseph, whose delicate frame at last had given way under repeated
hardships, and whose epitaph might be fitly taken from the letter La
Mre Marie wrote home: _Ma douce et anglique amie._

In 1660 Canada was apparently doomed. Only four years had passed since
the Iroquois had swooped down on their prey again and nearly killed
out the last, palsied remnant of the Hurons at the Island of Orleans.
The lines of war-canoes had glided snake-like down the St. Lawrence
to their vindictive massacre, under the very guns of Quebec, the crews
screaming savage defiance at the bewildered Governor, who cowered
behind the walls of the Chteau St. Louis. And now every threatening
warpath was once more astir with painted Iroquois, wild for a final
glut of blood. The rumour ran that their grand council had decreed the
extermination of all the Christians in Canada, and that their whole
assembled horde was coming hot-foot down the valley of the Ottawa.
Night and day the shadow of death closed in from the vast encircling
forest, darkening the terror of suspense. All Quebec stood to arms.
The Ursuline convent was garrisoned by eighty men and twelve huge
watch dogs, trained to hunt down and tear in pieces the hostile
Indians. La Mre Marie, resourceful as ever, told off her nuns to
different duties, and reserved for herself the most dangerous of
all--the carrying of powder and shot in action.

As Canada turned despairingly at bay, her necessity brought forth a
champion, the faithful, undauntable Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux. He and
sixteen others in Montreal volunteered to go up the Ottawa and hold
the Iroquois by a life-and-death defence, long enough to let the
colony have some time for preparation. At the Long Sault Dollard was
joined by a hundred Christian Hurons under Anahotaha. The allies then
took post in an old Algonquin fort, which, unfortunately, was too far
from water. Symbol-loving souls afterwards saw a mystical assurance of
salvation in the strange recurrence of the sacred number, seven. For
seven days and seven nights seven hundred Iroquois furiously attacked
the seventeen Frenchmen who defended the stockade. The attackers fell
in heaps under the steady fire. A letter of La Mre Marie's tells how
those seventeen fought for Christ and Canada: _Ds que l'ennemi
faisait trve, ils taient  genoux; et sitt, qu'il faisait mine
d'attaquer, ils taient debout, les armes  la main._ Worn by
unceasing vigils and tortured by thirst, they still held out. But
resounding war-cries announced the arrival of another five hundred
Iroquois; and they then prepared to sell their lives as dearly as they
could. The enemy advanced and called a parley, during which some
apostate Hurons persuaded most of their Christian tribesmen that an
immediate change of sides was the only way of escaping certain death
by torture. This desertion reduced the garrison to the seventeen
Canadians with only eighteen Indians. In the thick of the final
assault some Iroquois got in so close that they could chop at the foot
of the stockade without being exposed to the fire from the loop-holes.
Dollard then tried to dislodge them with a musketoon full of powder.
But this, unfortunately, miscarried. The musketoon blew up inside the
fort, killed and wounded several of the defenders, and left a breach
wide open. The Iroquois at once swarmed in from all sides, though,
even then, they could not close with their steadfast opponents.
Anahotaha, worthy comrade of Dollard, charged and killed five with his
tomahawk. But, as he regained the ranks, he fell, mortally wounded,
beside the burning palisade. "Lay my head on the fire," he implored
with his dying breath, "the Iroquois must never get my scalp!"
Dollard fell next. A last desperate scuffle, and all was over. The
Iroquois were dumbfounded at the resistance they had met with and
disheartened by their enormous losses. Their next council broke up
after deciding that a country defended by such heroes was too
dangerous to attack. They slank back to their wigwams; while a
contrite apostate Huron escaped to carry the tale of death and victory
throughout the waiting settlements. Thus ended Canada's Thermopyl.

The colony dragged through the misery of three more years. Then came
the memorable earthquakes, which threatened an almost greater ruin.
One effect of this stupendous and widespread upheaval may still be
seen at Les Eboulements, where the whole face of a mountain fell
headlong into the St. Lawrence. In Quebec the shocks recurred
violently for seven months, and the terrified people thought it was
the end of the world. The first great shock scared the roisterers at
the carnival out of their senses. The second threw all the Ursulines
to the ground while they were singing matins. Throughout this long,
heart-shaking ordeal trembling women and children kept coming to La
Mre Marie, as to the one human sanctuary that could preserve them
from the Avenging Angel. Not since the Great Famine, nearly four
hundred years before, when long processions of naked Flagellants
scourged themselves through every high street and market square in
Europe, had there been such universal contrition. The priests could
scarcely leave the thronged confessionals, even to eat and sleep.
Again the cry of "Back to France!" went up, and was piteously echoed
from the whole stricken colony. But two winged souls rose to the
foreseeing heights of prophecy, and two clear voices called on the
people to stay their panic and have steadfast faith in Canada. One was
the voice of Laval, the first bishop, who set a supreme example by
founding, in this terrible 1663, the great seminary which still bears
his name and carries on his work with undiminished vigour. The other
was the voice of La Mre Marie, who, for the third time in her life,
stood between a discouraged people and apparent ruin, and nerved them
to one more effort for the salvation of their country.

The unshaken faith of both was fully justified. The tide of fortune
was already on the turn. This very year New France became a Royal
Province. And in 1665 de Courcelles, the New Governor, arrived. With
him was Jean Talon, the great Intendant, well called the Colbert of
Canada. The pitifully weak garrison was strongly reinforced by the
famous _Rgiment de Carignan_, fresh from its victorious Hungarian
campaign against the Turks. The gallant Marquis de Tracy arrived as
the personal Viceroy of Louis Quatorze. Two hundred and twelve new
colonists of title or fortune came out to take up concessions of land.
And, most important of all, perhaps, there was a very much larger
number of more humble immigrants, who were destined to a long and
successful career under the well-known name of _habitants_. With these
arrivals a different _rgime_ began. The first great hero-age was
over.

V

La Mre Marie had a deep, though indirect, influence on the new order
of things. All the women of the old order had passed through her
school, all the girls of the new were her pupils. Her reputation for
sanctity and wisdom extended over people of both sexes and all
classes. And she never failed to throw the whole weight of this wider
influence into the scale on the side of Laval, in his fights for the
missionary system against the parochial one favoured by the Governors,
and for Indian prohibition against the indiscriminate brandy traffic
favoured by the traders. Laval was the living embodiment of the Church
militant, and was inclined to stretch his authority rather far over
spheres of public influence which are generally understood to be
within the province of the civil power. But his missionary system,
worked under his own eye, and through his seminary, undoubtedly met
the needs of a new and extending population better than the fixed
cures which the Governors vainly tried to establish. Laval wanted his
shepherds to keep continual touch with him and each other, while they
followed their flocks about the ever-opening pastures. But the
Governors preferred to find each individual shepherd sitting ready for
inspection inside an isolated fold. As for the brandy trade, it was
simply debauching the Indians, body and soul. And when La Mre Marie
supported Laval on these two burning questions she proved herself as
statesmanlike in the first as she was philanthropic in the second.

Her letters show how many human interests she touched, and with how
sure a hand she set each interest in its due relation to her belief
and practice. She was an indefatigable writer: in one autumn she sent
home over 600 letters. Her correspondents ranged from Royalty down;
but most of her spiritual letters were to her son or the Ursulines. In
theology she had some lively passages with the Jansenists, who did
their best to persuade her to adopt their views. But she was an
everyday and deeply sympathetic eye-witness of the work of the
Canadian Jesuits, and that was enough. In religious advice and prayer
she was the constant support of an Ursuline of Tours, whom she had
initiated before leaving France, and who was aunt to _cette touchante
Duchesse de la Vallire, dont la destine sera l'ternel
attendrisement de l'histoire_. She had special devotions and penances
in Canada, on behalf of the errant Duchess, who was, like herself, a
native of Tours; and the celebrated conversion at court was held to be
greatly owing to the ardent intercessions at Quebec.

She evidently never thought she had any written message to leave to
the world. She let all her spiritual memoirs, destined for her son's
eye alone, be burnt with the convent, rather than run the risk of
letting them fall into other hands in the confusion. Perhaps she felt
that the divine afflatus would not take literary form in her as it did
in St. Theresa. It is certain that she wrote less and less about the
inner life, though her reasons for her growing silence are themselves
excellently expressed. "Au reste, il y a bien des choses, et je puis
dire que presque toutes sont de cette nature qu'il me serait
impossible d'crire entirement, parce que dans la conduite intrieure
que Dieu tient sur moi, il y a des grces si intimes et des
impressions si spirituelles, que cela ne se peut dire. C'est en partie
ce qui me donne de la rpugnance  traiter de ces matires, quoique ce
soient mes dlices de ne point trouver de fond dans ce grand abme, et
d'tre oblige de perdre toute parole en m'y perdant moi-mme. Plus on
vieillit, plus on est incapable d'en crire, parce que la vie
spirituelle simplifie l'me dans un amour consumant, en sorte qu'on ne
trouve plus de termes pour s'en expliquer." Nevertheless, in response
to divine orders to comply with her son's renewed appeals, she rewrote
the lost letters, on condition that he promised not to show them to
anyone. Dom Martin has a prettily turned simile to express their
influence on his life--"ces grandes grces m'excitent  suivre ses
traces, comme l'aigle mre excite ses aiglons  voler aprs elle."

Though her worldly interests were always strictly subordinated to her
spiritual ones she wrote many admirable letters on public affairs.
European news is discussed with a good knowledge of its bearings on
Church and State. The troubles of the Fronde, the peace of the
Pyrenees, the death of Charles I of England, all find their place in
her correspondence. But Canada comes first. Indeed, her letters in
1654, 1655 and 1656 form the best documentary history of those
troublous years. She notes the natural wealth of the country and the
abounding fertility of the population. "M. Boucher a dit au roi qu'on
peut faire au Canada un royaume plus beau et plus grand que celui de
la France. C'est l le sentiment de ceux qui disent s'y connatre. Il
y a des mines en plusieurs endroits; les terres y sont fertiles. Il y
a surtout un grand nombre d'enfants; ce fut un des points sur lequel
le roi questionna le plus M. Boucher. Un pauvre homme en aura huit et
plus, qui l'hiver vont nu-pieds et nu-tte, avec une petite camisole
sur le dos, qui ne vivent que d'anguille et d'un peu de pain; et, avec
tout cela, ils sont gros et gras." No doubt some of these eels came
from the Ursulines' fishery at the Anse des Mres, just above Cape
Diamond. How many little _habitants_ are still to be found in one
family, and how many of them still get "gros et gras" on this very
warming winter diet! Who that knows the story of the French-Canadian
will dispute the wisdom of this: "Au fond, tandis que les habitants
s'amusent  la traite des castors, ils n'avancent pas tant leurs
affaires que s'ils cultivaient le sol et s'attachaient au trafic de la
pche et des huiles de loups-marins et de marsouins." La Mre Marie
knew a good deal more about the future of Canada in the seventeenth
century than Voltaire did in the eighteenth with his _quelques arpents
de neige_.

Nothing useful is too small for her attention, nothing great too
difficult for her judgment. She sends home to Tours "une certaine
bourre qui ressemble au coton, afin de tenter en plusieurs faons ce
qu'on en pourrait faire." There spoke Marie Guyard and Madame Martin.
And here, again: "C'est une chose merveilleuse d'entendre parler de la
beaut et de la bont de ce pays-l...les pis ont une grande coude,
et chaque pi donne plus de quatre cents grains." "Sa Majest nous a
donn deux belles cavales et un cheval, tant pour la charrue que pour
le transport." Talon's introduction of new industries--weaving,
tanning and others--excites her warm approval, and she rightly
concludes that "le pays est plus fait et les affaires ont plus avanc
depuis que M. Talon est ici comme intendant, que depuis que les
Franais y habitent." The Marquis de Tracy is equally praised for
excellence of another kind. "Nous allons perdre M. de Tracy...Cette
nouvelle Eglise, et le Canada en gnral, perd plus en lui qu'il n'est
possible de dire; car il a men  bonne fin des expditions qu'on
n'aurait jamais os entreprendre ni esprer." Marie was emphatically a
woman of light and leading, both in Church and State.

With the Indians she was, of course, thoroughly at home; and the
wisdom of many Blue-books is concentrated into her pithy comments on
the grand-paternal royal edict which ordered them to be immediately
"civilized" as well as christianized. "They must see the woods and
follow their parents to the chase. It is the nature of the Indian. He
cannot submit to constraint. Loss of liberty makes him sad, and
sadness makes him sick. We have more experience on this head than
anyone else, and we freely confess that we have not civilized one in a
hundred. Nevertheless, if it be the will of our Sovereign, we shall
attempt the task." On the other hand, she can find no words too strong
to explain how successful the nuns were in converting them. "Quatre
d'entre elles communirent  Pques; elles s'y prparrent avec tant
de dsir de s'unir  Notre-Seigneur, que, dans l'attente de le
recevoir, elles s'criaient: 'Ah! quand sera-ce que Jsus nous viendra
baiser au coeur'" "Thrse la Hurone" was faithful through three years
of captivity with the implacable Iroquois, during which she openly
confessed to her fellow-prisoner, Father Jogues, though she saw him
tortured in a way that might have shaken many a stout heart. These
five were Indian girls who had been a considerable time under convent
influences. But the full-grown braves and squaws, once converted, were
quite as staunch. The baptismal rite appealed to them with peculiar
force, as the conditions under which its liturgy originally reached
full growth in the fourth and fifth centuries were being reproduced in
Canada. The Indians, like most early converts, came straight from
ingrained adult Paganism. And so their initiation was very different
from the short and simplified ceremony through which the infant heir
of Christian ages is taken to-day. The Ursulines often gave the first
instruction to the _audientes_. Afterwards came the immediate
preparation of the _competentes_: a lenten education in the new
supernatural, in which great emphasis was laid on exorcising the
demons of the old. The command _dmonia ejicite_ was never forgotten.
And no sooner were the heathen demons cast out by many ritual
solemnities than the Jesuits warned the catechumen against the
myrmidons of Satan, who took the warpath against unwary Christians.
The good Fathers believed in object-lessons, and several times sent
urgent messages to France for pictures of still more terrifying
devils. Finally, the brave was baptized, during the regenerating joys
of Easter, and sent forth with the armour of Christ fast girt upon him
by all the symbols of the Church.

La Mre Marie often encouraged the braves to give their own views on
Christianity: "et lorsque j'entends parler le bon Charles Pigarouich,
Nol Ngabamat ou Trigalin je ne quitterais pas la place pour entendre
le premier prdicateur de l'Europe." No legitimate means of conversion
were neglected. She nursed the sick, quite in the spirit of Luke, the
beloved physician. And though there probably were some "blanket
Christians" in that as in other ages, yet she never had cause to
regret her continual hospitality. "Comme la faim est l'horloge qui
leur fait juger de l'heure du repas, il nous faut songer  ceux qui
peuvent survenir, et tenir de la sagamit toujours prte." On the
contrary, she found a genuine aid to conversion even in the
serio-comedy of a regular _festin de gala_. "Pour traiter
splendidement soixante ou quatre-vingts de nos sauvages on y emploie
environ un boisseau de pruneaux noirs, quatre pains de six livres
pice, quatre mesures de farine de pois ou de bl d'Inde, une douzaine
de chandelles de suif, deux ou trois livres de gros lard, afin que
tout soit bien gras, car c'est ce qu'ils aiment. Voil ces pauvres
gens contents et ravis d'aise, bien qu'il y ait parmi eux des
capitaines qui,  leur gard, passent pour des princes et des
personnes de qualit. Ce festin, qui leur sert tout ensemble de boire
et de manger, est un de leurs plus magnifiques repas; c'est ainsi
qu'on les gagne, et qu' faveur d'un attrait matriel, on les attire 
la grce de Jsus-Christ."

The arrival of the Marquis de Tracy inaugurated a more sheltered life
for the inhabitants of Quebec. But La Mre Marie was beginning to sink
under the strain of the terrible years that went before. Gradually
she was forced to give up her activities, one by one. But what she
could do she did with a will. She could no longer teach the Indians
under the old tree in the garden; so she had them brought indoors. She
wrote a sacred history and a glossary in Algonquin, and a catechism
for her old fierce enemies, the Iroquois. Her relations with these
last bloodthirsty braves had gone through every phase. She had
received their ambassadors with all due honour, and made an attempt to
convert them. She had stood guard against them when they threatened
Quebec. And now, having rightly drawn the sword at the proper time,
she was again trying the persuasive arguments of the Church.

In 1671 she received a great shock in the death of her life-long
friend. Madame de la Peltrie was suddenly struck down with pleurisy
early in November. She took the news that it was fatal with perfect
calmness; called in the Intendant Talon to witness her will, and
thanked him with as much grace as if he had been paying her a visit of
state. M. de Bernires, nephew of her old protector in France, gave
her the last rites; and, on the evening of the 19th, as the _Angelus_
was sounding across the square from the parish church, she died,
murmuring the words so often on her lips during her illness--_Loetatus
sum in his qu dicta sunt mihi; in domum Domini ibimus--I was glad
when they said, we will go into the house of the Lord._

The following Easter, the year Frontenac first came out to Canada, La
Mre Marie was in the throes of a mortal malady herself. She had all
the girls in the convent called into the infirmary to receive her
last benediction, which she gave to each one separately as they knelt
beside her. She entrusted her last message for her son to Mre St.
Athanase--_dites-lui que je l'emporte en mon coeur dans le paradis_.
Nor was public duty forgotten. One of her last acts was to dictate a
letter to an influential personage in France, urging the completion of
her well-considered scheme for the re-union of all branches of the
Ursuline Order throughout the world. To the great regret of everyone
Bishop Laval was then absent from Quebec. But the veteran Pre
Lallemant, who had served in every post of danger since the time of
Champlain, gave her the last consolations of the faith. For some hours
on the day of her death she neither spoke nor heard--rapt in ecstasy
between two worlds. The evening _Angelus_ was sounding, as it had for
her fellow-labourer five months before, when she opened her eyes for
one final look at the Ursulines kneeling round her, and then gently
closed them again for ever. All who were present saw a ray of
celestial light rest on her face as her soul took flight for Heaven,
and believed it to signify her consummated union with her Lord. The
Ursulines commemorate this to the present day, by singing a special
_Te Deum_ on the last night of each recurring April. Pre Lallemant
preached the funeral sermon, pronounced the benediction, and the
congregation dispersed. Then the Governor and Intendant, with the
clergy and nuns, approaching the bier, were so struck by her
expression that they sent for an artist to perpetuate it. The original
of this portrait was burnt in the second fire; but a contemporary copy
sent to France was afterwards returned to Canada, and is now in the
convent. The portrait taken, the coffin was closed and this
inscription placed upon it: _Ci-gt la Rvrende Mre Marie Guyart de
l'Incarnation, premire suprieure de ce monastre, dcde le dernier
jour d'avril, 1672, ge de 72 ans et 6 mois. Religieuse professe,
venue de Tours. Priez pour son me._

The night she died in Quebec her Ursuline niece in Tours distinctly
saw her laid out in a winding sheet, while a voice breathed close by,
"Elle est morte." The other nuns were averse from believing this story
next morning; but the first ship from Canada brought the confirmation
of it. The whole Ursuline Order deplored the loss of such a saintly
life. The Jesuits and all who knew her bore equally ready witness to
her surpassing virtues. While Dom Martin's filial piety and religious
zeal prompted him to publish her life and letters a few years later:
"C'est ici un livre de reconnaissance envers Dieu et de pit 
l'gard d'une personne  laquelle je dois, aprs lui, tout ce que je
suis, selon la nature et selon la grce."

Her cult began forthwith and has grown ever since. Fifty years after,
Father Charlevoix hoped to hasten the day of her beatification by a
new account of her merits. In 1752 a Quebec Ursuline writes: "Nous
avons eu quelque esprance de voir notre vnrable mre mise sur les
rangs pour la batification; mais la personne qui avait pris la chose
 coeur n'est plus..." And so it went on, at intervals, for more than a
hundred years. Everyone who examined her life freely admitted that she
ought to become Ste. Marie de l'Incarnation; yet nobody appeared with
sufficient influence at Rome to get a place on the calendar for this
remote Canadian saint. In 1867, the year of Confederation--so long ago
as that--Archbishop Baillargeon of Quebec succeeded in getting her
cause definitely begun. Some of the _lettres postulatoires_ sent to
Rome on her behalf are rather remarkable documents. The Canadian
Zouaves, who went to uphold the Temporal Power in 1870, might perhaps
be expected to address Pio Nono thus: "Nous, laques, aimons 
signaler que cette grande servante de Dieu est venue la premire
arborer sur nos plages le drapeau de l'ducation chrtienne, et que
cette ducation, perpetue par les imitatrices de son zle, fait les
femmes fortes et chrtiennes dont notre jeune pays se glorifie.
Trs-saint pre, c'est au nom des mres chrtiennes qui ont donn
leurs fils avec tant d'amour et de gnrosit pour la dfense du
saint-sige que nous demandons avec instance la batification de la
Mre Marie de l'Incarnation." But the following is a curiously telling
appeal, coming as it does from the Cabinet Ministers of Her Britannic
Majesty for the Province of Quebec: "L'action bienfaisante de son
oeuvre se fait encore sentir de nos jours, et est pour toute la
province une source de biens incalculables  tous les points de
vue.... Chargs d'une grande responsabilit dans le gouvernement de
cette province qu'habita la Mre Marie de l'Incarnation nous sentons
le besoin de nous appuyer sur son intercession pour bien remplir les
devoirs qui nous incombent." In 1887 she was pontifically declared
"venerable." But for twenty years more the process for her
beatification--which the Quebec Ursulines longed for even before the
British conquest of Canada--has not been ended in her favour. Yet it
was known to be in its final stage of all in 1907. No wonder the
faithful Ursulines are on the tiptoe of expectation for the latest
news from Rome!

The process may have been wearyingly long; but what French-Canadian,
viewing her with the transfiguring eye of faith, could ever have
doubted the result? The impulse towards sanctification has come
spontaneously, and from the mass of the people, who still feel the
exalting touch of this most effectual mystic. No doubt she had a share
of personal faults and human failings. An age like ours would not be
lenient in criticizing either. But--unless all tradition, record and
corroboration are untrue--even our age cannot deny her a befitting
eulogy. Her actions and outlook were certainly bounded by the
limitations of her Church. But, within those limits, she gave new
lustre to the golden truth that there is more variety in virtue than
in vice. And we Canadians of 1908, who are now entering the fourth
century of our country's history, who, like the rest of mankind,
prefer amusement to interest and incident to character, and who are
now more than ever apt to mistake comfort for civilization:--we, in
this twentieth century, can certainly not afford to neglect the
example of all the zeal, devotion and self-sacrifice which went to the
making of that well-wrought career.


VI

La Mre Marie's influence has always remained inspiringly alive; and
the tradition of her service has been greatly strengthened by many
personal links between the passing centuries. Only three nuns had
died during the first Ursuline generation; and some of the twenty-five
on the roll in 1675 lived long enough to connect Frontenac's first
administration with the first capture of Louisbourg in 1745.

Indian converts were as eagerly sought for as ever. Frontenac used to
bring back the brightest Iroquois girls he could find whenever he went
to Kataraqui, where Kingston is now. The Algonquins, Abenakis and
Hurons were in still closer touch with the convent. The books of the
"Sminaire," as the Indian classes were always called, contain many
entries like these: "On the 15th of July, 1682, Marie Durand left the
seminary after having been provided with board and clothing for a
year." "La Petite Barbe, of the Mohawk tribe, who has been six years
in the seminary, has returned to her parents at Ancienne Lorette." In
1686 an Indian girl called Marie Rose laid the foundation stone of a
new wing; she was "dressed in white and represented the Infant Jesus."
An Abenaki called Agnes Wes-k-wes even found the call of the cloister
more compelling than the call of the woods. Only death prevented her
from taking the veil; and the fame of her piety drew every Christian
Indian near Quebec to her funeral.

Within four months of the day the corner stone for this extension was
put in position the convent was burnt again. A brave lay sister, Marie
Montmesnil, nearly lost her life in rescuing the precious relics. The
_Hospitalires_ again offered shelter in their cloisters, where the
Ursulines intoned a Laudate and sang a _Memorare_ to their perpetual
superior, the Blessed Virgin, in token of resignation and
thanksgiving. The _Hospitalires_ greatly cheered the homeless
Ursulines by remembering to make a special celebration of the feast of
St. Ursula the following day. As before, everyone in Quebec showed the
greatest kindness; and a return visit of acknowledgment was headed by
the Mother Superior, who called on the Marquis de Denonville at the
Chteau St. Louis and on the Intendant at his palace. After going to
see the eight sisters who had remained on guard in an outbuilding of
the burnt convent the little deputation re-entered the Htel-Dieu, and
their records state that "the peace of the cloister was delightful
after a day of such fatigue and dissipation." In November they all
went into Madame de la Peltrie's house, near which a barn was
converted into a temporary chapel, "not"--as their annalist quaintly
says--"in the style of the Renaissance, but in that of the Naissance."
The makeshift cloister and chapel were all that was most
uncomfortable. "I see everything here to make you suffer," said the
kindly bishop. The nuns, however, rejoiced at re-union under any
circumstances: _Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in
unum._

1689 was a year big with the fate of empires. The Great Imperial War
between France and England had just begun. It was to be renewed at
intervals for more than a century, to culminate in both the Old World
and the New in 1759, and to continue till Trafalgar had confirmed the
British command of the sea for more than another hundred years. In
Canada Frontenac began by a bold swift stroke at New England. In the
British colonies Peter Schuyler was formulating the original
"Glorious Enterprize" of conquering New France that Pitt found the
means of carrying out seventy years later.

In the midst of these wars and rumours of war the Ursulines completed
their present convent and celebrated their first jubilee. All of the
original three were dead; but a nun who came out in 1640, and so was
in her fiftieth year of service, took part in all the proceedings.
Longevity has always been distinctive of this community. At every
succeeding jubilee there have been nuns who had already assisted at a
previous one. And the senior nun in 1908, the tercentennial year of
Quebec, was not the junior in 1839, the bicentennial year of the
convent. The Indians were already receding before civilization in
1689; and there were fewer at the jubilee feast than there used to be
round the hospitable tables of La Mre Marie. The nearby friendly
tribes had begun to wither at the touch of the town; the hostile
warpaths stopped farther and farther west. The massacre of Lachine
sent a shudder of apprehension through the whole colony. But no
Indians ever again threatened the safety of Quebec. Frontenac, on the
contrary, carried the war into the Iroquois country. And the
Ursulines, who had drawn the sword at need in 1660, did so again for
the common good in 1696, by equipping a tiny though efficient
contingent of two men. But their favourite weapon was and remained
conversion.

In 1690 New England made her counterstroke. On the 7th of October the
vanguard of the American fleet was sighted below Murray Bay. Quebec
stood aghast, defenceless; for Frontenac was much further off inland
than Phips was by the St. Lawrence. The Ursulines were instant in
prayer, "seeking in every way to appease the divine judgment and
obtain the favour of God for their country." And the townsfolk thought
these intercessions had been accepted when contrary winds so delayed
Phips that Frontenac arrived first and flung back defiance at the
summons to surrender: "I have no answer to give, except from the mouth
of my cannon." Phips at once began his bombardment, and the convent
received its baptism of fire. "The first day a cannon ball burst
through a shutter and finally lodged at the bedside of one of our
boarders; another cut a piece of her apron off one of our sisters.
Others fell in the garden and courtyard.... Our house was crowded with
women and children, so that we could hardly pass to and fro, but had
to take our food standing and in haste, like the Israelites when they
ate the Paschal Lamb.... We lent our picture of the Holy Trinity to be
hung on the steeple of the cathedral, to show under whose protection
we were fighting." On the 21st--Trafalgar day--the festival of St.
Ursula was duly observed. Father de la Colombire seized the
opportunity to extol the heroism of the virgin martyrs as worthy of
present imitation. And Bishop St. Valier had just intoned, with
vibrant solemnity, _Maria Mater grati.... Et mortis hor_...when the
hush that followed the benediction was suddenly rent by the crash of
artillery. But, this time, Phips was only covering his retreat; and
Quebec went wild with exultant joy. Frontenac became a hero of the
people, and has remained so ever since. The church built beside the
St. Lawrence, on the site of Champlain's _Abitation_, became _Notre
Dame de la Victoire_. And, three thousand miles away, in famous
France, _Le Roi Soleil_, in the heyday of his European renown,
commanded a special medal to be struck in commemoration of this
Canadian feat of arms--_Kebeca liberata, MDCXC, Francia in nova orbe
victrix._

The eighteenth century opened with famine, pestilence and war. Fever
and smallpox carried off a fourth of the population of Quebec. Funeral
knells became so frequent and so depressing to the spirits of the
living that they were forbidden altogether. Five epidemics in eleven
years scourged the town and turned the convent into a hospital. The
last was in 1711, the year Sir Hovenden Walker's armada made its
disastrous attempt against New France. The convent resounded with the
noise of warlike preparations, close beside the cloisters. The nuns
again prayed fervently for the French arms. And the British
expedition, ill found and badly led, retired discomfited and alarmed
by the many shipwrecks it suffered far down the river. _Notre Dame de
la Victoire_ was henceforth called _Notre Dame des Victoires_. Two
years later the Treaty of Utrecht freed Bishop St. Valier from the
Tower of London, where he had been nine years prisoner of war. This
time the cannon roared in greeting, and every bell in Quebec was rung
as the bishop landed amid the acclamations of the people, who all went
down to the water-side to bid him welcome home. The convent annals of
the 18th of August, 1713, record his first visit to the Ursulines
since his captivity. "In the course of the afternoon we had the
pleasure of seeing our good bishop and hearing him express his joy.
For our part, great is our gratitude to the God of all goodness, who
has vouchsafed to grant us such consolation after our long and heavy
trials."

In 1708 a very different prisoner of war had appeared at the convent.
This was Esther Wheelwright, the twelve-year-old great-granddaughter
of John Wheelwright, one of the most honoured of New England Puritan
ministers. The child had been carried off in the raid against the
little village of Wells, five years before. The Abenaki chief who took
her had adopted her; and she had almost forgotten her English when
Father Bigot came into the camp on a missionary tour. It was no easy
matter to rescue her. An Indian chief thought paleface prisoners were
trophies of war, quite as much as objects of ransom. And it was only
after long diplomacy and many seductive presents that Esther was given
up to the _Great Captain of the French_, the Marquis de Vaudreuil,
father of Montcalm's Vaudreuil, who sent her to school at the
Ursulines' with his own daughter. Was it the contrast between the
savage restlessness of the forest, as well as the civilized
restlessness of French society at the Chteau St. Louis, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the calm of the convent, that revived her
childish memories of home and school and the happy orchard beside
which she was torn away that midsummer morning, more than half her
life ago? Who knows? But when the peace that restored the bishop to
his diocese had let her family write for her return to them, she had
learnt a second separating language, had found a new home and a new
faith, and had taken the white veil among the Ursulines as Sister
Esther of the Infant Jesus. She petitioned the Governor, as her
adopted father, to allow her to make her final vows. The bishop
approved; and Father Bigot preached the sermon at her admission.
Letters were exchanged with the family, and the portrait then painted
for them in her nun's dress is now in the possession of the seventh
generation from the one to whose members it was sent.

But Esther was not the only, nor even the first of the Puritan
Ursulines. Mary Davis, carried off from Salem in 1686, entered the
novitiate in 1698. And, twenty-four years later than this, Mary
Dorothea Jordan also found her happiest earthly home in the "House of
Jesus," which the French missionaries had so often described to the
three little captives among the Indians as the great sanctuary of the
"paleface virgins" in Quebec.

Forty-two years of comparative peace followed the return of the bishop
from the Tower. The life of cloister, school and chapel went on with
little disturbance from the outside world. Indeed, the outside world
of Quebec was more moved by convent interests in 1739 than the convent
was disturbed by worldly intrusions. A whole year had been devoted
within the cloisters to preparing a _fte_ worthy of the centennial
year of the Ursuline order in Canada. The community now consisted of
fifty-three nuns. Exactly fifty-three had died during the century. And
their annalist rejoiced to think there was an evenly divided number to
make an antiphon of praise in earth and Heaven. All pious observances
were prolonged; all relaxations were shortened; silver plate was
melted down to make a sanctuary lamp; and a general "retreat" heralded
the approach of the famous first of August. The canons of the
cathedral celebrated; the Jesuit Fathers preached; the Bishop
constantly attended; and Pope Innocent X granted an Indulgence to all
who took part--clergy, nuns and laity alike. The Indians were not
forgotten. A special High Mass was celebrated for them, at which they
sang the _Kyrie_ and _Credo_. A feast of such abundance as to recall
the best of those given to their predecessors by La Mre Marie brought
their part of the ceremonies to a triumphant close. It was their last
great entertainment at the Ursulines'. They had receded much further
since the jubilee of 1689. At the time of the next jubilee the world
was going very differently, far and near. The French Revolution had
begun; a British sovereign had held the allegiance of Canada for
thirty years; and the Indians were only at home beyond the
ever-expanding frontiers of that _Western Country_, which was, in its
turn, to be succeeded by a still farther-off _Far West_ before the
bicentennial year had come.

The second quarter of the 18th century was the halcyon day of the old
_rgime_ at Quebec. The kindly Marquis de Beauharnois governed the
colony for fifteen years. A great "Father in God" was then bishop,
Count Henri de Pontbriand. The _seigneurs_ lived in homely affluence
among their _censitaires_. One of them enjoyed the manor and vast
domains of the baronies of Portneuf and Bcancour. His house and
chapel bore the insignia of nobility. Royal letters patent gave him
"the right of arms, heraldic honours, rank and precedence, like the
other barons of the kingdom of France." His daughter Anne had all the
colony could give her in the way of social amenities and distractions.
Yet three years of society disgusted her with what she called the "gay
follies" of "bowing and courtseying in the middle of an illuminated
hall." She became contented only when she took the veil, and could
summon the community to its daily duties by ringing the bell at four
o'clock in the morning--an office she performed without a break for
forty years. Another nun of this period, who came from the most
comfortable home the colony then had, was Genevive de Boucherville,
whose father's notebook contains the significant entry: "The land
being mine, I think it my duty to settle there as a means of being
useful to society." This anti-absentee landlord, Pierre Boucher de
Boucherville, was the father, grandfather and great-grandfather of
Ursuline nuns; for, besides Genevive, three of the next and four of
the following generation took the veil. His piety was proverbial, and
its memory was kept alive for many years by the custom his descendants
had of meeting to hear his "spiritual will" read aloud on the
anniversary of his death. They were a long-lived family. Pierre
Boucher was born during the lifetime of Shakespeare; yet his Ursuline
daughter did not die till the lifetime of the Duke of Wellington!

The other classes of society shared the novel pleasure of this time of
peace and comparative plenty. From the convent windows the nuns could
see the snug little whitewashed cottages strung along the Cte de
Beaupr--that well-named "shore of the beautiful meadow," which rose
two hundred feet or more in one bold bluff from the St. Lawrence, and
then, in evenly rising uplands, swept back to the Laurentians, fifteen
miles away. Or they could look out to the left of this, across the
valley of the St. Charles, over a still greater natural glacis,
sloping up and up to the blue ramparts of the same Laurentian
mountains further west. Here the cottages were clustering round the
churches into little straggling villages, which tamed the wild
woodlands with fruitful spots of greenery. Or they could see the
harbour, in the right foreground of the Cte de Beaupr, with, beyond,
the rich Island of Orleans, bearing at first such native produce that
the early settlers chose it as the garden of Quebec, and afterwards
bearing such crops that every traveller's eye was taken with the scene
of bright fertility at this seaward gate of Canada.

The very troubles of that time were those inflicted by prosperity.
Church and State cried out against the increase of luxury. There were
laments over the good old times of more frugality, when the
_habitants_ stayed on their farms, instead of crowding the wharves and
warehouses to spend their savings whenever a ship came in from France
with a cargo of men's and women's frippery. Young men of more stirring
natures turned to the wilds for profit and adventure. The paternal
Government was horrified to see hundreds of _coureurs des bois_
"absent without leave." And the Church was more justifiably grieved to
find how many of them were active as "the devil's missionaries" in
the brandy trade among the Indians.

An education at the Ursulines' offered the acknowledged corrective to
social excesses and the best preparation for the future mothers of the
colony. Civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries were always willing to
lend their countenance to such a school _fte_ as the one recorded in
the annals for the 23rd of August, 1752. Genevive de Boucherville,
now nearing her eightieth year, receives the distinguished guests with
all the grace of the salon without any of its empty compliments.
Duquesne, the last great Governor, and the Bishop and Intendant, with
their suites, are there, surrounded by everyone whom the society
papers would have mentioned next day, had there been any papers then.
At the end of the reception room is a grove, from which the nymphs and
shepherdesses issue in procession to greet the Governor-General with a
triumphal ode, comparing his services for the king in Canada to those
performed by his ancestors for the kings in France. There was no lack
of poetastic incense; but Duquesne had won the right of patriotic
homage, as had the bishop, who was addressed next. This good prelate's
visitations into the further wilderness were duly chronicled in
glowing verse. "All Olympus' faded hierarchy" was pressed into
unwonted fellowship whenever the occasion seemed to warrant it, and
some very quaint "conceits" were the result. When the Quebec Ursulines
heard what yeoman service the bishop had done after their Three Rivers
sisters were burnt out they gave him a place among the gods of Greece,
quite in the effusive spirit of the fashionable pastorals of the day.
The translation made for a later generation of English-speaking pupils
is even quainter than the original.


    Among the gods, if poets' lays are true,
    Deeds most surprising were not rare to view!
    And all Olympus did the feat admire,
    When bright Apollo cast aside his lyre,
    Forbore to sing and seized the heavy spade,
    Or with the mason's trowel mortar laid.
    Like him, my Lord, you put the apron on,
    And soften hearts, while you are laying stone.


But very different days were coming; days when the heart of New France
was failing it for fear; when the land was eaten up with corruption
and gaunt with famine.

Before the middle of the century there came a new Intendant, a man at
once so consummate and so outrageous in all dishonesty that even the
last hundred and fifty years of public life in the United States and
Canada have failed to produce his superior in villainy. This was
Bigot, whose sinister influence is seen, even inside the convent, in
the letter he wrote the Superior, forbidding her to sell or give away
any food during the famine, except through him. A few years later the
younger Vaudreuil became Governor-General, and gave the plausible and
insinuating Bigot a free hand, while spitefully thwarting the great
and incorruptible Montcalm at every turn. No former miseries had been
so bad as these; for New France now had worse false friends at home
than open enemies abroad.

In 1755 the Ursulines saw their sisters in the General Hospital burnt
out, with loss of life. Messages were instantly sent offering a return
of the kindness shown to the homeless Ursulines in the previous
century; and presently the Hospitalires arrived. One of their number
had been burnt alive; another was dying. She was nursed with all
possible care in the infirmary, and when she died the Ursulines buried
her in their own vault, "in order," as their annals say, "that her
ashes, mingling with ours, may serve to make still more enduring that
union which has ever bound us together."

The next three years were years of ever-increasing apprehension. The
French arms were often victorious; but victory became more and more
barren. Braddock's defeat at the Monongahela was the last real check
to the British advance. Montcalm's battles were desperate rearguard
actions, in which his skill snatched victory for the time being from
forces whose reserves were always closing up the ranks of his enemies
and pushing the lines of converging invasion one step further into the
doomed colony. The Ursulines were devotedly patriotic, and looked upon
race and religion as almost one and the same. The contrast between New
France and the English-speaking people was, indeed, a striking one.
Not a heretic was to be found in Canada; while Roman Catholic
disabilities were a stern reality in England, and the _Bostonnais_
were the straitest Protestants in the world. But, even apart from
religion, French priests and nuns have always been French of the
French abroad; so much so, indeed, that their services to French
influence were freely used by atheists like Paul Bert and Gambetta,
who agreed that "Anti-clericalism is not an article of export."
Montcalm, a frank and unswerving believer, looked upon the final
struggle as somewhat of an Armageddon, though he was man-of-the-world
enough to know that the British side was not in the service of an
Anti-Christ. His Ticonderoga letter to the Superior of the Ursulines
shows the bond of sympathy between the cloister and the sword in that
great crisis. "Continus, madame,  m'accorder vos prires et celles
de votre sainte communaut.... Je me flatte que celui qui a pris
Chouagen saura repousser  Carrillon les ennemis de la religion. C'est
_Dieu_ qui a fait un vrai prodige dans cette occasion. Je ai voulu Le
servir, je Lui raporte tout, et je reois avec reconnaissance votre
compliment et celui de votre Illustre Communaut."

Day by day new stories of British preparations against Quebec were
told through the _grille_ at the convent. The fall of Louisbourg left
New France shrunken, starved and isolated in the grip of a hostile
sea. Three hundred French ships were taken on the Atlantic that year.
No mail came out from France for eight silent months of
disappointment. And when Bougainville arrived in the spring of 1759
the convent historian significantly praises his skill and bravery in
having "penetrated the enemy's lines." Even the scanty fare usual in
the refectory had to be reduced to four ounces of bread a day.
Clothes, books, household necessities--everything--were lacking.
Montcalm had only a little horseflesh at his dinners; his army was on
half rations, the _habitants_ often on less. Only Bigot and Vaudreuil
fared sumptuously and gnawed the people to the bone.

On the 26th of June the British fleet appeared in the South Channel of
Orleans; and the Ursuline annalist that evening closed her entry with
the words: "The colony is lost!" From the convent there was a full
view of Montcalm's six miles of entrenchments along the Beauport
shore, from the mouth of the St. Charles to the Falls of Montmorency.
The British men-of-war could be seen feeling their way into the
harbour; Wolfe's soldiers landing in detachments at the Island of
Orleans, and afterwards, in great strength, just beyond the Falls. At
nine o'clock on the night of the 12th of July the bombardment from the
Levis batteries, across the St. Lawrence, suddenly began; and "at the
first discharge from the English batteries the convent was struck in
many places. We passed the night before the Blessed Sacrament, in such
terrors as may be imagined." The next morning the Superior, La Mre
Migeon de la Nativit, headed a sorrowful procession to the General
Hospital, each nun carrying all she took with her in a little bundle.
Ten volunteers remained to safeguard the convent, as best they could,
under the brave Mre Davanne, with the assistance of their chaplain,
Father Resche, and two of his friends.

The General Hospital had already become a sanctuary for 800 people,
including the nuns of the Htel-Dieu, who, like the Ursulines,
immediately took the harassing duty of nursing the sick and wounded in
overcrowded wards and with hardly any proper hospital appliances.
Wolfe's unsuccessful assault on the heights of Montmorency sent in
many patients. Among them was Captain Ochterloney, of the Royal
Americans, who had been wounded in a duel the day before; had left
hospital to take part in the battle, saying he could never let a
private quarrel stand between him and his public duty; had been shot
through the lungs while leading his company of Grenadiers, had refused
to leave the field after such a defeat, and had been rescued from a
scalping party by a French soldier of the Regiment of Guienne. Two
days later a messenger came out, under a flag of truce, for
Ochterloney's effects, which Wolfe sent in, with twenty guineas for
the soldier who had saved him. But Vaudreuil theatrically refused to
allow any money to be given for this gallant deed. So Wolfe replied,
thanking Vaudreuil, and promising Madame de Ramesay, directress of the
hospital, that he would grant her special protection if victory should
crown the British arms. This promise soon became known, and the
hospital was more crowded with refugees than ever. Towards the end of
August Ochterloney died, having been tenderly nursed by the good
sisters to the last. Both sides then ceased firing for two hours,
while Captain de St. Laurent came out of Quebec to announce his death
and return his effects.

In September hopes began to revive. It was thought the Canadian autumn
would compel the British fleet to raise the siege. Wolfe's restless
energy had to be reckoned with. But Montcalm's skill was depended on
to keep him at arm's length. And so it might have, though ultimate
conquest was only a question of time, if Vaudreuil's meddling
counter-orders had not thwarted Montcalm's foresight. Suddenly, on the
morning of the 13th, Quebec gasped at the desperate news that the red
wall of the British army was on the Plains of Abraham, cutting off the
town from the west as the British fleet cut it off from the east.
Within four hours the French army had marched up from its
entrenchments, formed line of battle, attacked, and been broken in
defeat. The Ursulines in the General Hospital saw the fugitives flying
for their lives down the Cte d'Abraham and across the valley of the
St. Charles. By midday the overcrowded hospital had to receive
hundreds more of their wounded friends. At midnight a detachment of
wild-looking Highlanders took possession and guaranteed protection.
The next morning the British wounded were brought in, and every nook
and corner in the hospital and all its outbuildings was filled with
friend and foe, now drawn together by the sympathy of common
suffering, and become but man and man once more under the ministering
hands of the good nuns.

While the Ursulines in the General Hospital were busily struggling to
do this service in the thickest of all the crowding horrors of war,
the little garrison left behind in the convent was racked by still
further suspense. The dire news that Wolfe was on the Plains had
reached them early in the morning. Their straining ears had heard the
sharp, knelling clap of volley after volley from that steadfast
British line; then the confused noise of hand-to-hand fighting, yells
that might have come from Iroquois, followed immediately by loud,
exultant British cheers, and, as they strained their eyes to see if
their ears deceived them, the foreboded truth struck them to the heart
when a mob of white and blue and grey fugitives fled in mad haste for
the bridge of boats leading back to the French entrenchments. Even as
they watched they heard of another disaster from the street beside
them. Montcalm had just ridden through St. Louis Gate, mortally
wounded--and this news touched the quick of anguish. Some terrified
women, seeing him pass by between two Grenadiers, who supported him in
the saddle, had shrieked out: "Oh, Mon Dieu--le Marquis est tu!" And
he had tried to reassure them by replying: "Ce n'est rien! Ne vous
affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies!" The surgeon told him he had
only a few hours to live. "So much the better. I shall not live to see
the surrender of Quebec." But he attended to the last details of his
public duty before he let his memory turn to his beloved family circle
among the happy olive groves of his home at Candiac. He sent a
farewell message to every member; and then, as his life was ebbing
fast away, he made his final peace with God. Often, in that dreadful
night, he was heard praying and rendering thanks for the consolations
of the Catholic faith. Just as the dreary day was breaking he breathed
his last.

What desolation met the eyes of the nuns that morning! The long six
miles of French defences stretched as usual along the Beauport shore
to the heights of Montmorency. But no one manned them. The guns were
dumb and deserted. There was no stir of life about the empty tents.
Nothing moved along the road which had so lately bristled with ten
thousand bayonets. The houses were as desolate as the camp. Death had
struck peace as well as war.

Bad news kept coming in all day long. All the other French generals
had fallen in the battle, with no one knew how many officers whose
daughters were pupils of the convent. In the afternoon the death of
two Ursulines was reported from the General Hospital. One was La Mre
Charlotte de Muy de Ste. Hlne, daughter of a Governor of Louisiana.
She was the convent annalist who lived just long enough to see the
fulfilment of her foreboding entry for the 26th of June: "The colony
is lost." By a strange coincidence the other was Mary Jordan, a
Puritan, whose former compatriots were represented by the American
Rangers in Wolfe's triumphant army. But she was "La Mre de St.
Joseph," heart and soul, when the battle was joined the day before,
and she died, just after Montcalm, as French, as patriotic, and more
intensely Roman Catholic than he.

The day wore on, and the nuns in the convent had more time than those
in the hospital to realize what a desperate pass the colony had come
to. A homeless and despairing people, a broken and fugitive army, and
the last half-mile of the rock of Quebec, close beset by victorious
forces on land and sea:--and this was all that was left of the Canada
they knew!

That night a funeral procession stumbled its way through the
encumbered street to the convent, bearing the great and unfortunate
Montcalm to his last resting place in the chapel of the Saints. The
town had been in such confusion all day that no one could be found to
make a coffin, except an old servant of the Ursulines, "le bonhomme
Michel," who wept bitterly as he worked at his makeshift of a few
rough boards. At nine o'clock the mourners entered by the fitful glare
of torchlight. De Ramesay and every man in the garrison that could be
spared from duty were there, with many civilians and women and
children. One little girl, who held her father's hand as she felt the
awestruck silence when that rude coffin was lowered into the
shell-torn ground, afterwards became La Mre Dub de St. Ignace, and
used to tell the story of that memorable night to successive nuns and
pupils, down to the Ursulines' bicentennial year of 1839; and one of
her most attentive listeners, both as pupil and nun, is still alive to
repeat the tale in Quebec's tercentennial year of 1908. _Libera me_,
_Domine_, chanted Father Resche and his two companions; while the
little choir of siege-worn nuns replied from behind the screen. It was
one more fulfilment of the family tradition: _La Guerre est le Tombeau
des Montcalm._

On the 18th Quebec capitulated. Three days later the Ursulines
returned to their shattered home. On the 27th an Anglican memorial
service was held for Wolfe, in the same chapel where Montcalm lay
buried, and the funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. Eli Dawson,
chaplain to H.M.S. _Stirling Castle_. The style of this oration is too
inflated; but the preacher was right in his estimate of the immense
importance of the victory. "Ye Heralds of fame already upon the wing,
stretch your flight and swell your Trumpets with the Glory of a
military exploit through distant worlds! An Exploit which for the
fitness of Address in Stratagem, the Daringness of the attempt, and
the Spirit of its execution shall take rank with the choicest Pieces
of ancient or modern Story in the Temple of Fame, where it remains
immortal."

The Mothers winced at the unwelcome necessity of having to yield up
their altars to what they thought unhallowed rites. And the conquerors
had the usual Protestant predisposition to take the mass for
superstitious mummery. But personal experience and many amenities on
both sides made each more tolerant after that long, hard winter.
General Murray, now in command of the British army of occupation,
quickly won golden opinions by his justice and generosity. He and his
men cheerfully gave up a whole day's rations every week for the
benefit of the poor, and always paid religious processions of all
kinds "the compliment of the hat." And it soon became known that,
before leaving for England, Townshend, though obliged to borrow money
from the fleet for the needs of the army, had yet sent Bougainville
enough to help the French sick and wounded.

Murray established his headquarters in the convent, which was also
used as an officers' hospital and had a guard of Highlanders. The
sanctity of the cloisters was religiously observed, and not a single
complaint was ever made against the British garrison. On the contrary,
the officers and men did all they could for the nuns, shovelling the
snow for them, seeing they got the best food that could be had, and
generally making them as happy as possible under the circumstances.
As the winter began to set in the annalist records that the
Highlanders, "exposed by the peculiarities of their costume to suffer
severely from the climate, became objects of compassion to the nuns,
who set to work to knit long thick stockings to cover the legs of the
poor strangers." Captain Knox, of the 43rd, records another pleasant
amenity in his journal for the 30th of November. "The nuns of the
Ursuline convent having presented the Governor and other Officers with
a set of crosses of St. Andrew, curiously worked, they were displayed
in compliment to this day: in the corner of the field of each cross
was wrought an emblematical heart expressive of that attachment and
affection which every good man naturally bears to his native country."

Thus passed the terrible 1759. How different from 1659, when La Mre
Marie de l'Incarnation was writing home to France her patriotic
congratulations on the Peace of the Pyrenees and the rising glories of
His Most Christian Majesty, _Le Grand Monarque_ and _Roi Soleil_!

French hopes began to revive with the spring of 1760. The gallant de
Lvis was gathering his forces at Montreal; his army was to be joined
by all the able-bodied manhood of the country as he came down; and the
_Fleur de Lys_ was to float from the Citadel again. On the 21st of
April Murray ordered all the inhabitants, except the nuns, to leave
Quebec. All private property left behind was stored in the Rcollet
church, on the site of the present Anglican cathedral, watched by two
delegates chosen by the townsfolk, and placed under a strong guard. On
the 23rd the ice moved down and navigation opened. On the 25th Lvis'
vessels began to arrive at Pointe-aux-Trembles; and a desperate
struggle was seen to be imminent. On the 28th every British soldier
that could be spared from actually manning the walls marched out to
prevent Lvis from closing in to the commanding heights at decisive
ranges. A desperate fight ensued; far bloodier than the first battle
of the Plains; and in a few hours the little British army staggered
in, beaten back to its walls, with the loss of more than a third of
its numbers. The French army had lost even more men; and the convent
was presently filled with the wounded of both sides. Lvis opened his
batteries: all the dangers of a siege began again, and at much closer
quarters than the year before. The vanguard of a fleet was reported
coming up stream under a press of sail. It rounded into harbour after
dark; and a French officer on the Beauport shore sent off a message to
Lvis to say the French reinforcements had arrived at last! The rumour
flew round and fired the besiegers to instant action. But just as they
were about to carry the town by assault they found they were mistaken,
and that the whole British fleet was coming to relieve Quebec and cut
off their own retreat. They at once raised the siege, retired in all
haste on Montreal; and there, brought to bay by irresistible forces on
land and water, they laid down their arms forever. Three years later
the convent annals record the momentous change of sovereignty in these
few and simple words:--"On the 24th of May, 1763, a treaty of peace
was signed between the Kings of France and England. Canada is left to
the English. God grant religion may continue to flourish there!" This
devout wish seemed at first destined to disappointment, in the sense
desired by the annalist. The good and great Bishop de Pontbriand died
before the final surrender, and the Canadian branch of the Church was
bereft of its ordinary head at the very time that the State was
wrested from its _Mre-Patrie_. For eight years, from 1758 to 1766,
not a novice joined the thinning ranks; and the novitiate,
consequently, soon ceased to exist. "To add to our difficulties, all
commerce with France is forbidden: yet what credit could the Canadian
merchants, even if not already ruined, hope for in London? And how
many articles of prime necessity, especially for the Church and altar,
and for the apparel of persons living in religious communities, are no
longer to be found on the list of English manufactures, since their
proscription by the law of the land!"

However, the nuns faced every privation with undaunted courage. They
did Indian bark work, which they sold to the British officers'
families. Perhaps they were taught by Esther Wheelwright, who was
elected Superior in 1761, and who might still have retained the art
she learnt in her five years' wanderings in the forest, between her
Puritan home and the convent. They earned a little money from their
own people by embroidery and gilding and other work useful in
restoring religious service in the ruined churches. They were poorer
than they had ever been, even in the worst days of a hundred years
ago. The present of a little seed grain is thankfully recorded as
likely to enable them to tide over the next winter without losing
their pupils.

In 1761, there were thirty-seven boarders, and English names appear
for the first time. Some years later the annals say:--"It has been a
great consolation to us, in the midst of so many difficulties and
trials, to see our classes always well filled, there being often as
many as sixty boarders, French and English. The latter are naturally
very gentle and docile; but it is sad not to be allowed to bring them
up in our Holy Faith." There are very few Anglo-Canadian families, of
any social standing during the first century of British rule, whose
daughters did not get at least some of their education from the
Ursulines. And was not St. Ursula herself the daughter of a Prince of
Britain?

1766 was a turning point in Ursuline history. The novitiate was
reopened; Monseigneur Briand, the Vicar-General, arrived out after
being consecrated as fourth Bishop of Quebec; and the foundress of
their Order was beatified as St. Angela of Merici. "The happy event
was celebrated with as many outward demonstrations of joy as if the
whole country had still been under Catholic rule." The breach between
French and French-Canadian public life was already widening. In 1767
La Mre Marchand de St. Etienne writes to the Ursulines in Paris: "The
news we have had from France this year grieves us profoundly. Although
expatriated by the fate of war our hearts are as French as ever, and
this makes us doubly sensitive to the decline of that dear motherland.
I cannot help saying that it is as well to be in Canada, where we
enjoy the greatest tranquillity. We are not in the least molested on
the score of religion. We have a Governor, who, by his moderation and
benignity, is the delight of every one, and a bishop who is the joy
and consolation of his flock." This juxtaposition of British
commander-in-chief and French-Canadian bishop speaks for itself. A
little later on La Mre de St. Louis de Gonzague writes:--"Religion is
perfectly free. People say it is not the same in Paris, where
religious communities suffer persecution. We are told that you were
even obliged to celebrate the beatification of our Blessed Mother
Angela in secret. We have no such difficulties here under British
rule."

In 1773 the Jesuits, hereditary friends of the Ursulines, were
suppressed in France. In 1774 the British Parliament passed the Quebec
Act, favouring French-Canadian rights and privileges. In 1775, an army
of American Revolutionists invaded Canada and besieged Quebec. Bishop,
clergy and nuns all saw the peril of intolerant assimilation staring
them grimly in the face; and all stood as firmly British as they did
against the third American invasion, in the war of 1812. And in 1799,
when Monseigneur Plessis preached a sermon in the Basilica to
celebrate Nelson's victory at the Nile, no church in Canada responded
with heartier alacrity than the Ursuline chapel to the Bishop's
_mandement_ ordaining a general thanksgiving for the blessings ensured
to the French-Canadians by the just laws and protecting arms of the
British Crown.

And this appreciation of British right and prowess was not wrung from
any assemblage of mere frightened women, cowering for protection
beneath the first strong hand; but sprang spontaneous from the
well-proved heroines of four sieges and five battles.


VII

St. Ursula is reverenced in the cloisters as a great patroness of
learning. St. Angela founded the Ursulines as a teaching order in
1537. And La Mre Marie de l'Incarnation and her successors have
always looked upon their school as the prime object of all their work
in Canada. Ursuline teachers and boarders are always drawn from the
best social classes in their respective communities; and these female
Etons exert considerable influence in different parts of the Roman
Catholic world, with their 500 convents, their 12,000 nuns, and their
100,000 pupils.

Quebec society offered a fair field and much favour to the Ursuline
teachers in the eighteenth century. Charlevoix found it very much to
his taste in 1720. "...a little world where all is select.... A
Governor-General with his staff, nobles, and troops; an Intendant,
with a Superior Council...a Commissary of Marine, a Grand Prvt, a
Grand Voyer; a Superintendent of Streams and Forests, whose
jurisdiction is certainly the most extensive in the world; merchants
in easy circumstances, or at least living as if they were; a bishop
and a large staff of clergy; Rcollets and Jesuits; three
old-established communities of nuns; and other circles almost as
brilliant as those surrounding the Governor and Intendant.... There
are abundant means of passing the time agreeably.... Current news is
confined to a few topics. News from Europe comes all at one time; but
then it lasts a whole year.... The arts and sciences have their turn,
so that conversation never languishes. The Canadians breathe, from
their earliest years, an air of good will which makes them very
agreeable in social intercourse. Nowhere else is our language spoken
with greater purity.... There are no really rich people here.... Very
few trouble themselves about laying up riches. They live well; that
is, if they can also afford to dress well. But they will stint
themselves at table in order to dress the better for it; and it must
be admitted that dress is becoming to our Canadians. They are a
fine-looking people, and the best blood of France runs in their veins.
Good humour and refined manners are common to all; and even in the
remoter country places the slightest approach to boorishness is quite
unknown." In 1757, Montcalm found the ladies "spirituelles, galantes,
dvotes," and notes in his journal that "Quebec is a town of
distinctly good society.... At two splendid balls I saw more than
eighty charming ladies, all beautifully dressed." So, perhaps, the
"good old times" which form the theme of a lament written from the
convent in 1785 were not so very different from the new as the writer
would have her Parisian Sisters believe. "There is liberty to profess
our holy religion; but there is little care for living piously, young
girls are not brought up so well as they used to be. Some of our
pupils are taken from us and allowed to go to the theatre before the
age of fourteen. We hear many complaints of the vanity and luxury
which are becoming prevalent in society; yet there are many good
people who persevere faithfully in the path of duty." Society was
probably getting more complex in Quebec, and throwing off its froth
and depositing its dregs as it always has since social complexities
began. But the fair field and much favour were there, for all that.
Very few convent schools have ever enjoyed such opportunities, and
none have used them better.

Yet in one important respect the Ursulines were at a very serious
disadvantage. All communication with France was cut off by the British
conquest in 1759, by the War of the American Revolution in 1778, and
again by the long wars of the First Republic and Empire; while no
French book was printed in Canada till 1765, and very few of any
general educational value appeared there during the next fifty years.
The only source of supply was from a French bookseller in Paris whose
London correspondent managed to forward a few text-books, from time to
time, as occasion served.

This separation from many forms of French life in those troublous
times of universal questionings, and the difficulty of getting secular
text-books, combined to throw the whole soul of the teaching more than
ever into the religious sphere. But this overwhelming preponderance of
one aspect of instruction did not crush out all other aptitudes, as
some might think. Literature was certainly not taught on modern
comparative lines; but there are many books in use to-day which are of
an altogether lower world of literature than the Roman liturgy, with
its profoundly intimate adaptability to so much human yearning, and
its perennial grandeur of expression. How those Ursulines would have
rejoiced exceedingly to see the fulness of knowledge uniting with the
charm of the best French prose in praise of the sthetics of the
liturgy, in Don Cabrol's _Confrences_ at the Institut Catholique de
Paris on _Les Origines Liturgiques_! "Ainsi l'Eglise s'est servie des
sens, des crmonies extrieures, pour vous lever vers Dieu; c'est le
premier degr de l'oraison. Elle s'adresse ensuite  votre
intelligence et  votre coeur par ses formules; et si vous vous laissez
pntrer par cette influence, elle vous conduira jusqu'au plus hart
degr de la prire, le ravissement et l'extase." This is an opinion of
to-day, calmly given forth while France was in the thick of the
debates on the Associations Bill in a Radical Chamber of Deputies.
Chteaubriand was nearer their own day; so near, in fact, that he was
among the pioneers of the renaissance of wonder in literature--a
renaissance which his _Gnie du Christianisme_ applied to the
scriptures of the Church. We re-open the little _livre d'offices_,
read with him a few hymns and prayers, and are fain to confess "qu'une
langue antique et mystrieuse (celle de Virgile et de Cicron) une
langue qui ne varie plus avec les sicles, convenait assez bien au
culte de l'tre ternel, incomprhensible, immuable."

But Chteaubriand is no longer an accepted expositor: he is not
scientific enough for an evolutionary generation. Yet his famous book
served its day well, revived a cultured interest in the liturgy, and
preached a series of excellent lay sermons from a Christian reading of
Keat's text:


    Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.


Then, by the time the literary revival of the liturgy was waning the
scientific began. This went straight to root-and-branch questions of
evolution, environment, accretion, and the survival of the fittest.
And now science and literature alike acknowledge the supreme fitness
of Bible and liturgies to fill a foremost place in the intellectual
life. Yet it's a far cry from the convent to the _Modern Reader's
Bible_, and it will be many a day before the Papal revision of the
Vulgate supplies the half-way house.

However, the essential point is the full and frank recognition of the
value of Bible and liturgy as source-books of science and art in the
life-history of man. M. Loisy is hardly persona gratissima inside the
cloisters; but what Ursuline would not agree with this sentence from
his _L'Evangille et l'Eglise_: "Le dveloppement historique du culte
accuse un effort persvrant du christianisme pour pntrer de son
esprit toute l'existence de l'homme." Or with Renan's dictum: "La
religion d'un peuple, tant l'expression la plus complte de son
individualit, est en un sens plus instructive que son histoire." Or
with Huysmans' artistic sensibility in Gregorian chants, while he was
en route towards Catholicism: "la paraphrase arienne et mouvante de
l'immobile structure des cathdrales." For would she not triumphantly
point to the great Tertullian as the archetype and prophet of all
these latter-day cultivators of religion? Look at this French version
of his _De Spec_, c. xxxix, P.L., t. 1, col. 735, and be convinced
forever:--"Vous avez des spectacles saints, perptuels, gratuits;
cherches-y les jeux du cirque, regarde le cours des sicles, les temps
qui s'coulent, compte les espaces, attends qu'on touche la dernire
borne, dfends les socits des glises, ressuscite au signe de Dieu,
lve-toi  la voix de l'ange, glorifie-toi de la palme du martyre....
Nous avons, nous aussi, cette littrature, nous avons de la posie,
des sentences, mme des cantiques en grand nombre, des chants;--pas de
fables, par exemple, mais des vrit...."

But how could there ever have been any place for English-speaking
pupils, and, above all, for Protestants, in such an atmosphere? The
only answer is that there always has been room for both creeds and
both races in all matters of secular instruction, and that the
class-room _entente cordiale_ has remained unbroken from the
appearance of the first English pupils to the present day. As English
schools became established, however, fewer Protestants attended.
Nowadays the boarding school is mainly French-speaking and almost
entirely Roman Catholic; while the Roman Catholic equivalent of
Sunday-school work is carried on among the girls of the public
schools, who attend the convent for that purpose only. Education moves
within certain limits in all branches; but, within those limits, it is
thorough. The facilitative amenities of life are nowhere better
understood; and the feminine of "manners maketh man" is nowhere better
put in practice.

Religion is very naturally made pervasively attractive to every Roman
Catholic; and the nuns and pupils are generally the best of friends.
Many a girl leaves in tears: but these do not recruit the ranks of the
novices nearly so much as those who leave less regretfully, "have
their fling," and then return for consolation from a hollow world.

A childish impression is sometimes fixed for life by the beautiful
commemoration which marks the fte-day of La Mre Marie, when every
hand helps to strew her grave with roses. And what pupil ever forgets
the end of her first Christmas term? Long before daylight, while the
little girls in the junior dormitories are still asleep, soft, distant
music floats through the open doorway, stealing over each warm
coverlet, to take the ear between dream and waking. _Nol!_ _Nol!_
are the first words soaring on the wings of that glad melody. And,
presently, the now expectant eyes discern the first tall, white,
gliding form, with taper-lit blonde head, leading the undulant, long
procession of the elder choir girls. Voices, violins and organ--a
swelling tide of sound--flow on and in, until the very air of the
whole vibrant room thrills with sympathetic harmonies. A few sweet,
rapt moments of full ecstasia...and the choir is passing through the
farther door...and the music, ebbing after it, lingers long on happier
notes, before it dies away, down the dim corridors beyond, into the
silence of remembered bliss.

The crowning glory of a convent education is, of course, the taking of
the veil. The ceremonial used in Quebec is the one approved by the
Theological Superiors of the Ursulines in Paris on Michaelmas Day, in
the year 1625. The appointed _Sacristine_ carefully divides all the
garments of the _Postulante_ into sacred and profane. The profane are
the clothes which will be discarded during the ceremonial. The sacred
are those which will be worn at the beginning of the life regenerate.
Then the _Postulante_ is dressed up as lay women dress for worldly
ceremonies; and the cross-bearer leads the way into the chapel, while
all the nuns follow, two and two, holding their lighted tapers in the
outer hand. The long-drawn procession is closed by three abreast: the
Mother Superior on the right hand, the Mother Assistant on the left,
and, in the centre, the _Postulante_, radiant in bridal white, with
wreaths of orange blossom in her hair, and flashing delight to every
worldly eye with the jewelled ornaments of the life she is renouncing.
Attending her are three little bridesmaids, also in white and also
wearing wreaths of flowers.

In the solemn middle of the Latin mass the whole sisterhood turns
towards the altar, as the Archbishop begins to ask the momentous
question of vocation in French prose. The change of language is an
abrupt surprise. Suddenly, insensibly, your attention is teased with
memories of _Faust_:--the _Dom_, _Amt_, _Orgel und Gesang_ the _Bser
Geist_, and Gretchen's:


    . . . . . . . . Weh! Weh!
    Wr' ich der Gedanken los!

        *    *    *    *    *

    Dies ir, dies illa
    Solvet sclum in favilla.


The _Celebrant_ and _Postulante_ are now alone, before the eyes of God
and man.

Ma fille, que demandez-vous?

_La misricorde de Dieu, le saint habit de la religion, la charit de
l'ordre, et la socit des mres._

Ma fille, est-ce de bonne volont, et de votre propre mouvement?

_Oui, mon Pre._

Ma fille, avez-vous ferme intention de persvrer jusqu' la fin de
votre vie?

_Appuye sur la misricorde de Dieu...j'espre le pouvoir faire._

The great renunciation made, the Postulante leaves the chapel, while
the nuns remain in continual intercession. Presently she returns,
robed as a sister; and makes her vows of service. Then, like a living
crucifix, she prostrates herself before the Throne of God. There,
while her sisters chant thanksgiving to the Mercy Seat of faith,
there--in a long, enraptured vision--she lies prone, all else shut
out.... She is so still...so still in silent adoration...you hardly
know if she is drawing human breath.

At length she rises, turns toward the rest of her community, slowly
passes down the waiting lines, where each nun greets her with the kiss
of peace; and then, as they file out, she follows, last of all, never
again to leave the cloisters in either life or death.


VIII

Who does not want to pass that massive inner door, which guards the
inviolate cloisters of one of the most romantic buildings in the
world, which has been a gate of honour for every Governor-General of
French or British Empire, and for every Royal party that has set foot
in Canada, and which the personal command of kings and viceroys alone
can open?

Visits are rare and visitors of high distinction; and the whole
convent is astir to give befitting welcome. A word through the
double-screened wicket to the left, a word in reply from the invisible
nun on watch, two strong turns of solid, double locks; and the door is
flung wide, and reveals a semicircle of bowing and smiling Sisters.
You enter, and it instantly swings to; both keys turn firmly, and you
stand there a wondering moment, with the same sense of mingled
strangeness and familiarity as you had when your first glimpse through
a telescope at night carried you off to the scene of things
unrealized.

The next minute a nun is asking if this is your first visit to Quebec,
and if you had a rough crossing. The Superior is a little ahead, doing
the honours with inimitable grace. The corridor is high and
well-lighted; it looks into the sunshiny garden; the pace is
quickened, and you move on, a willing captive to the charm of such
unexpected gaiety. You turn a corner--what can you be coming to now--a
ball-room? The same _brou-ha-ha_ of intervolving sound, and the same
little puffs and gusts of laughter--only with less forced notes, the
same fleeting little calms! You step in, just in time to catch the
point of that capital story about the shy visitor who got lost in the
cloisters, and mistook the right door, and...and here, at your very
elbow, actually is a nun with whom you have danced in many a
ball-room, and who remembers perfectly how often that splendid
two-step was encored!

Over at the other end of the room the respectful little semicircle has
been instinctively re-formed, as some more nuns come forward to be
presented to the guest of honour and make sweeping curtseys that could
not be excelled at court. A pathetically happy group is standing
beside one of the deep-set windows. It is a nun with her father and
sister, who have permission to follow _ la suite_ on this occasion,
and who are seeing her in the same room, instead of through the
_grille_, for the first time for--"ever so long," they say,
indefinitely, though they remember well enough the exact dates of such
rare events. But that nun pities her sister in the cold world outside,
and is really sorry that as you are a man you can never experience the
joys of her cloistered life.

This is the private reception room, where the visitors' book is kept;
and the nun who holds it open while you write notices that by having
paid two visits within a month you have broken all precedents, and she
promises you the gold medal for attendance and good conduct. The room
is typical of the whole convent. The floor is bare natural wood,
spotlessly clean. No First Lieutenant ever had a smarter deck. There
is some fine dark panelling round the walls, harmoniously plain. A
door opens through the panel at the far end. It is quite
indistinguishable at a little distance, and has an air of mystery
about it. How the nuns laugh when you ask if that's the way to their
_oubliette_! The only ornament, besides a few small pictures, is a
huge, old-fashioned fireplace, with a chimney nook where you could
build castles in the dying fire some midwinter evening. The
mantelpiece and frame are of handsomely carved, smoke-brown oak. The
dogs and fire-irons are enormous, with a long-established air about
them. The whole is flanked by cannon balls and shells--grim reminders
of troublous times, and glorious trophies of the steadfast bravery
shown during the four sieges through which the convent has passed.

The library has the appearance of being deep down, the windows being
high, and the light coming only from above. You look round and quite
naturally ask how many "tomes" there are--"volumes" seem such mundane
things compared with these ranks of solemn folios. There is a case or
two of modern secular books, some up-to-date Canadian histories among
them. Here is the only known impression of the seal of the famous
Company of New France, or _Cent Associs_, founded by Richelieu in
1627. The seal is three inches in diameter, the encircling inscription
is _Me donavit Ludovicus Decimus Tertius_, and a figure holding the
Cross stands against a background spangled with the _fleur-de-lys_. On
the other side is a ship under sail, with the inscription: _In Mari
Vi Tu_. This ship and its fine motto, _Thy ways are in the Sea_,
have been adopted by the Champlain Society, and the Quebec
Tercentenary crest displays both sides of the seal.

But the most interesting of all is the wealth of correspondence:
letters written during the last three centuries by people of every
class, from a reigning sovereign to a simple _habitant_. Anne of
Austria, Frontenac, Montcalm, Murray, Carleton--all who were greatest
in Canada's heroic ages--were correspondents of the Ursulines. But
more appealing than the rest are the letters from two Parisian
Ursulines during the Reign of Terror. In spite of the horrors
surrounding them and the fate which sent twenty-five of them to the
guillotine, these faithful nuns did all they could to safeguard the
property and revenue of their sisters in Quebec. Half of their letters
are filled with accounts of the business precautions taken by their
indefatigable _dpositaire_, La Mre de Ste. Saturnine, then in her
eightieth year. The other half alternately freeze the blood and set
one's veins on fire with indignation.

On the 13th of January, 1793, the nun who then signed herself
"ex-Superior of the Ursulines of the Faubourg St. Jacques," wrote to
the Superior in peaceful Quebec:--"Dear Reverend Mothers, you have
doubtless heard with grief of the destruction of all the religious
houses in France. Our monastery has not escaped the common fate. Your
compassionate hearts would have bled to see the cloister-wall broken
down, and ourselves forcibly driven out from our asylum. To our great
regret we are all scattered...beg our Divine Lord to grant us grace to
make a holy use of the heavy trial He has sent us. All the clergy we
knew have disappeared; we cannot discover any who have escaped the
massacre of the 24th of September. Our venerable confessor and our two
chaplains were certainly among the victims.... I recommend myself to
your good prayers as one already dead, for although my health is
fairly good, which seems a miracle, considering my seventy-four years
and cruel situation, yet I may not be among the living by the time
this reaches you. The holy will of God be done. If I were younger I
might try to accept your invitation." The letter was not delivered
till after her death, as presentiment had told her. But neither
correspondent could have imagined beforehand what adventures that
farewell message was to undergo. It was carried over to England by
some refugees flying for their lives, and confided to the care of a
shopkeeper, who mislaid and forgot it. Finally, one day in 1802, nine
years after it had been written, an English merchant, who had found it
in London, called at the convent and gave it to the third successor of
the Superior to whom it had been addressed!

The annals contain some curious entries about distinguished visitors.
Thus it is recorded that when King William IV paid a visit, as a young
naval officer of twenty-two, the nuns found him "most affable and
gracious, _although a sailor_." Fours years later, in 1791, came the
next member of the Royal Family, Queen Victoria's father, then called
Prince Edward, who was colonel of the 7th Fusiliers stationed at
Quebec. The good Mothers were delighted with him. He took refreshments
with the bishop in the Superior's room, and bought some bark work for
which he insisted on paying twenty times its value. Again, in 1860,
the greatest of all their public receptions was given to King Edward
VII, then on his Canadian tour as Prince of Wales. The annalist
records with pardonable pride that the Prince spent two whole hours in
going over the convent, after the ceremony, and that "he showed as
much interest in observing the plain apartments, the bare floors, the
simple cells, as anyone of us might have felt in seeing Windsor
Castle."

The Refectory is where "plain living and high thinking" are practised
_in excelsis_. Here are the signs and symbols of both. This room looks
centuries older than the others. It is in perfect fitness for its
present use; but it is long and comparatively low; quaint steps lead
down into it from its garden door, the ceiling is massively ribbed
with huge dark beams, and the whole appearance of it is distinctly
medival. The tables are long, bare, immensely heavy; so, too, are the
deep and narrow benches. You can't imagine that chairs and carpets
have ever been invented. The table is set for supper. There are white
water jugs at intervals; and heavy semi-globular pewter salt cellars
on thick stems and solid bases. These are over two hundred years old.
At every place there is a little birch-bark bread-basket, used to
"gather up the fragments that remain." A lectern, like a witness-box
in shape, serves for the _lectrix_ who reads aloud during meals from
some book of devotion. It is all so simple, and so unstudiedly
natural. A nun explains the bill of fare, and the great difference
between fast and feast days. You would mistake the feast for the fast
days, if you had not heard about the latter first! But it seems that,
beyond marking the difference in the calendar by difference in diet,
the Refectory is merely a place to refresh one's body for the sake of
one's soul. "Won't you give us the pleasure of your company at
dinner?" laughs a nun who has not been cloistered many years; "you'll
be better afterwards than if you dined at the club." And so you would.

As you approach the class-rooms there is a quick, settling shuffle of
little feet, a tap with a wand, a soft "Hsh!"--and there is the nun
at her desk, and all the girls standing before her, exactly as
teachers and taught stand for inspection all the world over. The
prize-winners wear coloured scarves over their left shoulders; but
they are wisely not "shown off" before the visitors. A half-holiday is
asked for and granted in honour of a distinguished guest; and
instantly every girl is dropping pretty, smiling curtseys to a running
accompaniment of multitudinous _Mercis_!

"It would be such a privilege to be allowed to present the novices."
So the party goes on to where fourteen are being marshalled in an
adjoining corridor. Two broad sunbeams are pouring steeply down into
the far end of the long room in which you are waiting; and as the
timid little procession begins to move in, beneath the high window,
veil after mist-like veil becomes an aureole in the transfiguring
light. One face and figure arrest your eye. The colour comes and goes,
shifting incessantly under the rich, warm, half-Italian complexion.
The neck strains a little, and pulses fast; though the face is calm
enough, and the delicately poised figure is almost still, it sways so
imperceptibly. What is her beauty doing here, secluded and immured
from every hope of triumph? Look again. She is evidently interested in
all that is taking place; but, just as evidently, only in so far as
these outside interests relate to her vocation. "Vocation" is the
dominant in the rhythm of her whole expression. Some other novices
catch their breath with shyness before answering your questions; but
her words are as untroubled as her brow. Is this the "Blessed Damozel"
that haunted the imagination of Rossetti with a vision of earthly
beauty looking back on us


      From the gold bar of Heaven?

        *    *    *    *    *

    The wonder was not yet quite gone
      From that still look of hers.

        *    *    *    *    *

    Her eyes were deeper than the depth
      Of water stilled at even.


There is an astounding volume of sound from what must be four-handed
piano-playing in the music room. No wonder: it is a fourteen-handed
performance! The solitary harp looks neglected in its corner. Is it
out of favour, even in convents, nowadays? At one time it was the
chosen instrument to give languishing, romantic finish to a lady-like
education. Perhaps its truer virtues will be recognized again, and the
fit though few will re-awake its glamour as bards and angels are famed
to do.

A hurrying little group meets you in the passage. They had forgotten
the Indian pupil! She is a curiosity now; perhaps the last of her race
to be taught there--within a few short steps of where Marie de
l'Incarnation used to gather so many round the famous ash tree. She is
a newcomer; and the convent is almost as strange to her as to the
visitors who cluster round. One of them knows some words of her native
tongue. Her eyes look far out beyond her surroundings as she answers.
Is it only a freak in the association of ideas that always makes
certain Indian languages set your fancy wandering among wind-swept
pines and "the voice of many waters"?

But there are so many things to see! The corridors seem unending; they
are so long, so many; weather-beaten grey outside, solid through and
through, as if they had grown, rough-hewn, from the rock of Quebec,
and had been hand-chiselled afterwards, just to humanize them. Every
window gives a glimpse of the golden-tinged block-tin roofs, with a
steep pitch and studded with little pointed windows. The stairways are
innumerable. One is called after St. Augustine--a great hero in all
convents--and on the landing is a statue of St. Joseph, which was
placed there in commemoration at the jubilee of 1689. The Blessed
Virgin Mary, of course, watches over the Community Hall, in her
quality of Perpetual Superior. A bell is ringing--it is the same one
that is rung at four o'clock every morning of the year. You confess
that the last time you heard it at that hour you were coming home from
a dance. "What different worlds there are in this one," says the nun
beside you; and then adds quickly, "but innocent pleasures are very
good for refreshing the mind--we take a great deal of pleasure in our
garden." Another nun, with a turn for ornithology, regrets that as the
town spreads further and further, all round the convent, the birds get
fewer and fewer. "They would come back if they could: this is their
sanctuary."

These things excite your own interest. But what interests the nuns
most of all? Probably the Chapel of the Saints. A very ancient and
highly venerated statue of Our Lady of Great Power stands benignant in
the centre of the altar. The whole breadth of the wall on either side
is covered with pictures and relics. In every other niche, too, there
are relics in pious plenty. Some of them were added during the
lifetime of La Mre Marie, like those of the martyrs, Justus, Modestus
and Felix, which her son, Dom Claude Martin, sent out in 1662. An
Ursuline of Metz sent out a relic of St. Ursula herself. All that is
mortal of St. Clement is here, by permission of Pope Innocent XI. In
1674 the collection was already so rich that it was decided to build a
special chapel in its honour. Since then it has increased enormously
in value to the devotee. Here are the trophies of the Holy War, of the
war from which there is no discharge but death, the war against the
Powers of Darkness and the principalities of this wicked world: relics
of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits who so often befriended the
Ursulines; of the "most lovable" Saint Francis de Sales; of the great
St. Augustine; of the foundress of the Ursulines, St. Angela de
Merici; relics of all ages and all countries, from the first century
to the twentieth and from Canada to China; and, shedding a diviner
virtue on them all, genuine particles of the Cross of Christ and of
His Crown of Thorns.

Will objects connected with Marie de l'Incarnation soon be numbered
with relics of the saints? You cannot help hoping that they will, so
eager are her followers in this just cause. Her tomb is already a
shrine for nuns and pupils.... But here is something different,
something to bring you back to secular affairs, and waken memories of
the heroes of world-history. It is the skull of Montcalm, a gruesome
relic of that vivid personality. The chaplain keeps it in the same
room as Father Resche used during Wolfe's siege of Quebec. A curious
link between a changeful past and present was supplied by the life of
Father Daul, another chaplain, who was born at the end of the Seven
Years' War and died as France and England were about to send an allied
army to the Crimea. You will find a deeper and less mortuary interest
in the grave than in the skull. _La Guerre est le Tombeau des
Montcalm._ At Bougainville's request the French Academy had composed a
Latin inscription for a memorial tablet shortly after Montcalm's
death; and Pitt had willingly given permission to have it sent out to
Quebec and erected there. But many delays occurred; and the present
tablet was only unveiled on the hundredth anniversary of the burial,
at a service held with all the magnificent rites of the Church which
the hero loved so well. The elaborate inscription recites Montcalm's
titles to remembrance at full length. But it is little more than a
good official document. Lord Aylmer, a British Governor-General,
inscribed on the grave a terser tribute, from one soldier to another's
fame.


              HONNEUR A MONTCALM!
                   Le Destin
          En lui drobant la Victoire
                L'a recompens
            Par une Mort glorieuse.


No other spot of equal size in the whole New World touches the heart
of universal history so nearly as this old chapel. It is just beyond
the cloisters: you remember how the nuns responded from behind the
screen of their own chapel at the funeral of Montcalm. Enter alone,
with the essential _genius loci_--half sacred and half secular--full
upon you. Three stone walls are your house of defence against an
intrusive world. The fourth is as physically firm as the rest; but, by
every appeal of altar, arch, pillar and aspiring height, it lifts you
above all mere mortality and the flux of living pettiness. Look round
you now. The sacred pictures glow with the inspiration of
self-sacrifice in the cause of God. Some are themselves the tokens of
daring devotion, having been saved from the fury of the French
Revolution by a former chaplain at the risk of his life. A jewelled
corona hangs from the ceiling by long silver chains. Within it burns a
perpetual _ex voto_ flame, to remind all time how human love and
heavenly were blent there long ago, in the parted lives of Marie
Madeleine de Repentigny and her dead affianced hero. And, facing each
other from the two side walls, not forty feet asunder, are the grave
of Montcalm and the pulpit from which Wolfe's funeral sermon was
delivered. This consecration of an _entente cordiale d'honneur_ unique
in history is surely the fit reward of those two commanders whose
whole careers were a dedication to their respective countries'
service.


          MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM
              FAMAM HISTORIA
          MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS
                  DEDIT


IX

"Quebec" is the ancient Indian name for the "Narrows" of the St.
Lawrence, that mightiest of rivers, which has been the highway of
empire since Canadian history began. And at these "Narrows" the Old
World and the New, the past, the present and the future, still meet
and intermingle as they never have and never do elsewhere. A half-mile
from the convent the full flood tide of immigration is surging inland
to the future home of a great nation now in the strenuous making. But
no newcomer to this harbour of a hundred fleets can fail to notice the
sheer, grey Citadel, crowning the seaward summit of those Heights of
Abraham whose moving story has so long been a part of universal fame.
Nor can anyone see this walled city, let the eye dwell on Nature's
exceeding strength and beauty within the vast mountain ring of the
Laurentians, know these for the eldest of the everlasting hills, and
then not feel how the most modern self transcends its wonted
boundaries of time through all its endless kinship with the immemorial
past and illimitable future.

Re-enter now the high-throned Upper Town, which is girt like a giant
armed. Seek its heart once more. The sacred solitude does not chill
you now, as it did when you came here first, out of mere bustling
curiosity. Your feet no longer seem muffled in the dust of death.
Greatness no longer seems departed; but omnipresent, immortally alive.
For here, in this veteran chapel, which has braved so many dread
ordeals with the heroic Ursulines, the twin renown of Wolfe and
Montcalm becomes a shrine of memory, where the pilgrims of all
chivalry can find inspiration for the exalting service of every age.

One step beyond, within the cloisters, a living link brings this
Valhallan past almost as close in the body as you have just felt it in
the spirit. Here is an aged nun who perfectly remembers the tales of
former days, told her so often by La Mre de St. Ignace, who saw
Montcalm's shattered corpse lowered into the grave after the Battle of
the Plains. While Mre St. Ignace herself heard the still older tales
of Genevive de Boucherville, who saw the perpetual Lamp of Repentigny
first lighted more than two hundred years ago, and whose father
remembered the time of Champlain, whose tercentenary of the foundation
of Quebec is being celebrated in this present year of grace. The
combined ages of these four human links already exceed three hundred
and seventy years. Long may this mighty span continue to grow with the
life of the survivor!

A few steps more, and you are again in the historic garden, with its
intimate memories of La Mre Marie. Here, between her intercessions to
the King of Kings, she formed the statesmanlike resolve to persuade
Canadians that, if they would be steadfast through the appalling
devastation of famine, war and earthquake, they could make Canada the
Land of Promise for countless generations. And here the nuns still
come to reinvigorate mind and body; and for the solace of the soul.
Here is a haunt of ancient peace, in which to ponder great, still
books of meditation. Here is the old French cross, upheld by a
pedestal made from the original ash-tree, beneath whose shade La Mre
Marie taught and exhorted her faithful converts. Near by is the corner
of wild garden, as wild to-day as when the little Indian feet brushed
so deftly through its springing flowers, never treading one down
because she loved them all to grow there as God Himself had planted
them. And here, where the very ground seems native to the Golden Age,
the nun who passes by in venerative mood might well apostrophize the
first great Ursuline of Canada in words addressed to another spirit of
the same deep constancy and calm:


    Thy soul within such silent pomp did'st keep,
    As if humanity were lull'd asleep;
    So gentle was thy pilgrimage beneath,
    Time's unheard feet scarce make less noise,
    Or the soft journey which a planet goes:
    Life seem'd all calm as its last breath.

    A still tranquillity so hush'd thy breast,
    As if some Halcyon were its guest,
    And there had built her nest:
    It hardly now enjoys a greater rest.


But the garden wakens deeper memories than these. Are not its walls
the harp whose unseen, olian strings have echoed to the voice of
cloister melody from morn till eve, year after year, and in five years
of jubilee? At dawn the Godward day begins:


    _Ad Te de luce vigilo._


During more secular hours there are the busy hum of school and
rippling treble of an interlude of play. But, where all is done _ad
majorem Dei gratiam_, even these sounds become attunable to the
dominant strain of a glad _Te Deum_ or the full self-surrender of a
suit preferred before the Throne of Grace:


    _O Cor amoris victima._


At dusk the whole Sisterhood commits soul and body to Heavenly
safe-keeping for the night:


    _In manus tuas, Domine._


And is not all this but one accordant note in the full chorus of
praise addressed by a single Church in a single tongue to the one true
God--a chorus of praise unwearied for nineteen Christian centuries,
and unwearied still, as, with the sun, it passes from choir to choir
unceasingly, among the Catholic faithful the whole world round?

And even when her Chapel is dim and silent, and the midnight garden is
only a hushed seclusion at her feet, the watching Ursuline is brought
home to the Divine Infinitudes by her very Convent. Here, from her
roof-side window, again within the stupendous colosseum built by
Titanic Nature round the arena of Quebec, she finds all that Earth can
show her of Eternity:--the home of a vanished past, lost to all record
or tradition; the home, too, of deeds to stir the hearts of men while
history remains; the scene now of quickening life along the great
ship-bearing River, in the busy streets, and among the girlhood at
school beside her; and then the hills, the old, the everlasting hills;
and the primordial tides, throbbing so far inland with the full pulse
of the Atlantic; the wide, wide sky; the universe of stars; the view
of all immensity.


    Murs, ville
    Et port,
    Asile
    De mort,
    Mer grise
    O brise
    La brise--
    Tout dort.

    Ce bruit vague
    Qui s'endort,
    C'est la vague
    Sur le bord;
    C'est la plainte
    Presqu'teinte
    D'une sainte
    Pour un mort.

    On doute
    La nuit....
    J'coute....
    Tout fuit,
    Tout passe,
    L'espace
    Efface
    Le bruit.


Then, when an angel lays his ear to this still convent, as we lay ours
to catch the voice of Ocean whispering through a single shell, he
surely hears those undertones of lowly human service which are the
soul of all the harmonies on high.




CHAPTER X

THE HABITANT


A million of happy, selfcentred _habitants_ still live, little knowing
and little known, among the other self-ruling millions of the Empire.
They were, originally, the _habitants_ of lands "conceded" to Canadian
_seigneurs_ by the Crown of France, according to the theocratic feudal
scheme of Richelieu. All emigrants were "good Catholics"--Huguenots
being expressly forbidden; the firstfruits in their new home were
apportioned to the Church; and every able-bodied man was also bound to
answer the King's call to arms. The _seigneur_ did homage for his
lands, which he was obliged to settle on pain of forfeiture. The
_habitant_ paid seigniorial dues of _cens et rente_, ground his corn
at the _seigneur's_ mill, baked his bread in the _seigneur's_ oven,
and gave tithes of all fish caught in seigniorial waters. In those
days Canada was administratively a part of France; and, as every
acceptable feature of separate French life has since been guaranteed
by every succeeding Constitution and fostered by every feeling of
intense race-patriotism, it is little wonder, nowadays--with every
French disability long since forgotten and every present benefit
appearing daily in a French disguise--to find the _habitant_ still
more devoutly French than ever. The term _habitant_ is now generally
applied to the whole country population; but, as it excludes that
other million of French-Canadians who live in towns or cross the line
to work in New England factories, it still denotes the classes
farthest removed from outside influences, most cut off by difference
of language, readiest to look upon race and religion as one and the
same, and always hearing, whether they will or no, the voice of the
_Mre-Patrie_ calling to them through every tale and song.

If, then, we wish to understand something of their peculiar
differentiation, we must consider them as having lived under the care
of a great theocracy; as still speaking a pure form of French, with
truly derived adaptations to Canadian needs; and as still cherishing a
folklore quintessentially French both in letter and spirit, and
distinctively Canadian only through much selection and a little
variant development.

Ordinary manifestations of priestly power are too well known to be
dwelt upon here. We need only note that Canada has her share of them,
and more. Every village has its towering church, its convent, school,
and _presbytre_, with straggling clusters of little white cottages
meekly grouped about them. The wealth of the Church is not only very
great in itself, but simply overwhelming in comparison with that of
the community at large; moreover, it is free from all taxation. Yet,
under the double stimulus of their own faith and priestly pressure,
the people contribute enough to support a church living on pious
offerings alone. There is, virtually, a State establishment in the
Province of Quebec, with "all accustomed dues and rights"; and
Provincial, Dominion, and Imperial authority alike have all united in
guarantees for its continued security. And the _habitant_ has
generally been content with most things as they are. He believes that
his lines are laid in pleasant places, and he knows that, however far
afield they run, they will always, and surely, turn within the
guardian circle of his mother Church.

But, time and place and people all considered and the point of view
once granted, there is no gainsaying the fact that the Church has
fairly won her predominance over the mind and her pre-eminence within
the soul. For the home-bound France of modern anti-clericals and
perpetual colonial sterility has always been "le Soldat de Dieu"
abroad, sending generation after generation of her chosen sons and
daughters to go forth pioneering for the Lord of Hosts. And her first
Canadian martyr-missionaries, and their successors in less perilous
times, have set up a standard of leadership which still makes the
"black robe" a mighty power in the land. Illustrations of this power
abound everywhere. The place-names were, originally, as various here
as elsewhere; but, as ecclesiastical power came home to the people so
much more nearly than any other, the names of the local patron saints
have now supplanted the place-names proper in quite two-thirds of the
French towns and villages. St. Anne is the great exemplar of this
victory in nomenclature. And the most important single instance is La
Bonne Ste. Anne, the transatlantic Lourdes, where so many pilgrims
gather that the entire population of London visiting an English
shrine would not proportionally outnumber these good Canadians.
Equally apposite illustrations are by no means wanting in the comic
vein. A _habitant_, who had unwillingly taken part in a very
boisterous celebration of St. Patrick's Day, summed it all up by
making the saint the eponymous totem of all _les Irlandas_--"C'est un
terrible Saint, ce _Sin-Pattarraque_!" Another, after listening to my
explanation of the points of likeness between the two different
Churches, showed his appreciation of the Anglican position by the
remark, "Eh, oui, Monsieur, c'est _une espce de religion comme il
faut_."

But the all-pervading influence of the "black robe" is nowhere better
shown than by the way in which Christian songs have become engrafted
on Canadian folklore--and folklore is always the last refuge of
paganism. The "nol" _D'o viens-tu, bergre_? is a perfect Christmas
picture-poem, become a folksong for childhood. _Le Voyageur Chrtien_
is for the full vigour of manhood. And old age has the quaintly solemn
religious dance, _Il n'y a qu'un seul Dieu_. The words of this are a
French translation of a Latin paraphrase of the _Series_, once used
for the initiation of Druidic novices. At the words _Il n'y a qu'un
seul Dieu_ the chain begins to turn, each dancer continuing in the
same direction until the first line of the half-way couplet--_Six
urnes places_, _remplies_, when all pause together to make profound
obeisance to each other twice; then, at its second line--_A Cana_, _en
Galile_, the chain continues turning until the _series_ ends with
_les douze aptres_. The order of enumeration is then reversed and the
dance ends, as it began, with the key-line so often used, _Il n'y a
qu'un seul Dieu_. Strange that this _series_, of unknown antiquity
even in Druidic times, should have come down, through all the
Latinized conversions of the middle age, to find its last fulfilment
here, in this Old-World corner of strenuous America! And yet familiar
too, for many an immemorial ark enshrines new covenants, made more
appealing to the human soul. The Druids began and ended with vain
elaboration--"There is no _Series_ for the number One: Fate itself,
and Passing forth, the Father of Grief: Nought before, nor any After."
But the Canadians, though with the same Druidic form, are worlds apart
with the new indwelling Spirit there, and faithfully content with the
twice-sung line--_Il n'y a qu'un seul Dieu_. "Nought before, nor any
After"--but, with _Unus est Deus_, the soul flies back _per omnia
saecula saeculorum_ and forth again to all Infinity.

The _habitant_ speech is a very genuine old French--not a _patois_,
much less a degenerate form of any standard tongue. It is, indeed, the
next-of-kin to Molire's own, carried oversea two centuries ago by the
most conservative of emigrants, and still living in unconscious
fidelity to the France of the _Grand Monarque_. Its imported variants
are generally of Norman origin, or nautical and military terms applied
to everyday life, a very natural transference in a colony founded by
seamen and maintained by force of arms. New conditions soon called for
new expressions. Some Indian words were adopted; and Anglicisms have
since crept in at different times. But the natural growth of new
Canadian terms out of pure Old French has always been the truest form
of development; and such terms have now acquired a legitimate
technical precision in their New-World acceptations.

When a _habitant_ says he will _acertainer_, he is not using an
Anglicism, but an excellent obsolete French word: did not Francis I
himself tell the Parliament of Paris, on April 9th, 1526, "Que nous
sommes duement acertens"? _Bachelier_ and _bacon_ have a similar
history; the English words coming from the Old French, which are now
obsolete in Paris, but flourishing in Canada. The emphatic _assavoir_
is still used here; so is _fiable_, now only expressible in France by
some such circumlocution as "digne de confiance." People sometimes say
_cheux eux_ and _ganif_; and astonished _habitants_ always exclaim
_cray-yez_!--"croyez," our own "who'd a' thought it!" In spite of
locks, doors are always _barres_, as in the time of the "gudeman"
hero of "Get up and bar the door." A single line of Molire has two
obsolete words still current in Canada: "Demain, _du_ grand matin, je
l'enverrai _qurir_." _Du_ means _ds_ and _habitants_ still "go in
quest of" what they want--_je va le kri_. As nearly all the emigrants
came by way of the north of France, we naturally find many northern
peculiarities reproduced among the _habitants_. Such are: _a_ for
_elle_; _i_ for _il_, _ils_, _lui_ or _y_; _amain_, "handy";
_esprer_, "to wait"; _houiner_, our "whinny"; _bers_, a cradle; and
_escousse_ as a space of time, instead of the space run in order to
make a good jump. Pronunciation is decidedly broad and rather harsh;
with _a_ for , _aw_ for a, sibilant initial _dz_ for d, and final
_d_, _r_, _s_, and _t_ often sounded in places where they are now
mute in modern French.

A few military terms are very common in ordinary life. The personal
effects which we call our "things" are invariably known as
"booty"--_butin_. The big round "steamer" on the winter stove is a
_bombe_. A fur cap is a _casque_. And old _habitants_ still talk of
their village as _le fort_, in reminiscence of warpaths and
scalping-parties. But nautical terms meet you everywhere. You steer
your way about the country by the points of the compass. The winter
roads are marked by buoys--_balises_; and, if you miss the channel
between them, you will founder--_caler_, and become, like a derelict,
_dgrad_. You must _embarquer_ into, and _dbarquer_ out of, a
carriage. A cart is _radoue_--refitted. A well-dressed woman is _bin
gr-ye_--"fitted out to go foreign." Horses are always
moored--_amarrs_; enemies reconciled by being _ramarrs_; and winter
heralded by a broadside of snow--_la borde de la Ste. Cathrine_.

Indian words are comparatively rare. _Tobogane_ and _mocassin_ are
familiar to everyone. Others are more recondite: like _sassaquaw_, "no
end of a row"; _micouenne_, the big wooden spoon for the camp kettle;
_ouaouaron_, an onomatopoeic name for the bull-frog; and _ouannaniche_,
the land-locked salmon of Lake St. John.

The use of English idioms is a very real danger; and, unfortunately,
this insidious form of barbarism has perverted the truer ways of
speech. Most of the common Anglicisms are merely bad superfluities
forced into use by the closer pressure of modern Anglo-Saxondom.
Steamers and trains being unknown until generations after the old
French time we naturally hear of _stimeurs_, of "boarding" _les
chars_, and even of a traction-engine as _une espce de stime_! _Un
Franas de France_, who was superintending the erection of the
Champlain monument in Quebec, could not get "un cric" till someone
thought of _un djack-scrou_. The _habitant_ will _clairer_ his land,
curse with all the English he knows, and sometimes get _un blackeye
sur le nez_! When husband and wife go to town they can enjoy
_sand-wedges_ together, and she may buy _des gants de kid_, while he
chooses a pair of trousers from _une grande varit de pantings_.

Canadianisms proper are quite different, and altogether justifiable.
In a country of canoes and waterways certain words soon became locally
specialized. _Aviron_ is always "paddle"; _sauter_, to "run" the
rapids; _bateau_, a slow jib-and-mainsail river cargo-boat of some 40
tons. _Portage_ has actually been taken by the Academy, which stooped
to conquer an immortality of ridicule as well, by seizing upon this
wonderful example:--"Depuis Qubec jusqu' Montral, il y a tant de
portages"! _Refoul_ is the strong Acadian contraction of
"refoulement," describing the sudden tumult of subsidence as the
mighty ebb rushes out of the Bay of Fundy. Life in the woods has
turned _brl_ into a noun, meaning a burnt patch. _Bois-brle_,
however, is something very different. It means "half-breed," in
allusion to the darkening of the "paleface" complexion. A road through
sticky black earth is a _pot--brai_, or sailor's pitch-pot. And
"boucan," "the place where hams are smoked," has become _boucane_,
meaning smoke itself, of any kind at all. Lumbering is responsible for
the _cage_--raft, _cageux_--raftsman, _crible_--"crib," and
_glissoire_--"shoot." Sugaring has _l'rablire_--the "sugar-bush" of
maple-trees; _la sucrerie_, where sugar is made; _dalleaux_,
nautically "scuppers"--spouts for "tapping" trees; _mouvette_--a
stirabout "paddle" for the _brassin_--thickening "syrup";
_cassot_--tiny birch-bark cornucopia, full of "setting" sugar; and _la
tire_--both the "pulling" of half-hardened sugar and the "pulled"
sugar itself. Snow and ice have their own vocabulary. Canadians go to
_le patinoir_, not "le skating-rink" affected by Parisians. _Les
bordages_ are shore ice; _pont de glace_, any stretch of ice capable
of bearing traffic across water; _crote_, "crust" of snow, good going
for _raquetteurs_--snowshoers. The chief drawbacks to the pleasure of
winter driving are the _baraudage_, "slewing," of the
sleighs--_carrioles_; _bourguignon_--frozen clots after rain; _un
chemin boulant_, where hoofs "ball up"; and _cahots_--not the bumpings
of the carriage, as in France, but transverse gouged-out snow-ruts
which cause the bumpings. And _frasil_, snow hanging suspended in
water, is the natural foe of every miller. This "fraw-zee" is from
"fraisil"--"coal-dust." Extremes meet in similitude!

There are few words to show that the seamy side of life has called for
special terms. But the frequent use of _zigonner_, "to saw a horse's
mouth," is one proof of the lamentable fact that _habitants_ are among
the very worst horse-masters in the world. Unpleasing turns of
thought, too, are revealed by the universal word for women--_les
cratures_, by the bogey-name for the Devil--_la Gripette_, and by
the feminine form of "tom-fool"--_la btasse_.

But, in spite of these exceptions, and partly by reason of the general
contempt for the opposite fault of affected fine language--_parler en
termes_, the _habitant's_ own new-found phraseology will pass with the
best. Even his _distance de quelques arpents_ is correct enough, where
farms are staked out "on the square," and the side of an acre
naturally becomes a fixed measure of length. _Fumez donc_ is no bad
form of inviting you to sit down and spend the evening; nor could
people whose axes are worth half a chest of tools describe a penniless
but capable man better than by calling him _un homme  la hache_. And
what an old-time charm there is in the everyday remark about any
honest pair of lovers--_le cavalier frquente sa blonde_; in the high
road being still _le chemin du Roi_; and even in the word _octroi_,
the Canadian use of which, in the original sense of "assistance
granted," takes us far back to the old largesse of princes. How
deeply, too, must the patriarchal lore have touched a popular fancy
which sees a yearly manna for the teeming rivers in the infinitude of
those flies so aptly called _la manne des poissons_. And, surely, the
name peculiar to Laurencian twilight is drawn from the very source of
poetry itself; for, at the chill of sunset, the warmed hill-tops smoke
with thickening mist, the afterglow burns through the dusking brown,
and then, when darkness and light have met awhile--_ la brunante_,
the Canadian day is over.

_Habitant_ folklore is one more witness to the scientific truth that
older forms live longest in selfcentred and remote communities. For
the _habitant_, coming out from the remoter Northern Provinces while
medivalism still existed there, have ever since preserved their
ancient lore in a new environment so very favourable to a segregated
life.

Priestly influence banished _galanterie_ from the _fte des noces_ and
pagan wakes from every _bel enterrement_. The _vaudeville_ meanings
are not given to _blonde_ and _matresse_. The _cantica nefaria_,
abhorred by St. Augustine, are rare enough. Ste. Anne is invoked in
song for missing sailor sons: "Bonne Sainte, rendez-moi mon fils--Il
vente--C'est le vent de la mer qui nous tormente." And pagan rites are
only known in their Christian guise: _La Guignole_, or cutting of the
sacred mistletoe at the winter solstice, becoming a Christmas _qute_
for the poor; and the summer fire in honour of the earth-gods becoming
_le feu de joie de la St. Jean_. But unconverted relics of paganism
still survive. Within quite recent years an old _magicienne_ has sold
favouring winds to sailors. Little trees are still put up on new
houses, though without any conscious purpose of giving a new home to
the dispossessed spirits of the wood cut down for building.
_Marianne's_ donkey changes skins at Michaelmas. Wise animals and
talking birds abound. The miller tricks the Devil into a sack and ties
him to the mill-wheel. The _voyageur_ sings _bonsoir_, _Lutin_, and
shares a common superstition with the fisherman, whose _blanc, blanc
loup-marin_ is a mermaid or werwolf. And the _plus savante_ rival
supplants _la fille du Roi_ by means of the Black Art.

The chief interest, however, centres in the folk-songs. Impersonal and
objective in themselves they have the unselfconscious native insight
of all true folklore; and their appealing simplicity calls forth our
sympathy at once and holds it fast with all the intimate and yearning
charm of "Nature's old felicities." Not that they have any "natural
magic" of their own; for Nature is only a conventional background to
some of their vivid little dramas. What really gives them their vital
popularity is their intensely social qualities; and it is this one
companionable touch of Nature which makes them all akin. _Habitants_
will always gladly turn away from the stern or beautiful immensity of
Canadian scenes to sing their fancy back into that quaint, strayed,
old-French life, where all their common joys and sorrows of to-day
still find a home. Verse and music are inseparably one. The more
ancient airs link the songs still more closely with the past; for
folk-melody is far older than any modern music, and you may still hear
Gregorian love-songs among the remoter _habitants_; while the more
modern airs help to wing the verse both fast and far; for many of them
are singularly pure, some of them excellently apt, and a few have
learnt the spell which binds ear and heart for ever.

But, though man alone may form the burden of his song, the true
Canadian folksinger is, in himself, always and everywhere a voice of
Nature's own. And once, in particular, I happened to hear his own wild
melody blent with hers in supremely perfect harmony. It was far up the
fiord-river Saguenay, amid a scene of beauty hushed in awe. The warm,
midsummer night was wholly calm, the great cleft gorges full of soft
moonlight, which turned to gleaming silver at the touch of water, and
floated there at rest, over vast, still depths. The two gigantic
guardian Capes of La Trinit and L'Eternit flanked the little bay,
where my tiny yacht swung quietly at anchor, as the last of the flood
pulsed slumberingly along the shore. The white whales had come in here
to seek their prey, and turned seaward again with a tumult of snorting
plunges. A far-off loon had given his last weird, re-echoing laugh.
And then there came another--and this time a human--voice, from nearer
by, among the full-leaved shadows; at first in wayward snatches, like
a bird's prelude; but soon rising to the full outburst of a heart
caught unawares, and singing unconscious of the world around. And this
lone strain of love importunate was then as much a part of Nature's
wildness there as the cry of that calling night-bird, the mighty
breaths of those leviathans, the deep pulsation of the tide, or the
sheer silence of those everlasting hills.




CHAPTER XI

FRENCH-CANADIAN FOLKSONG


I

COLLECTION

Collectors of folklore so often lament that they have begun their work
too late, and they so often find themselves mere gleaners of the
little that has escaped the natural decay in fields once white with a
harvest which no one ever thought of reaping, that some sort of a
prose variant of the _chanson des regrets_ is usually expected to form
a part of every well-conducted preface. Just now, folklore is quite
one of the proper things to dabble in, and, as the general reader is
nothing if not fashionable, it will be a consolation for him to know
that, in turning his attention to Canadian folksongs, he will be sure
to find enough irreparable loss to give him plenty of the dainty sweet
of melancholy. As we read in Mr. Gagnon's delightful book--_Chansons
Populaires du Canada_--of the difficulties of collection fifty years
ago, we find only too convincing a proof of that state of rapid
transition from the old order to the new, when the folk begin to be
self-conscious and the collector realizes that opportunity is bald
behind.

It is chiefly to the collection of Mr. Gagnon that student and
general reader alike must turn for information. He has given us of his
best, and that best is so good that it is hard to see how anyone
working on the same lines can ever better it; but then, as he says
himself, "le nombre de nos chansons populaires est incalculable" and
"ce volume en contient juste cent."

It is, of course, too late now to make any approach to an ideal
edition, so far as collection is concerned; but a good edition for the
student is still within reach, if only it is taken in hand at once and
carried out with thoroughness. To be complete, such an edition should
have maps of France and Canada in the time of the Grand Monarque,
showing, as nearly as possible, the old and the new homes of the
emigrants: it should also have folklore maps of both countries at the
present day. An index, a bibliography and a glossary with philological
introduction are quite indispensable. Verse and music being
inseparable in the folksong, their mutual relations should be
explained in a preface; but to ensure full justice to each, separate
introductions should be written, that to the verse showing the place
of the folksong in the beliefs, manners and customs and general
life-history of the people. Besides this, every song should have its
two footnotes, one on the verse, the other on the air, where all
variants, Canadian, French and foreign, should be cited with exact
bibliographical references. It is fortunately unnecessary, nowadays,
to insist upon a faithful text, that being taken for granted. But
there are degrees of faithfulness, and nothing short of perfection
should be accepted. When a song is taken down from oral tradition, not
only should every musical feature be exactly reproduced but every
appropriate gesture noted as well. Then, after the perfect
authenticity of the manuscript version has been proved, the editor
should see that the printing follows it line for line, word for word
and letter for letter. Even this is not enough to ensure absolute
fidelity in all cases, for it is sometimes very hard to withstand the
temptation to make up a complete editorial version out of authentic
fragments: finding all the materials is not the same thing as the
discovery of the building.

One word as to the collectors themselves. If there is one thing more
than another which needs sympathy, tact and an insight into human
nature, it is the collection of folksongs. The mere patience required
is no small thing, as we can see from the difficulties Mr. Gagnon met
with here in Canada, where, as in old Normandy, the songs were as
plentiful as the apples. But the chief difficulty to overcome is the
shyness and suspicion of the folk when they know they are being
observed. Their first instinct is to deny all knowledge of
superstitious practices, out-of-the-way customs or curious legends.
And so, perhaps, the best collecting of all is done, as it were, by
accident, by living among the people and gathering up the songs and
stories they let fall from time to time. Mlle. Hlne Vacaresco, to
whom we owe the splendid collection of Roumanian folksongs published
in England under the title of _The Bard of the Dimbovitza_, "was
forced to affect a desire to learn spinning, that she might join the
girls at their spinning-parties, and so overhear their songs more
easily; she hid in the tall maize to hear the reapers crooning them;
she caught them from the lips of peasant women, of lute-players, of
gipsies and fortune-tellers; she listened for them by death-beds, by
cradles, at the dance and in the tavern, with inexhaustible patience."
Another successful collector is the Rev. Elias Owen, who turned his
position of inspector of schools to admirable account. "At the close
of his examination he asked the first class, 'Now, children, can you
tell me of any place where there is a buggan to be seen, or of anyone
who has ever seen one?' Instantly every hand in the class was
stretched out, and every child had a story to tell. He then asked,
'Which of you can tell me of a cure for warts?' with like results,
greatly to the discomfiture of his friend, the clergyman, who had
fondly imagined that there was no superstition in _his_ parish! The
clergy are very liable to this illusion, because the people are apt to
keep superstition out of their way, which in itself is a not
uninstructive folklore item." But, perhaps, the best of all collectors
was old Wilhelm Mannhardt. "It is on record that he was once taken for
a gnome by a peasant he had been questioning. His personal appearance
may have helped the illusion; he was small and irregularly made; and
was then only just emerging from a sickly childhood spent beside the
Baltic in dreaming over the creations of popular fancy. Then, too, he
wore a little red cap, which was doubtless fraught with supernatural
suggestions. But, above all, the story proves that Mannhardt had
solved the difficulty of dealing with primitive folk; that, instead of
being looked upon as a profane and prying layman, he was regarded as
one who was more than initiated into the mysteries--as one who was a
mystery himself."


II

NON-POPULAR SONGS

Before coming to the folksongs proper it would be as well to consider
shortly some intruders, which, though occasionally naturalized among
them, are none the less intruders still.

The _Lyric_ is so obviously non-popular that the merest mention is
sufficient to put it out of court. Still, no hard-and-fast line can be
drawn even between the lyric and the folksong, so insensibly does each
sometimes approach the other. A lonely lyric may be born in an unhappy
time, perhaps during an exile shared by many beside its single singer,
and then--so sweet are the uses of adversity in the realm of song--all
the exiles will adopt it, cradle it in their sorrow, and bring it home
at last as their very own. Who has not heard and laid to heart the
song of


    Un Canadien errant,
    Banni de ses foyers?


But this is an exception which proves the rule.

The _Vaudeville_, that product of the bourgeois versifier and joy of
the bourgeois heart, is, in France, the greatest enemy the folksong
has to fear. It has no recognized place in Mr. Gagnon's book and is
not yet a power in Canada; but it is not likely that the
inter-communication between town and country and the exodus to the
United States can go on much longer without profoundly affecting
French-Canadian popular life and song. If only the vaudeville and its
offshoots were entirely products of the bourgeois wit they would not
be half so dangerous as they are. But, while all is fish that comes
to their net--political and historical songs, the poetry of the day,
love-songs and drawing-room ditties, together with parodies of psalms,
hymns and all sorts of religious verse--their choicest quarry has
usually been the words of a folksong and the air of a popular dance.
It is to such an origin that many vaudevilles owe their tremendous
vogue. Like the Janissaries the folksong is kidnapped from its early
home, reared among the aliens, and finally sent back to destroy its
own kin.

The _Nol_ is another strictly non-popular form. It is, at best, an
adaptation, composed under the direct or indirect influence of the
priesthood, and made up of the most heterogeneous materials. Some
nols are simply versified accounts of the birth of Christ and are
almost entirely of Christian origin; the beautiful one given by Mr.
Gagnon is of this nature and is a remarkable example of the fusion of
the nol and folksong into a real poem. But most are composed of
whatever was handiest to the adapter. So we find nols derived from
folksongs, from Christian hymns and Pagan formul, from vaudevilles,
from love songs, from drinking-songs, from rounds and rhymes for
dancing, from fairy-tales, hero-tales and drolls, from mystery-plays,
and from events of real history. All doubtless contain popular
elements--the dramatic element, for instance, which they borrowed from
the folksong, usually by way of the medival _mysteries_, _ftes des
fous_ and _ftes de l'ne_. But they are not themselves popular,
because they never came directly from the lore of the folk itself.
Their popularity in Provence proves nothing; for the Provenal nol is
most popular when it is least essentially a true nol. A convincing
proof of their non-popular character is the well-known fact that, from
the sixteenth century on, they have been so common in printed
collections. Moreover, in these collections the authors' names are
often given, and we find them to have been mostly those of priests,
organists and men of letters, who all had some learning to boast of
and who generally show unmistakable signs of having looked at their
theme through the spectacles of books.

Less popular than the _Nol_ or the _Vaudeville_, and not much more so
than the _Lyric_, is the _Drinking-song_. The French-Canadian
so-called drinking-song, like its fellows elsewhere, is really not a
drinking-song at all. It may be a specimen of pot-house jingle, like
_Vive la Canadienne_, or a maid's lament that her lover prefers the
company of his boozing companions to her own, or a gallant's toast to
his mistress, or the expression of a rejected lover's determination to
drown his woes in the bottle, or a versified account of a rollicking
adventure in which the singer takes a conscious pride in saying


    On dit que je suis fier,
    Ivrogne et paresseux;


and does not scruple to send this very unabashed confession to M. le
Cur:


    Dis-lui que sa paroisse
    Est sans dessus dessous.
    Que dans le P'tit Bois d'Aille
    On n'y voit qu' des gens sols:


[Transcriber's Note: the page in the original source was torn here,
leaving several words missing, and no alternative source has yet been
located.]

product be any one of these, or something of the same kind; but it is
not a drinking-song. A drinking-song, pure and simple, is a song in
praise of wine, and whatever else is said in praise of love, or war,
or other gallant delights only serves to enhance the importance of the
theme. Perhaps the somewhat gross imagination of the folk cannot take
flight except upon the wings of love and other of the finer passions,
and perhaps an educated fancy and an allusive wit are necessary to
give the more material things of life the little power of flight
vouchsafed to them. But it is certain that such folksongs as this one,
which is still sung by the harvesters in the remoter dales of Craven,
are rare exceptions to a general rule:


    This ale it is a gallant thing,
    It cheers the spirits of a king,
    It makes a dumb man strive to sing,
      Ay, and a beggar play!


Take almost any collection of drinking-songs and you will find most of
them are lyrics of clever verse with a spice of real, or at least
mock, learning in them. Adam Billaut, who wrote as his own epitaph


    Ci-gt le plus grand ivrogne
    Qui jamais ait vu le jour,


declared, in another place, his intention of going


    ...dans l'Averne,
    Faire enivrer Alecton,
    Et planter une taverne
    Dans la chambre de Pluton.


In Boileau's account of a famous drinking-bout, though


    Un docteur est alors au bout de son latin,


wine is still the best aid to knowledge, for


    On est savant quand on boit bien,
    Qui ne sait boire ne sait rien.


Old Dr. Fischart, of bibulous memory, invokes the spirit of wine in a
way quite alien to the Canadian folksinger:


    Nun bist mir recht willkommen,
    Du edler Rebensaft;
    Ich hab' gar wohl vernommen,
    Du bringst mir ssse Kraft;
    Lsst mir mein G'mth nicht sinken,
    Und strkst das Herze mein,
    Drum wllen wir dich trinken,
    Und alle frhlich seyn.


And Goethe, in writing


    Drum, Brderchen! Ergo bibamus,


was only following the time-honoured custom of innumerable versifying
scholars in mixing dead and living languages together in the praise of
wine. _Gaudeamus_, _laudamus_, _vivamus_ are words constantly
occurring in the refrains of drinking-songs; so are Bacchus, Venus and
many more; and all are used with an evident knowledge of their proper
sense and fitness. What M. Tiersot says of the French drinking-song
may be said with even more truth of the Canadian--"la chanson  boire
n'est pas un genre de chanson populaire."


III

THE FOLKSONG PROPER

Impersonality is of the very essence of the folksong. "Ce livre," says
Mr. Gagnon, "n'est pas du tout mon oeuvre. C'est l'oeuvre de ce
compositeur insaisissable qu'on appelle le _peuple_." And Signor
Pitr tells us that the Sicilians will not sing a song at all if they
know who the author is. Even in the case of songs, usually of a
humorous nature, where the author devotes the last verse to revealing
or hinting at, his identity--


    Qui a fait cette jolie chanson?


the impersonal note is the dominant one. The author, instead of trying
to impress his own point of view upon others, simply gives voice to
the thought and feeling of his folk. And even in the love-song--though
love is personal before all else--the impersonal note is clearly
struck. The lover sings of his own joy and pain in his own way, but
never without an undertone which tells of the burden common to his
folk at large. It is partly a cause, partly an effect, of this
impersonality that the folksong is often so vividly dramatic, yet
without showing the least touch of self-consciousness. There is
neither the desire nor the opportunity for an artificial pose. The
Grimms declared that in the whole range of folksong they had never
found a single lie; and, indeed, there is no folksinger who, if asked
the reason of his singing, could not truly answer in the words of
Goethe's minstrel,


    Ich singe wie der Vogel singt,
    Der in den Zweigen wohnet;
    Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt,
    Ist Lohn das reichlich lohnet!


It is this very truth to life that gives the note of melancholy.
Children know this well and, when they want to be amused, never ask
you to sing them songs, but to tell them stories; for in the folktale
the hero and heroine, after the fearful joy of wonderful adventures,
generally get married and live happily ever after; whereas in verse
they are more often united only by death. The folksong is, indeed, a
"melancholy strain." "Songs are the words spoken by those that suffer"
says a Greek folksinger in words of which Shelley's "Our sweetest
songs are those that tell of saddest thought" seem like a literary
paraphrase. If the folk cultivate poetry as a gay science in any
tongue at all, it is in the French, and, if French folksongs are sung
with a lighter heart in any one land more than in another, they are so
sung in Canada. Yet Mr. Gagnon has to quote the Grimms' dictum in
prefacing the wedding-song _A la sant de ces jeunes Maris_; and he
is certainly justified in doing so, whilst drawing our attention at
the same time to another true saying, "La crainte est de toutes les
ftes," for we find these words in the very middle of the toast:


    Je puis bien parler
    De tous ceux et celles
    Qui se prennent sans s'aimer
    Et meur'nt sans se regretter.


In another place he gives us the rollicking song of the _Trois
Capitaines_, who are going off to the tavern on their return from the
war. This is an occasion of more certain jollity than even a marriage
feast. And the verses certainly have the ring of jollity in them. But
the air to which they are sung is anything but gay. "Pourquoi ces
couplets si gais se chantent-ils dans le mode mineur?" asks Mr.
Gagnon, and quotes Chteaubriand for the answer: "dans tous les pays
le chant naturel de l'homme est triste; lors mme qu'il exprime le
bonheur." When Brizeux wrote the following lines he was thinking only
of his own romantic part of France; but I should like to quote them
here, as they seem to me almost equally applicable to our Canada:


    Hlas! je sais un chant d'amour
    Triste ou gai, tour  tour.

    Cette chanson, douce  l'oreille,
    Pour le coeur n'a point sa pareille.

    J'avais douze ans lorsqu'en Bretagne
    On me l'apprit sur la montagne.

    Avec un air, une parole,
    Toujours l'exil se console.

        *    *    *    *    *

    Ce chant, qui de mon coeur s'lve,
    D'o vient qu'en pleurant je l'achve?

    Hlas! je sais un chant d'amour
    Triste ou gai, tour  tour.


"Triste ou gai, tour  tour," that is just what Canadian folksongs
are. But the general burden of the folksong all the world over is more
nearly sad than gay. Though, perhaps, it was not in sadness that the
Highland reaper sang, yet, "whate'er the theme," the melancholy
undertone was there, and that the listening poet caught its meaning we
know well from his haunting lines:


    Will no one tell me what she sings?
    Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
    For old, unhappy, far-off things,
    And battles long ago.
    Or is it some more humble lay,
    Familiar matter of to-day;
    Some natural sorrow, loss or pain,
    That has been, and may be again?


Sympathy, truth and melancholy, these three prime qualities give a
mighty power to the folksong, alike in the world of action or of art.
It is said that at the battle of St. Cast, as a Breton regiment was
advancing to the attack, it suddenly halted in amazement: the opposing
regiment of the British army was a Welsh one and the men were singing
a song heard daily in Brittany itself! The order to fire was given;
but both sides gave it in the same tongue! In a wild transport of
enthusiasm discipline was thrown to the winds, the ranks were broken,
and the long-lost Celtic kinship was renewed upon the field of battle!
Even the faithful Swiss Guards were not proof against the intense
longing aroused in them by the sound of their native airs, and it was
found necessary to forbid the playing of the _Ranz des Vaches_
altogether. The folksong is everywhere the home of fancy in a far-off
land, and Canadians have never been without it wherever they have
been. It went out to the new Far West in the pioneering days when the
Red River Settlement seemed to be at the end of the Earth, and it went
in our own day with the same hardy class of _voyageurs_ to the banks
of the ancient Nile. It was taken into exile by the Acadians. It was
sung into battle by the heroes of Chteauguay. And the story is told
of the quick response made by the 65th Battalion in the North-West
campaign to General Strange who, on hearing a soldier complain of the
weary march, said, "Ah! mes braves!


    'Malbroucke s'en va-t-en guerre,
    Ne sait quand reviendra.'"


In an instant the men took up the refrain, and the march continued
without a murmur.

Little wonder that the poets and composers of all times have
acknowledged the power of the folksong. The collections of the "grand
sicle" were filled with the "airs de cour," and the separation of
town and country songs was then complete. Yet the insight of genius
prompted Molire to choose


    J'aime mieux ma mie,  gu!


which comes nearest to the folksong, for the "vieille chanson," of
which le misanthrope says--


    Ne voyez-vous pas que cela vaut bien mieux
    Que ces colifichets dont le bon sens murmure,
    Et que la passion parle l toute pure?


And, at a time when folklore was still more discredited in high
places, we find Voltaire himself exclaiming--


    O l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables.

    *    *    *    *    *

    On court, hlas! aprs la vrit,
    Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son mrite.


In the present century, French writers, from George Sand to Pierre
Loti, vie with each other in doing honour to the folksong. Readers of
"Pcheur d'Islande" will remember how Sylvestre and Le gros Yann,
while fishing throughout the endless Iceland day, sang


    Jean-Franois de Nantes, Jean-Franois, Jean-Franois.


Those who have read "Mon Frre Yves" must have noticed the fine effect
with which an invocation to La Bonne Sainte Anne--the Guardian Angel
of the Sea--is given in the very words of _Les Trois Marins de
Groix_--


    La maman qui s'en est alle
    Prier la grande Sainte-Anne-d'Auray:
    "Bonne Sainte, rendez-moi mon fils!"
    La Bonne Sainte-Anne, elle lui a dit:
    "Tu le r'trouveras en paradis."
          Il vente,
    C'est le vent de la mer qui nous tourmente.


And it must have been with a burden of some love-song of "La Belle
France" in his mind that Frchette wrote to La Louisianaise:


    Je sais un ville rieuse,
    Aux enivrements infinis,
    Qui, fantasque et mystrieuse,
    Rgne sur ces climats bnis;
    Ville o l'orange et la grenade
    Parfument chaque promenade;
    O, tous les soirs, les amoureux
        Chantent la srnade
        Sous des balcons heureux.


But poets have done more than acknowledge the power of folksong. They
have felt its inspiration and transformed its spirit into their own
creations. Its influence may be seen throughout the whole of Homer.
One of its saddest tales has been retold by Victor Hugo in the story
of "Petit Paul," who, with Dante's Anselmuccio and Shakespeare's
Arthur will live forever in the poetry of pity. Its ballads of the
Borders have inspired Scott, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Morris, Mr.
Kipling and many another. The ballad of _Chevy Chase_ stirred
Sidney--the flower of Elizabethan chivalry--more than the
trumpet-call to arms. And the greatest writer of the last century
bears witness to the hold its vivid simplicity had upon his
imagination. "The unsophisticated man," says Goethe, "is more the
master of direct, effective expression in few words than he who has
received a regular literary education." Everyone knows the folksong
which in dialect begins


    Min moder de mi slach't,


that Gretchen sings in prison; and it is not hard to see that Goethe
has poured the essence of the true German _Volkslied_ into her
spinning-song--


    Meine Ruh' ist hin,
    Mein Herz ist schwer;
    Ich finde sie nimmer
    Und nimmermehr.


We may find plenty of apt examples of the comparative treatment of a
common theme by folksong and by lettered poetry in France. The
_Lovers' Metamorphoses_ is an interesting case in point; for here we
can set our Canadian variants beside the French ones, and then compare
both with the poetry of Mistral and the music of Gounod.

But we need not push our investigations on this head any further,
especially as no one denies the influence which folksong has always
had upon the poetry of art. Before leaving this part of my subject,
however, I should like to recommend anyone desiring an object lesson
on the inspiration of folksong to read the last six pages of Part I in
M. Tiersot's "Histoire de la Chanson Populaire," for in them he will
find all that is necessary to prove that the _Marseillaise_, both in
words and music, is, in reality, nothing else than a folksong "writ
large."

Turning now to the different forms of folksong we naturally begin with
the nursery. Here we find the truest of all conservatives in the
children, who hand down the traditional rhymes from generation to
generation, with a marvellous fidelity unknown to their elders. The
most primitive forms of folkverse are probably of onomatopoeic origin;
and the little folks, who could almost make a whole nursery rhyme out
of this one portentous word, preserve the traces of this origin at
every turn. With their poets the sound is an echo to itself--


    Un i, un l--Ma tante Michel;
    Un i, un um--Cagi, Cajum:
    Ton pied bourdon,--Jos Simon;
    Griffor, Pandor,--Ton nez dehors.


Other primitive forms survive in the refrains of more modern ballads,
like the slogan of Hawick


    Teribus y teri Odin


which is a curious Pagan invocation and now belongs to a famous Border
riding-song. Others again are to be found in all kinds of trade-songs,
like the ancient songs for grinding, weaving and reaping, or those
specially composed to be sung by the rowers in the galleys. These last
were doubtless like those in vogue among boatmen all the world over.
The Sonaris when wading and hauling sing a sort of "Cheerily, my
boys," with a chorus of "Yoho Rm"; the Malagasy canoe men chime in
with an equally meaningless chorus of "H! misy v" at regular
intervals; and our own _voyageurs_ have plenty of choruses like "Ma,
luron, lurette," which have no pretension to any definite meaning at
all, and several others whose meaning it is hard for the non-elect to
understand; for instance,


    Tortille morfil,
    Arrangeur de faucilles,
    Tribouille marteau,
    Bon soir, lutin!


Many entire rhymes are almost as primitive in form, though a little
clearer in meaning, whether they are rounds for dancing like


    Dans ma main droite je tiens rosier,


or enumeratives like


    C'est Pinson avec Cendrouille,


or cumulatives like our old nursery rhyme about the cow with the
crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat whose actions,
in their turn, were the result of a long train of events. The chief
points to notice in all these primitive forms of verse are that they
are in no sense literary, but dependent for their very existence on
the game, or dance, or other action they accompany, and that they are
always of less importance than the music. The little value attached to
the meaning of the words is strikingly illustrated by the Kookies of
Northern Cachar and the Watchandies of Australia, who both sing in
unknown dialects. And little _habitants_ can hardly attach much
meaning to the words of the nursery rhyme, _un i, un l,_ quoted
above.

The popular _Ballad_ may be generally taken as the typical form of the
folksong. As their name shows, all ballads were originally danced as
well as sung. A medival ballad of Poitou has this refrain--


    Alavi, alavie, jalous,
    Lassaz nos, lassaz nos
    Ballar entre nos, entre nos;


and peasants almost always use some sort of appropriate action up to
the present time. I have seen the _habitants_ in the back country of
Temiscouata using a great deal of dramatic action in their songs, and
I particularly noticed one of them who danced and sang a couple of
waggish variants of _Malbroucke_. The refrain is the chief connecting
link between the ballad and the simpler forms, and was often danced to
after the ballad itself had lost its appropriate action. Refrains are
found in every possible form, sometimes rising to the importance of a
Greek chorus and sometimes represented only by a musical accompaniment
hummed in the bass during the singing of the solo. This peculiar
running accompaniment is common in the folksongs of the most diverse
peoples; and I remember a chance illustration of its wide diffusion
which may be worth mentioning. At the Quebec Carnival Concert, as, on
hearing the hummed accompaniment of a well-known Canadian folksong, I
was turning to remark its likeness to the bass accompaniments I had
heard hummed by a Zulu choir, I found that my neighbour was turning to
tell me how much the same thing reminded her of the songs she had
heard sung all over Italy.

The refrain is one of the most distinctive marks of the ballad-form,
and when we find songs like


    Voici le temps et la saison,


or


    Je me suis mis au rang d'aimer,


without any, we may generally class them with ballads, because they
would bear the addition of one without any incongruity. But a refrain
in itself is not enough to make a ballad, and its presence in even the
earliest verse cannot be cited as proof of a popular origin. As a
matter of fact, it is curious to observe in this connection that the
oldest refrain known in English poetry occurs in the Lament of Deor,
which is not a folksong at all, but an Anglo-Saxon lyric written
twelve hundred years ago.

In its metre the Canadian ballad as a rule conforms to the
fourteen-syllabled type, which Nature seems to have set up as a
master-model for most peoples to follow. On this point Mr. Gagnon
remarks: "La longueur du vers populaire est souvent de quatorze
syllabes ou mme davantage. Chaque fois alors que la rime est
masculine--car les rimes parfaites s'y rencontrent quelque fois--la
csure est invariablement fminine, ou, plus exactement, sourde.
Conformment  l'usage, ces sortes de vers ont t, dans ce recueil,
briss  la csure; ainsi les deux vers:


    Par derrire chez mon pre--lui ya-t-un bois joli;
    Le rossignol y chante--et le jour et la nuit,


ont t crits sur quatre lignes:


    Par derrir' chez mon pre
    Lui ya-t-un bois joli;
    Le rossignol y chante
    Et le jour et la nuit."


The _Complainte_ is nearer to modern poetry, in that its musical
accompaniment is often only a sort of intoning, and its action is no
more than any good reciter would make use of. And yet it arose in the
Middle Ages, when music, action and verse were inseparably connected
in the folksong. But its origin was different from that of the
ordinary folksong. It was often a reshaping, in pithier verse, of the
interminable _chanson de geste_, which was a transformation of the
_cantilne_, which, in its turn, occupied a somewhat anomalous place
between the _epic_ and the _legendary lay_. Above all, it is a
narrative, and, though nearly always on a pious or a tragic theme, is
not at all the same thing as a lament or elegy. In the pious vein Mr.
Gagnon gives us the admirable _Complainte d'Adam et d'Eve_, which is
the fine Canadian variant of the folksong story of the fall of man. We
may compare it with a Provenal version, _Leis gracis des
meissouniers_, and trace its descent from the _cantilne_ by noting
its affinities with the rhymed legends of _Jsus-Christ et les deux
htesses, Marie Magdeleine, Sainte-Marguerite, the Complainte des
trois petits enfants_, or that of _Saint-Nicolas_. In the tragic vein
the verse more nearly approaches the ballad form, but the music still
keeps the tone of a higher seriousness. No doubt it is partly owing to
the serious tone of its direct narrative style that it has kept its
traditional form so long, but it is certainly still more owing to the
simple austerity of its musical accompaniment that, even in far-off
Canada, _Marianson, dame jolie_, is still an old-world _complainte_
sung with all the


    Stretchd metre of an antique song.


It is a somewhat rough-and-ready way of classifying folksongs to
simply group them together as _complaintes_, as _ballads_, or as what,
for want of a generic name for the simpler forms, we might call _folk
ditties_. But, as I shall note any peculiarities in individual
examples as they occur, this grouping may be sufficiently exact for a
general survey. As a matter of fact, too, any attempt to explore the
maze of by-paths and cross-roads in a hurry would certainly lead us,
more often than not, into places where we could not see the wood for
the trees.


IV

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

In all times and places the folk have found a pleasant escape from the
dulness of the daily round by singing at their work. In Russia they
sing as they sew at the "besyedy" of a winter's evening. In Roumania
the best singer stands in the middle of the circle of spinners, the
rest joining in the chorus. In Flanders--at Bruges, Steenvoorde and
other towns--the lacemakers have songs called _tellingen_, which serve
the double purpose of helping on the work and keeping tally of the
number of meshes done. I wonder how many songs go to the making of a
piece of Canadian homespun_l'toffe du pays_. I am sure no spinner,
"en filant ma quenouille," could truthfully say


    Je le mne bien
    Mon dvidoi',


if she did not sing as she worked. As a rule, work-songs refer as much
to other callings as to the singer's own; and most of them have
nothing at all to do with work--except to lighten it--but are
variations on the endless theme of love. Lord Dalhousie's canoe men,
as they paddled, used to sing the _Je le mne bien mon dvidoi_' just
quoted, which is, of course, a spinning-song; but only as regards the
refrain, for the song itself is one of the many variants of _Ccilia_.
So here we have a sea-song adapted to the spinning-wheel, and then
sung in this adapted form by _voyageurs_. The great thing always is to
get a suitable rhythmical form. Tallemant des Raux tells a story of a
Huguenot arquebus-maker who sang as he worked,


    Appelez Robinette,
    Qu'elle vienne ici-bas.


The well-known theologian, Pierre Dumoulin, happening to pass by,
remonstrated with him and advised him to sing psalms instead. The man,
however, knew his own business best: "Voyez comme ma lime va viste en
chantant _Robinette_, et comme elle va lentement en chantant _Lve le
coeur, ouvre l'oreille_." It was more a matter of sound than sense with
the worthy arquebus-maker, as it is with the Savoyard sweep, the words
of whose cry, "avec sa bizarre vocalise descendante,"


    Ramonez-ci, ramonez-l--ah!
    La chemine du haut en bas--


are not separated from even those of


    Who will buy my sweet lavender?


by anything like the immense difference separating their respective
airs. In the words set to trumpet and bugle-calls the sense is even
more an echo to the sound. In fact, the words owe their very existence
to the call, as in _la soupe_, which has inspired "le lignard" to sing


    C'est pas d' la soup'; c'est du rata,
    C'est assez bon pour le soldat;
          Pour le soldat franais,


and Tommy Atkins to make up his British variant,


    Officers' wives have puddings and pies,
    And soldiers' wives have skilly.


Weddings, of course, come in for their share of attention in Mr.
Gagnon's collection. The folk-songs proper to the _ftes des noces_
are serious enough as a general thing, witness _A la sant de ces
jeunes maris_. But the other songs popular at weddings have been so
universally distinguished for their non-Christian tone, that, together
with the equally popular Pagan dirges, they have rarely failed to draw
down upon them the anathema of the Church. In 650 the Council of
Chlons had to threaten song-loving women with excommunication--to say
nothing of the cat-o'-nine-tails; and St. Augustin speaks of the
"cantica nefaria" which were sung and danced to, even upon the tombs
of the saints! The strange mixture of gravity and _gauloiserie_ at
weddings is well illustrated in the Gascon songs, which are sung on
the way to and from church, at the feast, and even in the bridal
chamber itself. It is interesting to notice what an old-time view the
Canadian songs take of the sanctity of betrothal: Petite Jeanneton
evidently thinks that having her "petit coeur en gage" is no light
affair. But she does not take so stern a view of the situation as the
Bretons, who say--"Quiconque est fiance trois fois sans se marier va
brler en enfer."

The Canadians have no dirges. This is natural enough; for the popular
dirge is pagan to the core; and the Canadian folksinger takes an
unusually Christian view of death.

Nor should we suppose from Mr. Gagnon's collection that they had any
war-songs either. There are, indeed, scattered references to war; but
that is all. The universally-known deserter sings,


    Un jour l'envie m'a pris
    De dserter de France.


"Les enfants sans souci" are soldiers; but they are doing nothing more
warlike than drinking "pots et pintes, vidant les verres aussi," and
doing it in barracks, too. In _Gai le rosier_, the singer's lover is a
prisoner of war in Holland, and Cadieux refers to the bush-fights with
the Iroquois. But none of these are war-songs in any proper meaning of
the term. Dr. Larue gives us two genuine Red River war-songs, both
composed by Pierriche Falcon, who was one of the Bois-Brls of 1816,
and fought the English as vigorously in arms as in verse. His songs
are full of local colour, of the glory of the Bois-Brls, and of the
defeat of the English--or rather of "les Arkanys," as the Orcadians
were called there. They have a spice of _gauloiserie_ and the
all-essential lilt. But nevertheless Pierriche Falcon, "ce faiseur de
chansons," is many degrees below the Tyrtean level. As for military
topical songs, like _C'est la Casquette du pre Bugeaud_, which was
composed in Algeria and sung at Inkermann, they are practically
unknown in Canada. When Canadian troops sing in camp or on the march
they choose a song like _En roulant ma boule_, which has a splendid
swing, or one like Napoleon's favourite _Malbroucke_, in which war
plays little more than a nominal part.

Chivalry, as we might expect with the scions of a gallant race, has
left its characteristic mark on some of the best-known Canadian
love-songs. This is hardly surprising when we remember that the
love-song, as we know it, owes its very existence to chivalry, and
that true chivalry is the fittest theme of song:


    Servants d'amour, regardez doucement,
    Aux chafauds anges de paradis;
    Lors jouterez fort et joyeusement,
    Et vous serez honors et chris.


Knights, lords, princes and kings are all familiar figures to us. In
_En roulant ma boule_ the "canard blanc" is shot by "le fils du roi."
Another "fils du roi" hears the shepherdess singing "comme une
demoiselle" by the famous "Pont d'Avignon." "Trois filles d'un Prince"
are asleep beneath the "pommier doux," and they wake to sing, in truly
chivalric style--


    Nos amants sont en guerre,
    Ils combattent pour nous.


"Trois cavaliers barons" rescue the distressed damsel, who rewards
them only with a song, saying--


    Mon petit coeur en gage
    N'est pas pour un baron.


Kings themselves--like Cophetua who married the beggar-maid, and
Cormac who loved the Fair Eithne--think rustic courtship by no means
beneath them. When


    Le roi, par la fentre,


saw three "filles  marier" pass by, he hastened to join them, and
then


    Le roi prit la plus jeune,
    Dans la dans' l'a mene;
    A chaque tour de danse
    Il voulait l'embrasser.


Even the good bourgeois goes a-courting like a knight:


    Dans Paris ya-t-une brune
    Plus bell' que le jour;
    Sont trois bourgeois de la ville
    Qui lui font l'amour;


and when they are planning how best to win her, the youngest says--


    Je me f'rai faire one selle
    Avec tous ses atours;
    Et j'irai de ville en ville
    Toujours  son nom.


Then we have a whole complainte, _Marianson_, breathing the very
spirit of the Middle Age; and, besides these, there are many other
vestiges of the age of chivalry remaining, sometimes in a phrase and
sometimes only in a single word. But perhaps enough has been said to
show that in the songs of New France there still remains much of the
picturesqueness of the Old.

There are very few songs in Mr. Gagnon's collection, apart from those
connected with ftes and ceremonial customs, which contain any
important remnants of popular myths. The dancing of the sun at Easter
is not mentioned, nor are some other beliefs still, or up to quite
recent times, current in the country. But Marianne, when her donkey
has been eaten by a wolf, tries to pass off the one given her by the
miller as the old one with a new skin; for, in accordance with
time-honoured custom, all good asses changed their skin at Michaelmas.
Then, in _Digue Dindaine_, the sheep dance on the green in the most
approved fashion; and Pinson and Cendrouille, when at their wits' end
to furnish a wedding feast, are helped out of their difficulty by the
dog, the crow and the rat, each animal bringing some suitable dish
with him. There is no lack of talking birds; sometimes to tell
inconvenient gossip--bilingual gossip, too, both in French and
Latin--as in _Ccilia_; sometimes to recommend matrimony, like "le
rossignolet" in _J'ai cueilli la belle Rose_; and sometimes to help
the weaker sex to abuse the stronger, like the quail in _Mon beau
ruban gris_. The old belief in the materiality of the soul is
satirically alluded to in the compendious _Malbroucke_:


    On vit voler son me
    A travers les lauriers.


And metempsychosis of a sort is pressed into the service of love in
_Si tu te mets anguille_ and _J'ai fait une matresse_. The
_voyageur_ who sings "bon soir, lutin" may think twice before
encountering the powers of goblindom. And perhaps some fishermen of
the Lower St. Lawrence may have more than a suspicion that, in singing
"blanc, blanc loup-marin," they are referring to mermaids or other
uncanny beings far more dangerous than the timid seal. In _En roulant
ma boule_ there is the wonderful bird producing jewels from its eyes
and gold and silver from its beak, just as mythical beasts do in all
other countries. And we can hardly attribute the prodigious convulsion
of Nature produced by a carpenter's merely sitting down to purely
natural causes--


    En s'asseyant il fit un bond;
    Qui fit trembler mer et poissons,
    Et les cailloux qui sont au fond.


Then there is the miller, who tricked the Devil into a flour-sack,
which was tied to the revolving mill-wheel, much to his Satanic
Majesty's discomfort. But the only song the action of which turns
entirely upon supernatural agency is that of the "plus savante" rival,
whose power over the elements enables her to supplant "la fille du
roi":


    Ell' fait neiger, ell' fait grler,
    Ell' fait le vent qui vente;
    Ell' fait reluire le soleil
    A minuit dans sa chambre.


Turning to songs connected with Christian festivals we are at once
struck by the persistence with which both song and fte have kept the
form of pagan moulds. Usually, when a pagan custom was too strong to
be killed it was adapted to Christian purposes; and this practice
became so universal, that Villemarqu's saying that the cross was
planted on the dolmen is as applicable to the whole of Christendom as
it is to Brittany: he might have gone a step further, to say that the
cross itself is almost as much pagan as Christian. The mixture of the
two beliefs in folksong is very curious. No conversion to Christianity
has ever succeeded in preventing paganism from living at least a
legendary life, and often a life of real power. At the present day in
Tinnevelly the Anglican missionaries cannot stamp out caste among the
native Christians, nor prevent their wearing the tli, a golden
wedding token, with the cross on one side and a figure of Lakshmi, the
Hindoo goddess of Fortune, on the other. In a Portuguese ballad the
king hearing a lovely song asks, "Is it an angel in Heaven or a Siren
in the sea?" Whole nations have adopted patron saints, not because of
their sanctity, but from their real or imaginary likeness to popular
heathen deities. No Northern folk would ever have had anything to do
with St. George if his fabled fight with the Dragon had not resembled
that of the mighty Thor with the Midgard-Serpent.

The adaptation of the old to the new is well seen in such songs as
those till lately current in Canada in connection with _La Guignole_.
The _Guignole_ is of Druidic origin, and probably was in some way
connected with the ceremony of cutting the sacred mistletoe at the
winter solstice. At all events, it was part of a very popular sacred
custom, performed by the high priest of an immensely powerful class,
a class of immemorial antiquity even in the days of Csar. And it has
come down to us in Canada, through centuries of Old-World change, with
enough of its ancient form to remind us of its original office in the
sacred forest rites. Among the superstitions alluded to in the songs
of _La Guignole_ is the curious belief in the efficacy of warming a
woman's feet to give her a good childbirth; a practice which Mr.
Gagnon thinks originated from propitiatory sacrifices, for he quotes
from the "Soires Canadiennes": "Il est probable que ces vers tranges


    Nous prendrons la fille ane,
    Nous y ferons chauffer les pieds!


sont un reste d'allusions aux sacrifices humains de l'ancien culte
gaulois." In Canada _La Guignole_ has always been connected with
Christmas alms-giving, the singers making a "qute" in search of all
sorts of things, money included, which they afterwards distributed
among the parish poor. Sometimes, if the "quteurs" were unsuccessful
at a house, they shouted uncomplimentary couplets, reflecting on the
stinginess of the host and hostess. But they never sang, I believe, as
the unsuccessful May Day "quteurs" still do in Champagne--


    J'vous souhaitons autant d'enfants
    Qu'y a de pierrettes dans les champs.


But, then, the children of Old France were never worth a hundred acres
a dozen, as they recently were, by law, in the Province of Quebec!

The great religious round, _Il n'y a qu'un seul Dieu_, is even more
interesting than _La Guignole_. It is danced as well as sung--"Les
danseurs se comptent d'abord  haute voix, de faon  ce que chacun
d'eux se trouve tre dsign par un nombre pair ou impair. Le chant
commence ensuite et la chane se met  tourner. On tourne ainsi
constamment, tantt  droite, tantt  gauche; mais quand les
chanteurs en sont au sixime couplet, et chaque fois que ce sixime
couplet se rpte, tout le monde s'arrte, et, pendant que l'on
chante: 'Six urnes places, remplies,' les danseurs dsigns par un
nombre pair se tournent, d'abord  droite, puis  gauche, et font 
leurs voisins de profonds saluts. Ceux que dsigne un nombre impair
font la mme crmonie en sens inverse: le tout avec la gravit d'une
crmonie religieuse. Puis lorsque l'on chante: 'A Cana, en Galile,'
les danseurs recommencent  tourner." This round is a French
translation of a Latin imitation of a Druidic _Series_ used in the
education of novices. The Christian

round, as given by Mr. Gagnon, concludes thus:


    Il y a douze aptres,
    Il y a onze cents mill' vierges,
    Il y a dix commandements,
    Il y a neuf choeurs des anges,
    Il y a huit batitudes,
    Il y a sept sacrements,
      Six urn's places, remplies,
      A Cana, en Galile,
    Il y a cinq livr's de Mose,
    Il y a quatre vanglistes,
    Il y a trois grands patriarches,
    Il y a deux Testaments,
    Il n'y a qu'un seul Dieu.


The Druidic _Series_, as given by Villemarqu, is summed up thus:


        Douze mois et douze signes,
        Onze prtres arms,
        Dix vaisseaux ennemis,
        Neuf petites mains blanches,
        Huit vents,
        Sept soleils,
        Six petits enfants de cire,
        Cinq zones terrestres,
        Quatre pierres  aiguiser,
        Trois parties dans le monde,
        Deux boeufs,
    Pas de srie pour le nombre un;
        La Ncessit unique,
        Le Trpas, pre de la Douleur;
        Rien avant, rien de plus.


"La Ncessit unique" is identified with Death--the Breton "Ankou,"
the forgetting of all, not unlike the Nirvana of the Buddhists. "Les
deux boeufs" are those of Hu-Gadaru, an ancient Breton god. In the
"Quatre pierres  aiguiser" we have a Breton variant of the Welsh
whetting-stone, which sharpened the swords of the brave, so that they
killed an enemy with a single stroke, but reduced the swords of
cowards to dust. The "Six enfants de cire" refer to the ancient and
universal practice of witchcraft, not yet extinct, by which an enemy
is made to fall sick and die through the melting of his waxen image.
The connection of this with our modern habit of burning unpopular
public characters in effigy is obvious. The number seven, like three
and twelve, was peculiarly sacred. Here we have seven elements, seven
suns and seven moons; three beginnings and three endings, alike for
man and for the sacred oak; twelve months in the year and twelve signs
in the Zodiac. The "Huit feux, avec le grand feu" refer to the seven
sacred fires perpetually burning in the temples and to the great fire,
the Bel-tan, which the ancient Irish lit in May in honour of the
Sun-god. Here again we have a modern variant in the _Feux de St.
Jean_, which were lit on the Island of Orleans as late as 1810. In the
"Dix vaisseaux ennemis" and the "onze prtres arms" we may have a
reference to the naval war in Armorica, when Csar put the Senators
and Druids to the sword. The respective ages of these two rounds
cannot be determined. But the Christian must be later than the
conversion of Armorica in the sixth century, and the Druidic somewhat
earlier, and both must have their origin in a pagan past so dimly
remote that we cannot now discern a single feature of it clearly.

I give Villemarqu's notes as they stand for what they are worth, not
supposing it necessary to warn my readers that the _Barzaz-Breiz_ has
fallen from its high estate of authenticity. If we want authentic
Breton folksongs we must go to the _Gwerziou_ and _Sonniou_ of M.
Luzel, where we shall find a scrupulous exactitude, not excelled even
in Professor Child's monumental collection of the English and Scottish
ballads. The _Barzaz-Breiz_ is something quite different from these.
It is not a faithful collection of folksongs edited from unpublished
manuscripts; still less one that is faithful to oral tradition, for
the Bretons repudiate all knowledge of its texts; nor yet is it a
trustworthy literary history. But it is not to be thrown aside as
completely useless, because it is no longer found to be what it was
once taken for by everyone. It is a storehouse of information,
picturesquely rearranged for literary effect; in fact, a sort of
historical novel on a large scale--belonging to the same class of
Celtic literature as the works of "Ossian" Macpherson and Sir Samuel
Ferguson. And if it had only been published in its true guise, like
Ferguson's poems, instead of in a false one, like Macpherson's, its
real value as an interesting and stimulating version of the genuine
spirit of old Celtic poetry would never have been called in question.


V

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity, pure and simple, counts for very little in folklore of
any kind, and perhaps for less in verse than in prose. The nols are
non-popular and the songs connected with Christian ftes and
ceremonies have come down strongly imbued with paganism and cast in
pagan moulds.

Mr. Gagnon gives us, besides the nol _D'o viens-tu_, _bergre_, the
two complaintes, _Adam et Eve_ and _Le Juif Errant_, and _Cadieux's
death-song_, the first and last of which are inspired by Christianity
throughout. Cadieux's song, with its heroic ring and fervent piety, is
just what we might expect from that age of Christian martyrs, "sans
peur et sans reproche." The legend of the _Wandering Jew_, with its
many variants, has a folklore history almost as strange as the
adventures themselves. But we cannot enter upon it here. Beside these
we may place two _voyageur_ songs, as given by Dr. Larue: _Le chantier
d'Abacis_, a strain of Christian resignation and thanksgiving; and
the song of the _Christian voyageur_, in which the singer points his
morals in a way which would be highly diverting if it was not so
transparently sincere. Beginning with a caution against the dangers
besetting the way of the _voyageur_ he breaks off to tell us that even
Christians sometimes use strong language:


    Mille fois il maudit son sort
    Dans le cours du voyage.


After this comes a warning against the wiles of the Evil One:


    Quand tu seras sur ces traverses

        *    *    *    *    *

    Tu es ici prs du dmon
    Qui guette ta pauvre me;


and then a moral, drawn from the likeness of mosquitoes to the Powers
of Darkness which all good anglers ought to thoroughly appreciate:


    Si les maringouins te rveillent
      De leurs chansons,
    Ou te chatouillent l'oreille
      De leurs aiguillons;
    Apprends, cher voyageur, alors,
      Que c'est le Diable
    Qui chante tout autour de ton corps
      Pour avoir ta pauvre me.


Next comes an exhortation to prayer:


    Quand tu seras dans ces rapides
      Trs dangereux,
    Ah! prie la Vierge Marie,
      Fais-lui des voeux;
    Alors lance-toi dans ces flots
      Avec hardiesse,
    Et puis dirige ton canot
      Avec beaucoup d'adresse.


Excellent advice; which reminds us of that given by Oliver Cromwell to
the soldiers of the New Model, when they were about to ford a river in
presence of the enemy: "Trust in the Lord--and keep your powder dry."
Prayer is again recommended at the end of the song as the only
talisman against the perils of flood and field:


    Ami, veux-tu marcher par terre
      Dans ces grands bois;
    Les sauvages te feront la guerre
      En vrai sournois.
    Si tu veux braver leur fureur,
      Sans plus attendre,
    Prie alors de tout ton coeur,
      Ton ange de te dfendre.


Thus we can see for ourselves that there really is a class of purely
Christian folksongs, and that Canada has produced some fine examples
of it. But these very Canadian examples serve to prove how sterile
this class has always been, even under the most favouring conditions;
for, though Mr. Gagnon and Dr. Larue are the last collectors in the
world to neglect a folksong of Christian origin, though they have
collected in a country conspicuous for the religious character of its
foundation and famous, throughout its entire history, for the
extraordinary zeal, devotion, discipline and widespread influence of
an omnipresent priesthood, yet, in spite of all these advantages, the
specimens they give us are few in number and of no great intrinsic
value. "Le nombre de nos chansons populaires est incalculable"; in
Normandy the songs were as plentiful as the apples; and, in all
English-speaking countries, the Borders have long been celebrated as
the land of song. Yet neither in the French tongue nor in the English,
neither in the Old World nor in the New, neither by priest nor by
Puritan has the folksong ever been converted. If a universal
collection of folksongs were made, and the different classes placed in
order of genuine popularity, it would probably be found that in the
class of purely Christian origin Canada stood an undisputed first. But
it is quite certain that this class itself would be the very last of
all.


VI

HUMOUR

There is another influence besides those already mentioned which
greatly affects the characteristic tone of Canadian folksongs and
which, if misunderstood, makes many of them the veriest "caviare."
This is that blending of a witty humour with a natural turn for
satire, so peculiarly French that we must give up trying to find an
English name for it and call it simply _gauloiserie_. Not that we are
wholly without descriptions of some such kind of humour. In a
delightful little preface to Locker Lampson's volume of society verse
Mr. Austin Dobson gives us a very good idea of the British variant of
this peculiar natural trait. But variants are variants, and are apt to
have elusively subtle distinctions about them.


    Apollo made, one April day,
    A new thing in the rhyming way;
    Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
    It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear;
    Then Momus gave a touch satiric,
    And it became a "London Lyric."


And then, if we take this refrain of de Rougemont's we may get still
nearer to an insight into the true _raison d'etre of gauloiserie_--


        Dans cette vie
        O tout varie,
    O chaque pas mne au tombeau,
    Portons gament notre fardeau.


But let us stop here; if we go on trying to get an insight into what
_gaulloiserie_ really is, by taking it to pieces and examining its
component parts, we shall defeat our own object; for its essence does
not depend upon the nature of its parts, but upon the way in which
they are blent together into a living whole. Just as a joke that has
to be explained is no joke at all, so _gaulosierie_ is no real
influence except to those whose sense of humour enables them to see
and feel it in their studies from the life.

And in making a study from the life we have to remember another
characteristic French trait--the social quality, which is so strongly
developed in the whole nation and which, with its great power of
assimilation, has gained for France, through her men of letters, the
title of the Interpreter of Europe. All the world acknowledges the
social virtues of French song--even perfidious Albion takes pleasure
in "the gay French refrain," as she generally calls it.

And there is yet another point to note here--that we must speak of
_gauloiserie_ only with reference to the French language; for wherever
a different tongue has survived within the borders of France, there
the sad tone may still be heard above all others. The Breton fisherman
can feel a passion akin to that of the wild, mysterious Flamenco songs
of Spain, and a Breton maiden can sympathise with her love-forsaken
Sicilian sister who pined away and died after being serenaded with
_dispetti_ and _sfide_, songs of challenging suspicion, affront and
ridicule. The Flemish lover sings his song because he cannot rest
until he has done it, although he knows beforehand the pain that the
singing of it will surely cost him:


    Ik vinde my bedwongen dar ik zingen moet,
      Ja, dat ik zingen moet,
    Een liedeken van minne die my treuren doet,
      Ja, die my treuren doet.


The French themselves--les vieux Gaulois--take things differently. The
Franks of Chlodion were so intent upon enjoying the songs and dances
at the marriage-feast of one of their great chiefs that they never
discovered the approach of tius till his legionaries charged down on
them. Thus the Romans won their first battle in Gaul. It has been
said:


    Toujours content et sans souci,
    C'est l'ordre de Crambambuli;


and of this jolly order are the _gaulois_ songs of Canada. One might
suppose that in love, at all events, there would be little enough of
the "sans souci." But the French and Canadian Cupids are rarely
blind. I do not mean to say that either French or Canadian love-songs
are strangers to melancholy altogether--Perrette knows only too well
that sometimes:


    Les enfants sans souci
    Ils sont bien loin d'ici.


Much less do I mean to say that they are strangers to the faithfulness
of lovers. Does not the princess scout the idea that love can hang
upon the issue of the fight, and is only to be given to the victors?


      S'ils gagnent la bataille
      Ils auront nos amours,

    "Qu'ils perdent ou qu'ils gagnent
    Ils les auront toujours."


But I do believe that there is little, if any, exaggeration in M.
Tiersot's remarks upon the general influence of _gauloiserie_. "La
satire est tellement au fond de notre esprit national qu'elle tend
son influence jusque sur nos chansons d'amour. Rarement on trouvera
dans ces dernires une dclaration d'amour vraiment sincre et sans
arrire-pense, un accord absolu de deux coeurs qui s'aiment."

However unwelcome to the lover of poetry when it comes in as an
intruder, _gauloiserie_ is unrivalled in its proper sphere, whether in
Canada or in France. Native Canadian _gauloiserie_ is very little
behind the French; witness the amusing account of how


   Dans l'comt de Rimouski
   A l'lection nouvelle,
   Jacquot Hug's s'est prsent.


A sharp flavour is to be found in


    Quand le mari s'en vint du bois,


and


    Mon mari est ben malade.


But the quintessence of _gauloiserie_ is in _Malbroucke_. Malbroucke
himself, like his predecessor the Duc de Guise, is burnt in effigy
with all the mock-heroics possible. The "beau page" tells "Madame" how
the great man was followed to his grave by "quatre-z-officiers":


    L'un portait sa cuirasse,
    L'autre son bouclier,
    L'un portait son grand sabre,
    L'autre ne portait rien.


And French illustrators have not left us in any doubt as to how the
chief mourners carried their burdens. But _Malbroucke_ is not to be
appreciated in extracts.

To be gay and Gallic and to sing _Malbroucke_ with gusto ought to be
enough to prove Canadians true heirs of the singers of the "gay
refrain," who, in their turn, are heirs of the Gallic legionaries
that, in the time of Julius Csar, are said to have borne the lark
upon their helmets as the distinctive emblem of their race. But there
is a reverse to all this. The Gallic funeral ceremonies of
_Malbroucke_ seem very like a modern variant of the medival _Dance of
Death_. Both old and new owe their popularity to the same cause; and
he who runs may read the moral of both; which is, that the great King
Death will mete out equal justice to all alike, to high and low, to
rich and poor, to victor and to vanquished. What a satisfaction to be
able to rejoice in the foreknowledge of a common doom! Professor
Pellegrini tells us that this guiding inscription appears upon the
wall on the road to the cemetery of Galliate: "Via al vero comunismo."
And _Malbroucke_, for all it does it with a smiling face, points out
the self-same way. So perhaps _gauloiserie_ may be somewhat grimmer
than it seems, and its refrains not, after all, so very gay.


VII

LULLABIES

Having briefly noted the general characteristics of the songs, let us
turn to a few particular classes of them. To begin at the beginning,
the _lullabies_ must be considered first; then the _nursery rhymes_ of
childhood, followed by the love-songs of youth; and lastly, we must by
no means forget to notice the most typically Canadian class of
all--_the songs of the voyageurs_.

The _Lullaby_ has all the form and rhythm of a natural simplicity, its
burden is made soothing with onomatopoeic and reduplicated words, and
the names the nurses give it in every tongue breathe the very spirit
of rest and sleep--_n-n_ in Dauphin, _no-no_ in the South, _lo-lo_
among the Basques are some of the many variants of the universal
French _do-do_. Monotony, calm and an ebbing flow of sound are
universal. In Berry the nurse begins with


    Dodo, berline,
    Sainte Cathrine,


in Dauphin with


    Nn, petite,
    Sainte Marguerite,


in Canada with an invocation to the same saint--


    Sainte Marguerite,
    Veillez ma petite;


and all French nurses sing


      Do, do, l'enfant do,
    L'enfant dormira tantt;


and in every case we hope their singing is attended by the same good
fortune--


    Et l'enfant qui dort
    Fait des rves d'or.


Monotonous, too, are the variations on the simplest themes; variations
_ad infinitum_, or, rather, so far as the nurse's memory and fancy can
carry her. All Canadians have been sung to sleep by the chanted story
of


    C'est la Poulette grise
    Qui pond dans l'glise,
    C'est la Poulette blanche
    Qui pond dans les branches;


and so on with "Poulettes" of innumerable hues, many seen only in the
land of dreams. Assonance plays a great part in cradle songs, and
makes even stranger bedfellows than politics. Its whims and caprices
make Alsatian "bonnes" mix bitter things with sweet in curious
fashion. In the very same song where little girls are put to bed in
Heaven itself we find that little boys are well whipped and then
stuffed into a sack full of toads:


    Rg, Rg, tropfe,
    d'Buwe muass ma klopfe,
    d'Madl kummen is Himmels bett,
    d'Buwa kummen id Grodd seck.


And it is just as full of freaks in Canada:


    Il est midi.--Qui-c' qui l'a dit?
    C'est la souris.--O est-elle?
    Dans la chapelle.--Que fait-elle?
    De la dentelle.--Pour qui?
    Pour ces demoiselles.--Combien la vend-elle?
                  Trois quarts de sel.


This constant mention of animals shows us what nursery favourites they
have always been: witness, _Le Chat  Jeannette_, _La Petit poul'
grise_, _Le Bal des Souris_ and _Les Noces du Papillon_ for France;
and, for Canada, the wedding of _Pinson avec Cendrouille_ and the
unending enumerative which begins with _Une Perdriole_.

It is strange that Mr. Gagnon gives us no lullabies of the Virgin,
unless we can take _D'o viens-tu, bergre_? as one; for they form an
important class apart, and are met with in many countries. They are,
however, somewhat like the nols in tone, and often had a common
non-popular origin. The famous one with the refrain


    Millies, tibi laudes canimus
      Mille, mille, millies,


could hardly have been of popular composition, even if it had been in
some vernacular. But another Latin one might well have been a
folk-song:


    Dormi Jesu, mater ridet,
    Qu tam dulcem somnum videt,
    Dormi Jesu blandule.
    Si non dormis, mater plorat,
    Inter fila cantans orat:
    Blande, veni Somnule.


The last line reminds us that lullabies are long-lived beyond most
other folksongs and trace their descent from pagan times. "Blande,
veni Somnule" is at least a reminiscence of the direct invocation to
Sleep, still common among many folk. The [Greek: nannarismata] of
Modern Greece have many such invocations; so have the _som-soms_ of
Languedoc and Auvergne, like the one beginning,


    Som-som, beni, beni, beni;


and so, too, have the _souin-souins_ of La Bresse:


    Le poupon voudrait bien domir;
    Le Souin-souin ne vent pas venir.
    Souin-souin, ven, ven, ven;
    Souin-souin, ven, ven, donc!


There are no heathen invocations in our Canadian lullabies; but when a
_habitante_ calls upon _Sainte-Marguerite_ she is invoking a favourite
saint in the _White Paternoster_, and as the _White Paternoster_ was
invented as a charm against the Evil spirits which could be conjured
with a _Black Paternoster_ or other magical formula the connection
with a survival of pagan beliefs is not far to seek. It is curious to
observe the number of Christian customs which the folk has pressed
into the service of White Magic. Even the "Angelus" has not escaped,
the Provenals believing that it was instituted to scare away the evil
spirits who might be tempted out by the approach of night!

But whether of Christian or of pagan origin, whether in Canada or in
other lands, the simple _Berceuse_ has all the intimate pathetic charm
of one of "Nature's old felicities"; for there is nothing that can
take us back to our own first twilight fancies, and to the very
infancy of time itself, like a crooning lullaby, whispering of all the
little immemorial mysteries of cradleland.


VIII

NURSERY RHYMES

Though _Nursery rhymes_ belong to a later age of childhood than
lullabies they are really a still simpler form of verse, in fact, a
mere jingling accompaniment to the action and air of some sort of
game, and never make the slightest pretensions to poetry. Assonance
is, of course, most important, and generally plays its pranks to the
admiration of all concerned. Sometimes, however, opinions differ. To


    Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,


or to be


    A cheval,  cheval, sur la queue d'un orignal,


or to go


    A Paris,  Paris, sur la queue d'un p'tit cheval gris,


or


    A Rouen,  Rouen, sur la queue d'un p'tit cheval blanc,


is all very well. But perhaps Quebecers might rather remain forever
unknown to nursery fame than be immortalized in the couplet


    A Qubec,  Qubec, sur la queue d'une belette!


As they have so much in common with lullabies it is natural enough
that nursery rhymes with a suitable rhythm should enjoy an equal
popularity in either form; _J'ai tant d'enfants  marier, Ah! qui
marierons-nous?, C'est le bon vin qui danse, C'est la plus belle de
cans_ and many other simple rhymes are sung beside the cradle as well
as in the play-room.

The main feature of interest in all nursery rhymes is the wonderful
fidelity with which both words and action have been handed down from
generation to generation. A Canadian girl or boy singing


    C'est le bon vin qui danse ici


reminds us at once, by the single word "vin," that this rhyme
originally came from France--whence, indeed, all our nursery rhymes
have come. When we hear a reference to "le pont de Nantes" or to the
more famous "pont d'Avignon" we know they are singing of France in the
olden time. The mention of "l'assembl' d'amour" takes us back to the
medival Courts of Love. In _Le premier jour de Mai_ we have a
reminiscence of the ftes for the rite of May. And the couplet,


    J'ai trouv le nique du livre,
    Mais le livre n'y tait pas,


now sung in fun by children, might once have been sung in real earnest
by some of their ancestors who lived by the chase. Turn where we may,
we find ourselves in what has been well called the old curiosity shop
of customary lore. English children singing


    Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,


are using a variant of


    Eene, meene, mieken, mken,


in which German children still ask their play-fellows to join them in
the Teutonic conquest of Celtic Britain:


    Kumm will'n beid' n England gn!


It is easy enough to go back still further. In "Buck, buck, how many
horns do I hold up?" we have the lineal descendant of an old Roman
game, as described by Petronius Arbiter in the time of Nero:
"Trimalchio. . .bade the boy get on his back. The boy climbed up and
slapped him on the shoulders with his hand, laughing and calling out,
"Bucca, bucca, quot sunt hic?" We can go beyond even this. But
probably no one is disposed to deny the claims of the nursery rhyme
to, at least, a very respectable pedigree.


IX

LOVE-SONGS

Everyone turns to Nature herself for the origin of the _Love-song_.
But to fully appreciate the influences which have moulded it into the
form it has taken in Canada we must remember that the natural tones of
love have been modified, first by the pervading _gauloiserie_ of
France, then by the customs and ideals of medival chivalry, and
lastly by the peculiarities of Canadian life. Now Nature, of course,
needs no discussion, and, as the three modifying influences have been
discussed before, we take Canadian love-songs exactly as we find them
in Mr. Gagnon's book, and, noting that there they may be somewhat
exclusively addressed _virginibus puerisque_, we shall venture to
characterize them generally as an almost perfect blend of Nature,
chivalry, _gauloiserie_ and what we may perhaps be allowed to call for
the occasion _Canadiennerie_.

The _Chanson des Regrets_ has no place in Mr. Gagnon's book. There is
no _Pronnelle_, no Young Heiduck to woo and win and ride away, no
Canadian wife to yield to the wiles of the _Demon Lover_, no Canadian
Launcelot and no Canadian Guinevere. The Canadian maiden makes no such
confession of the power of love as her Bressian sister:


    Que veux-tu que je te donne?
    Je t'ai dj trop donn:
    Je t'ai donn une rose,
    La plus belle de mes roses
    Que j'avais sur mon rosier.


Neither does she sing her regrets at having found that power
irresistible, like her Scotch sister:


    But had I wist, before I kist,
    That Love had been so ill to win,
    I'd lock'd my heart in a case of goud
    And pinn'd it wi' a siller pin.


But the _Chanson de Galanterie_ is allowed in, though only on
sufferance, and during good behaviour. Of course, _Le Comte Ory_ and
all his fellows are shut out. So are the gay _Tam-lins_, the _Sire
Garins_ and all the other gallants whose motto is


    Quand tu tenais la caille,
    Il fallait la plumer.


Mr. Gagnon's Canadian _galanterie_ is of a very harmless kind. In
French folksong the very popular pastorals beginning with


    L'autre jour m'allant promener,


or words to that effect, and recounting the adventures of a lord with
a shepherdess, almost always end in one of four ways: "Si
l'interlocuteur est un berger, il sera heureux; si c'est un seigneur,
il est renvoy  son chteau; ou bien lui-mme est tmoin des tendres
confidences de la bergre et du berger. Un quatrime cas peut se
prsenter: celui o le seigneur a affaire  une femme marie: il est
alors sr du succs." In Canadian variants the fourth case does not
occur. But the second is well represented.


    Le roi prit la plus jeune,
    Dans la dans' l'a mene;
    A chaque tour de danse
    Il voulait l'embrasser.


The youngest of the three "fill's  marier" rejects his advances as a
matter of course--


    Allez, allez, beau prince,
    Allez plus loin chercher.


And _Petite Jeanneton_ is just as virtuous:


    Mon petit coeur en gage,
    N'est pas pour un baron.


But the romantic professions find plenty of willing victims:


    Je voudrais bien d'un officier,
    Je marcherais  pas carrs,


sings one young girl who has dismissed _habitants_, labourers,
_colporteurs_, notaries, doctors and lawyers as one and all unworthy
of her attention. And another relates that, having been sent to sea
with a gallant sailor,


    Il devint amoureux de moi.
    Ma mignonnette, embrassez-moi.
    Nenni, Monsieur, je n'oserais:
    Car si mon papa le savait....


A third damsel will not descend to particulars:


    Ma fille promettez-moi donc
    De n'jamais aimer les garons.
    --J'estim'rais mieux que la maison
    Serait en cendre et en charbons,
    Et vous mon pr' sur le pignon:
    Vous vous chaufferiez les talons.
        Le beau temps s'en va,
        Le mauvais revient;
    Je n'ai pas de barbe au menton
        Mais il m'en vient.


A comparison between the French and Canadian variants of _Marianne
s'en va-t-au moulin_ or, still better, _Petite Jeanneton_ will at once
show where the line is drawn in the different countries.

The _gauloiserie_ which turns the love-song into a _chanson de
galanterie_ is seen in _Papillon, tu es volage_! and some others. But,
as we saw in examining the influence of humour, there really are some
Canadian _Chansons d'amour_ which may be truly classed as love-songs,
pure and simple. These have little of the sympathetic imagery of the
Italian songs or the fiery and rather sententious passion of the
Spanish, and they can hardly give us anything so touching in its
artless simplicity as this:


    Y a ben sept ans que ze se amoureusa
        D'on bravou labori:
    Rien que d'y va son labourazou
        Me fa ben plasi.


They are generally coloured by a lighter fancy and sung with a more
lilting measure. But they have as true a sincerity of their own as
many of a greater intensity. In the _metamorphosis_ the lovers delight
in toying with the risks by the way, because they feel that the end is
certain, and in _A la Claire Fontaine_ we know that they will be all
the more in love afterwards for having fallen out over the "bouquet de
roses." The lover _Au bois du rossignolet_ may be trifling a little,
and so may the soldier who makes the not unusual military promise:


    Adieu, belle Franoise,
    Adieu, belle Franoise!
    Je vous pouserai,
    Au retour de la guerre,
    Si j'y suis respect.


Perhaps, too, it may be the "love that is too hot and strong" which
"runneth soon to waste" that drives "le fils du roi" to exclaim--


    Bergre on non je veux la voir
    Ou que mon cheval crve!


But there can be no doubt about the intense longing in this appeal:


    Amant, que j't'ai donc fait
    Qui puiss' tant te dplaire?
    Est-c'que j't'ai pas aim
    Comm' tu l'as mrit?
    Je t'ai aim, je t'aime,
    Je t'aimerai toujours.
    Pour toi mon coeur soupire
        Toujours.


Nor can we doubt that "Versailles, Paris et St. Denis" would willingly
be given in ransom for the prisoner of war in Holland, if his mistress
had them to give. And we have only to turn to _Le Pommier Doux_ to
find, in the "Trois filles d'un prince," the very embodiment of
unchanging love.


X

SONGS OF THE VOYAGEURS

The _Voyageur_, like all other workers, takes whatever comes to his
hand, and is always equally ready either to sing a spinning-chorus,
like _Je le mne bi'n mon dvidoi_, or to make up a canoeing variant
of his own, like


    Fringue, fringue sur la rivire,
    Fringue, fringue sur l'aviron,


which is an adaptation of _Va_, _va_, _va_, _p'tit bonnet_, _grand
bonnet_. But the most interesting songs in his repertory are naturally
those connected with his own mode of life. Love, war, religion and the
hardships of his calling are their principal themes. And it is
specially noteworthy how much the religious tone is deepened by the
sense of ever-present danger--the _voyageur_ at work, like the soldier
on active service, being a living proof that godliness is commoner in
the field than in barracks. _Cadieux's song_, _Le Chantier d'Abacis_,
the _Christian Voyageur_ and Pierriche Falcon's _Songs of the
"Bois-Brls"_, already mentioned in connection with war and religion,
are all true _Voyageur songs_. We are indebted to Dr. Larue for
several other specimens of this class. _Voici l'hiver arriv_ has
admirable local colour: the free-and-easy shantyman, paid on the
abominable truck system,


          ...travail ben tout l'hiver;
    Au printemps on se trouve clair!


And so he sings with hearty good will--


    Que l'diable emport' les chantiers.


But, for all that, he goes back to them again the following year. _A
Bytown c'est un' joli' place_ is a song of parting--


    Nous n'irons plus voir nos blondes.


_Parmi les voyageurs and Salut  mon pays_ are songs of return.
Sometimes the "blondes" forget their _voyageurs_--


    A prsent m'y voil
    En arrire des autres.


And sometimes, when they do so, they get paid back in their own coin--


    A prsent j'en ai-t-une autre
    Qui y est ben plus  mon gr.


Among _voyageurs_, as among soldiers and sailors all the world over,
there are always some careless adventurers, who, wandering about for
years in parts unknown, find, on their return home, that their
families have given them up for lost and their wives have married
again. Such a dramatic situation is never thrown away upon
folksingers, who everywhere have innumerable variants on this single
theme. The Canadian one is _Voil les voyageurs qu'arrivent_, which
ends without telling us what becomes of the two husbands:


    J'ai donc reu de fausses lettres
    Que vous tiez mort, enterr,
    Aussi, je me suis marie.


It is a great pity to find this disappointing baldness here, as the
same theme has often been so effectively treated in folksong;
sometimes with almost the artistic finish of "Enoch Arden" and
sometimes with the insight and fine reserve of Guy de Maupassant's
short story "Le Retour."


XI

VARIANTS

Variants begin at home; and, though the local ones are often
apparently of the most trifling importance, they are never to be
neglected on that account. In a variant of _En roulant_ the word
"mitan" occurs:


    Derrir' chez nous ya-t-un tang,
    Et la rivir' passe au mitan.


This in itself is a small thing. But the use of the word acquires a
good deal of importance when we find that it is frequent in the Cte
de Beaupr, the Isle of Orleans and the Cte du Sud in Canada, that it
occurs in the songs of Picardy and that we know from what provinces
many of the "colons" of the seventeenth century originally came. As a
matter of fact, the word "mitan" is used instead of the standard
"milieu" in other provinces besides Picardy, and the _habitants_ of
the parts of Canada just mentioned are by no means all descended from
Picards. But, all the same, this serves to show that no local variant
should be overlooked, even when it is only a philological one. Some
local variants are made simply by the freakish misunderstanding of the
traditional words: for instance the old round--


    C'est la plus belle de cans
    C'est par la main je vous la prends,


is perverted into


    C'est la plus belle de Sion,
    C'est par la main nous la tenons.


Other variants of a minor kind have more to justify their existence.
It is more natural for a St. Lawrence fisherman to sing


    Dans les prisons de Londres


than


    Dans les prisons de Nantes,


and the mixed geography of


    Il est dans la Hollande,
    Les Irlanda's l'ont pris


is not without sufficient reasons of its own.

Variant refrains abound: Mr. Gagnon gives us six for _En roulant_
alone. Popular humorous songs, which so easily lend themselves to
improvisation, are peculiarly subject to variations. The inevitable
_Malbroucke_ has two Canadian variants touched with Indian local
colour, one beginning


    C'tait un vieux sauvage,
    Tout noir, tout barbouilla,
      Avec sa vieill' couverte
        Et son sac  tabac,


and both ending in much the same way:


    Quatre vieux sauvages
    Portaient les coins du drap,
    Et deux vieilles sauvagesses
    Chantaient le _libra_.


There are plenty of variants of all kinds, besides these, many made up
on the spur of the moment and as quickly forgotten, and others
flitting about in oral tradition with more or less fixity of form. The
_voyageurs_ have their variants like the rest of the world; a good
instance being the purely Canadian _Death-song of Cadieux_, which
begins in the original version--


    Petit rocher de la haute montagne,
    Je viens finir ici cette campagne,


and in the Red River version--


    Petits oiseaux, dedans vos charmants nids,
    Vous qui chantez pendant que je gmis,
    Si j'avais des ailes comme vous,
    Je vivrais content avant qu'il fut jour.


It is easy enough to see that nearly all Canadian folksongs are
variants from the French, somewhat remote in a few instances, but very
close in most. All nursery rhymes and lullabies may be taken as of
purely French origin: so may all songs of the type of _Ccilia_, _Le
maumari_ and _La maumarie_, _Je ne veux pas d'un habitant_, _En
roulant_, _Au jardin de mon pre un oranger lui-ya_, _Dans les prisons
de Nantes_, _Marianne au moulin_, _Perrette est bien malade_, and
others too numerous to mention. The peculiar restrictions which
prevented many Canadian variants from attaining a too luxuriant growth
are well described by Mr. Gagnon. We may see how powerful these
restrictions were by taking such a typical theme as _Le retour du
mari_ and comparing Dr. Larue's version with M. Fleury's four Lower
Norman variants, or with those of Spain and Portugal, which are the
most romantic ones of all. The Canadian variant of _Au jardin de mon
pre un oranger lui-ya_ breaks off suddenly, whilst Fleury's Norman
variants tell the whole story, like those of Bartsch, Bujeaud, Legrand
and others. It is a noticeable fact in folk-history that the Norman
"Coucou" has never been acclimatized in Canada.

_Mon pre a fait btir maison_ is sung in Saintonge and Aunis, _J'ai
cueilli la belle rose_ in Angoumois, Cambrsis, Artois and Le
Nivernais, _Au bois du rossignolet_ in Franche-Comt and Switzerland,
_Gai le rosier_ and _J'ai trop grand peur des loups_ in Poitou,
_Ccilia_ and _Isabeau s'y promne_ in Champagne, _A St. Malo, beau
port de mer_ in French Brittany, _A la Claire Fontaine_ in Normandy
and a dozen other provinces, and _Quand j'tais chez mon pre, petite
Jeanneton_ all over France. It is interesting to observe how folksongs
which have wandered from their native home often retain their more
ancient forms in an outlying colony. This was the case with Greek
songs, so it is said; and it certainly was with the Anglo-Saxon
songs, for Beowulf is the oldest Teutonic epic. The Icelandic songs
preserved much of the folklore of the Old Norse. Some of the finest
Portuguese ballads have been collected in the Azores. And in Canada we
have versions of _A la Claire Fontaine_, _Le Pommier Doux_ and other
songs which are older and often more poetical than most of the
variants now current in France.

The number of French folksongs represented by Canadian variants in our
texts is certainly remarkable. But, to give a just view of the
relationship between the collections of the two countries, we must not
forget to mention that no trace is to be found in either Mr. Gagnon or
Dr. Larue of many of the most popular and typical songs of France. Of
course, it must be borne in mind that those two gentlemen were not
collecting for folklorists, but for the general public--and the public
has rarely been better served--but it is at least noteworthy, from
every point of view, that they have given us no specimens of the
following types: _Le mari bent, Elle a choisi le vieux, La fille
perdue, Le moine blanc, La chanson des regrets, Les trois tambours, La
fille engage au regiment, La courte paille, L'amant qui tue sa
matresse, Martin, Les tisserands, L'occasion manque--ou saisie, Les
trois enfants ressuscits par Saint-Nicolas, La mre ressuscite,
L'enfant au berceau dnonce un crime, Renaud, La fille qui fait la
morte, L'amant noy_ and _La Pernette_. All these are found in M.
Rolland's collection, which is only the beginning of a great work, and
is by no means exhaustive even so far as it has gone already.

Looking further afield we find that we do not go quite so far as we
might hope among the folksongs of the world at large. We have no
Canadian versions of the adventures of _Bluebeard_ or of _May Colven_,
while there are innumerable variants in French, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, English, Dutch, Flemish, High and Low German, Norse,
Swedish, Icelandic, Polish, Bohemian, Magyar, Servian and scores of
other languages. To see what could be done with Teutonic folklore I
went through the two thousand _volkslieder_ of Erlach's collection;
but only found about twenty which had any direct affinity with those
in Mr. Gagnon's book. Of course, among the twenty were variants of the
misadventures of _Petite Jeanneton_, who instead of being sent


        ... la fontaine
    Pour pcher du poisson


goes of her own accord,


    Wollt geh'n in den Wald,
    Wollt Brombeer' brocken ab,


and does so with very "variant" results. Equally of course were
stories of the loves of lords of high degree for rustic maids, and the
spirited answers of girls whom their parents ask to promise


    De n'jamais aimer les garons.


The _Weltkind's_ answer is even more fiery than _la Canadienne's_:


    Meine Glut ist nicht zu dmpfen,
    Bis ich einstens werde kmpfen
    Mit dem Amor, his auf's Blut.


_Petite Jeanneton_ is one of those folksongs which seem to be native
to every soil; and an even greater vogue is enjoyed by the woeful
_Maumaris_. If a world-wide celebrity were any compensation for the
miseries of married life _P'tit Jean_ would get some consolation from
the knowledge that, even in far Cathay, he has fellow-sufferers; for
there the "Hotung Lioness" makes her better half quake at every roar.
The story of the prisoner and the gaoler's daughter is known
everywhere and is always a most popular theme, whether the hero is
simply "un prisonnier," as he is in Canada, or a peer of the realm, as
he is in the _Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman_. The tragic history of
_Marianson_ is common to many countries, more particularly to Spain
and Portugal, where the famous ballad of _Helena_ has always been held
in special honour. The variants of the _Metamorphoses of Love_ have
spread from the East over the whole world and are so universal that it
would be difficult to find any language in which they are quite
unknown. In Mr. Gagnon's two variants the lover has to follow his
mistress through her changes into an eel, a lark, a nun and so forth.
Some other lovers, even when they belong to the weaker sex, are much
more severely tried. In the Border ballad of _Tamlane_ the hero warns
his love:


    They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
    Into an ask and adder;
    They'll turn me to a bear sae grim
    And then a lion bold.
    And last they'll turn me in your arms
    Into the burning gleed;
    Then throw me into the well-water,
    O throw me in with speed;
    And then I'll be your own true love,
    I'll turn a naked knight.


In _Penda Baloa_, a negro ballad of Senegambia, the Fairy Lover turns
into a crocodile, when once he has carried the girl into his enchanted
kingdom. In _Alison Gross_ a bewitched knight is restored to himself
on Hallowe'en "when the seely Court was riding by." The dipping of
_Tamlane_ in water is a variant process of similar acts in an Indian
tale called _Surya Bai_, in a Hottentot story, in one of von Hahn's
Albanian folk-tales, and in the ancient Egyptian story of the _Two
Brothers_. The classical versions, especially the story of Proteus in
the fourth book of the Odyssey, hardly need mention.

The _metamorphosis_ affords us a striking illustration of the
wonderful diffusion of identical themes. But when we hear of Chenier's
translating a Romaic folksong which had been taken down from oral
tradition in the highlands of Greece, and which proved to be the same
as Ophelia's song, which Shakspere learnt from some English crowder,
we are even more struck by the wonderful diffusion of identical
variants. And anyone who might wish to make Canada his starting point
and thence study the diffusion of theme and variants together on a
universal scale may be recommended to begin with _Voil les voyageurs
qu'arrivent_, for, wherever soldiers, sailors and songs are known,
there we are sure of finding versions of _Le retour du mari_.


XII

POETRY

Canadian folksongs have been considered in the foregoing notes mainly
as an interesting subject of folklore study. But the question
naturally follows whether they are worthy of attention from the point
of view of poetry alone? I think it may be made clear that they are
worth some study from the point of view of art, though it is equally
clear that our admiration must be discriminating, for it is only
within certain narrow limits that they rise into real poetry.

One limitation to their range ought to be specially noticed: it is the
total lack of all genuine "natural magic." When the princess in the
_Pommier Doux_ wakes her sister with


    Ma soeur, voil le jour,


and is answered


    Non, ce n'est qu'une toile
    Qu'claire nos amours,


we get, indeed, a fine poetic touch; but without any of the sympathy
with Nature which we see in this little Czech poem:


    Star, bright star!
    Thou art from love's fetters free;
    Hadst thou a heart, my golden star,
    A shower of sparks thou wouldest weep for me.


The language of flowers is purely conventional and has nothing
whatever of the Celtic glamour in it. The Spanish gipsy can find his
mistress fairer than the white carnation as it opens to the morning
sun. But it never occurs to the Canadian _habitant_ to use any simile
of this kind. He sings glibly enough of "le bouquet de roses" and "mon
joli coeur de rose." But it would be quite alien to his genius to
employ the rose in a description of a girl asleep:


    Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
    As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.


He tells us very pleasingly of the apple tree, that


    Les feuilles en sont vertes.


But this is a mere generality, quite devoid of the peculiar charm of
Chaucer's "glad light-green." In a land of falling waters the best
description of their beauty is only another general remark--


    J'ai trouve l'eau si belle,


though Nature is assuredly not less lavish in providing her similes in
Canada than in Roumania, where they sing--


    And through his slumbers, murmuring on, their watch the waters keep;
    O! happy waters that may sing and lull him in his sleep!


The Canadian folksinger would never think of ascribing royal honours
to the sunset, like the Greek Calabrians, who call it "o iglio
vasilggui"--[Greek: ho hlios Basilehuei]. Nor could he appreciate
the golden promise of some rare, quiet, sunlit afternoon in our early
March, when


    Winter, slumbering in the open air,
    Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring


No, the Canadian folksinger has never consciously felt the joy of
being "made one with Nature." He only finds poetry in Man, especially
in the popular _nol_, the _complainte_ and, of course, the _chanson
d'amour_.

_D'o viens-tu, bergre_? is perfect as a _nol_ and children's
picture-poem. The form of question and answer at once arouses the
childish interest, and the simple descriptive touches, all borrowed
from the child's own little world, are strikingly dramatic to his
wondering imagination:


    Qu'as-tu vu, bergre?

        *    *    *    *    *

    Un petit enfant
    Sur la paille frache
    Mis bien tendrement.

        *    *    *    *    *

    Ya le boeuf et l'ne
    Qui sont par devant,
    Avec leur haleine
    Rchauffent l'enfant.
    Rien de plus, bergre,
          Rien de plus?
    --Ya trois petits anges,
    Descendus du ciel,
    Chantant les louanges
    Du Pre eternel.


"La belle _complainte_ de Marianson" is the finest piece of poetry in
Canadian folksong. It does not begin with any attempt at preparing its
hearers to see things from the proper point of view, nor does it ever
turn aside to explain its purport by the way; for the folksong always
takes its hearers' intelligent sympathy for granted. But, with true
dramatic insight, it sings the burden of its song as shortly and
directly as it may. And so it is, that, as a tale of fated woe, an
echo from the days "of tourneys and great challenges of knights,"
terse, tragic and of an infinite pathos, it has come down to us,
stripped of all poetic trappings and glorious in all the grand
simplicity of naked strength. In her innocence Marianson has lent her
golden rings to the false friend who, having had them copied, goes out
to meet her husband on his return from the war:


    Marianson, dame jolie,
    Ell' m'a t fidle assez?

    Oui, je le crois, je le dcrois:
    Voil les anneaux de ses doigts!

        *    *    *    *    *

    Ah! maman, montre-lui son fils:
    a lui rjouira l'esprit.

        *    *    *    *    *

    A pris l'enfant par le maillot,
    Trois fois par terre il l'a jet.

    Marianson, par les cheveux,
    A son cheval l'a-t-attache.

        *    *    *    *    *

    Marianson, dame jolie,
    O sont les anneaux de tes doigts?

    Il sont dans l'coffre, au pied du lit;
    Ah! prends les clefs et va les qu'ri'.

    Il n'eut pas fait trois tours de clef,
    Ses trois anneaux d'or a trouvs.

    Marianson, dame jolie,
    Quel bon chirurgien vous faut-il?

    Le bon chirurgien qu'il me faut,
    C'est un bon drap pour m'ensev'lir.
    Marianson, dame jolie,
    Votre mort m'est-elle pardonne?

    Oui, ma mort vous est pardonne?
    Non pas la cell' du nouveau-n.


The typical _love-song_ of Canada is _A la claire fontaine_. Everyone
knows it, everyone sings it and everyone can see how well it holds the
mirror up to French-Canadian nature. Some of the French versions have
a poetic turn of thought wanting in the Canadian:


    Au milieu de la rose
    Mon coeur est enchan;
    N'y a serrurier en France
    Qui puisse le dchaner
    Sinon mon ami Pierre
    Qui en a pris la clef.


On the other hand the Norman verse--


    Chante, beau rossignol,
    Toi qui as l'coeur tant gai;
    Je ne suis pas de mme,
    Je suis bien afflig,


will not bear comparison with the Canadian--


    Chante, rossignol, chante,
    Toi qui as le coeur gai;
    Tu as le coeur  rire,
    Moi je l'ai-t- pleurer.


And then we look in vain among the current variants of France for the
touching refrain--


    Lui-ya longtemps que je t'aime,
    Jamais je ne t'oublierai.


A deeper note is struck by the intense fidelity of the princess's love
in _Le Pommier Doux_--


    S'ils gagnent la bataille
    Ils auront nos amours,
    Qu'ils perdent ou qu'ils gagnent,
    Ils les auront toujours--


and by the self-sacrifice of the sailor in _Isabeau s'y promne_--


    De la troisime plonge
    Le galant s'est noy--


and a far greater passion breathes in every word of the "fils du roi"
when, _Hier, sur le pont d'Avignon_, he heard the shepherdess--


    Elle chantait d'un ton si doux
    Comme une demoiselle--


and her singing wrought in him


    A dream of fire,
    All his hours ensnaring.
    Burns the boy past bearing--
    The dream that girls inspire.


Though these few citations may be enough to show that there really is
some poetry, there is one more song which tells the story of the
lover's varying moods so well that I cannot forbear to quote it, too.
It begins with such an airy, _gaulois_ charm:


    J'ai perdu mon amant
    Et je m'en souci' gure;
    Le regret que j'en ai
    Sera bientt pass.
    Je porterai le deuil
    D'un habit de satin;
    Je verserai des larmes
          De vin.


But the tone soon changes; and, at the last, there comes the "long
regret" from the other party to this "misunderstood" affair:


    Si j'tais hirondelle,
    Vers toi, bell' demoiselle,
    Par derrir' ces rochers
    J'irais prendr' ma vole.
    Sur votre main, la belle,
    J'irais me reposer,
    Pour raconter la peine
          Que j'ai.


There may be a suspicion of lettered workmanship about all this; yet
in Maskinong, the only part of Canada where it is known, it is truly
popular; and, taken as the folksong expression of yearning for an
absent lover, it will almost bear comparison with even this delightful
snatch of Old-World grace:


    Celui que mon coeur aime tant,
    Il est dessus la mer jolie.
    Petit oiseau, tu peux lui dire,
    Petit oiseau, tu lui diras,
    Que je suis sa fidle amie
    Et que vers lui je tend les bras.


But, whether poetical or not, the Canadian folksong, in its proper
home, is never without its own peculiar charm. We have already seen
where it does and where it does not make its home: not within the
shadow of the Church, though it has caught the Christian tone better
than all others have; not in any moonlit fairyland, though it can
tread a fairy measure well enough; not among mysterious forest-aisles,
for it has no wild-wood fancy of its own; nor among "enchantments
drear," for it has long since lost the thrill of fearful joy; nor yet
with Nature, for it cannot see her beauties: but, at every season of
the year, with the nurse at the cradle, the children at their play,
the spinners at the wheel and the guests at the marriage-feast, and
everywhere and always with lovers when apart; in summer time with the
_habitant_ out in the open fields and the knitters in the sun awaiting
his return, or away with the _voyageur_ in camp or in canoe; and in
winter, when nights are long and cold, within the easeful farmhouse
circle, or far-off, amid the silent snows and beneath great sleeping
pines, with a cabinful of care-free shantymen gathered around their
evening fire.




CHAPTER XII

A FRENCH-CANADIAN POET

Some time ago, when writing the article on French-Canadian literature
for the eleventh _Britannica_, I had the refreshing delight of
discovering at least one true poet whose work was entirely new to me.
Here was what I had been looking for: a poet whose sensitive verse
could reveal the most intimate native secrets of French-Canadian life
to anyone who had the understanding ear and eye and heart; and, most
delightful of all, do this in several poems completely free from
rhetoric.

I soon told my friends the good news. But, to my surprise, I found
that among the Anglo-Canadians who read French poetry only two had
seen these poems, while a few French-Canadians knew nothing about them
at all. Under these circumstances, I venture to take the liberty of
supposing that there may be some others who would be glad of an
introduction to _Les Floraisons Matutinales_. Par Nre Beauchemin.
Trois-Rivires. Victor Ayotte.

Folksong, Frchette and Crmazie were long the three chief glories of
French-Canadian verse; and in the general opinion they probably are so
still. Nothing, of course, can ever displace the folksong. However
great the stream of poetry may yet become, the folksong has been, is,
and always will be the very waters of the fountain-head. But Frchette
and, still more, Crmazie are already suffering from the creeping
paralysis which eventually numbs even the most applauded occasional
verse that has a rhetorical appeal. No versifying rhetorician can ever
hold more than the honorary rank of poet, and even this rank is only
local and temporary. Change of time and place and people soon fades
all poetry that is not wrought out of essential human nature in
harmony with universal art. _La Lgende d'un Peuple_ is grand verse,
but no epic. It has many passages of real poetry--here and elsewhere
Frchette was assuredly a poet, by turns with a rhetorician--but you
are never quite sure whether he will give you enough winged words to
carry you over a crisis; and he so often insists on your plodding
prosily along the ground while he harangues you as if you were a
public meeting. This may offend those who hold Frchette to be the
Canadian Victor Hugo and Hugo to be the prince of French poets. But
perhaps these enthusiasts--with whom I gladly go a certain way
myself--will forgive me a little when I add that Hugo's poetry is not
at all the point at issue, though his rhetoric is. He wrote poetry
great enough in quality and quantity for two reputations. But he also
wrote a good deal of rhetoric, as did Frchette and Crmazie.

Here is Hugo the rhetorician, the grandiose pulpiteer, as out of his
element as an albatross on deck.


    Nous contemplons l'obscur, l'inconnu, l'invisible.
    Nous sondons le rel, l'idal, le possible,
        L'tre, spectre toujours prsent.
    Nous regardons trembler l'ombre indtermine.
    Nous sommes accouds sur notre destine,
        L'oeil fixe et l'esprit frmissant.


A polytechnic audience would wallow in its clouds on hearing such
"mind-stuff" as this, which might even persuade some M. Jourdain that
he could speak verse as well as prose.

Now let us leave the platform and seek the world where poetry knows
her supreme self for what she really is. And let us take Heredia as
our guide: Heredia, whose consummate verse draws its whole breath of
life from poetry alone; who sees, conceives, creates, and finally
presents the very soul and body of things poetic, without one word of
alloying rhetoric or mere description. I choose his oft-quoted sonnet,
_Le Rcif de Corail_. But apt quotation can no more stale it than
repeated watching can tire one of any other beauty of the sea.


    Le soleil sous la mer, mystrieuse aurore,
    claire la fort des coraux abyssins
    Qui mle, aux profondeurs de ses tides bassins,
    La bte panouie et la vivante flore.

    Et tout ce que le sel ou l'iode colore,
    Mousse, algue chevelue, anmones, oursins,
    Couvre de pourpre sombre, en somptueux dessins,
    Le fond vermicul du ple madrpore.

    De sa splendide caille teignant les maux,
    Un grand poisson navigue  travers les rameaux.
    Dans l'ombre transparente indolemment il rde;

    Et, brusquement, d'un coup de sa nageoire en feu,
    Il fait, par le cristal morne, immobile et bleu,
    Courir un frisson d'or, de nacre et d'meraude.


Eternities in rhetoric contrasted with a single evanescent seascape in
poetry! But the eternities are only talked about, and in cold,
dissected, abstract words; while the seascape is embodied in a
concrete and immortal form. Here is a touch-stone, indeed, to try our
poet with! Can he stand the ordeal? Now, I do not maintain that Dr.
Beauchemin's every verse is entirely on the side of poetry, that he
has never written any rhetoric at all--very few French poets have done
this. But I can show several poems in which no word of rhetoric spoils
the fulness of their appeal to those who love poetry for its own sake.
And I believe that these, his most characteristic, poems will give him
an abiding place in French-Canadian letters.

Before introducing him, however, it may be well to remind the
English-speaking reader of French that there is a deep difference
between French and French-Canadian literature, and that individual
Canadian traits, like Dr. Beauchemin's, tend to increase this
difference. I do not mean that he is not in touch with the great
French tradition, for he evidently is. But the difference between him
and the modern French man of letters is more than that of mere
regionalism and individuality combined. He is not satirical; yet
satire is rooted in the Gallic nature. He has no special hobby in
verse-forms; neither affecting modern variants of the "rondeaux et
autres telles pisseries" which used to vex the soul of du Bellay nor
letting his sense sprawl through amorphic lines, as certain fantastic
spirits did some little time ago. Then, if Boileau is right in saying
that


    Le franais, n malin, forma le vaudeville,


Dr. Beauchemin must have been born benign. But, if born benign, his
benignity does not run to all humanistic lengths, not even so far as
Ronsard went. The all-round humanist was for Church and King; yet
keenly for Jove and Amaryllis, too. Pica della Mirandola was a happy
blending of this dual personality. But Dr. Beauchemin's ancestors left
Jove and Amaryllis behind them when they came out to Canada in the
century after the Renaissance. During the next hundred years the Old-
and New-World French were being parted by a great gulf, which
presently widened when one side was occupied by Voltairians and the
other by a Bishop's "mandements." The Napoleonic age increased the
distance, in spite of Branger; and, from that time to this, French
poetry has not made any national appeal to the French-Canadians, who
now have a national poetry of their own. Their admiration for French
literature is, of course, far more than an international amenity: it
is part of the true love for the glories of a "Mre-Patrie." But,
while sprung from France, they are wedded to Canada. They feel no pang
of Port-Royalist regret:


          Flicit passe
          Qui ne peut revenir,
          Tourment de ma pense,
    Que n-ay-je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir?


And, so loving Canada, they cannot choose but love those poems of Dr.
Beauchemin which show the world her homeland ways in the light and
glamour of a native genius.

They may feel pride as well as love; for in this book Dr. Beauchemin
certainly has shown the world a phase of its life well worth its
discriminating notice. But King Demos is not discriminating, even in
democratic Canada. You must cry your wares at the full pitch of your
lungs, and rhetorically justify their manufacture by their money
value, if you would gain his attention. What Voltaire wrote to console
Grtry for Court indifference to the _Judgment of Midas_ applies with
perfect fitness to the court of Demos to-day:


    La Cour a dnigr tes chants,
    Dont Paris a dit des merveilles.
    Hlas! les oreilles des grands
    Sont souvent des grandes oreilles.


Yet if Dr. Beauchemin is not strident enough for the "grand
public"--which is made up of such little individuals--he should have a
by no means narrow public of his own. His appeal is wider than that
which is made, on first acquaintance, by a poet like Omar--shall we
say?--or Verlaine, with his "chanson cruelle et cline"; though it is
no more melodramatic than theirs. And it should be specially wide in
Old Canada, because he has a real spiritual affinity--with a
French-Canadian difference--to the _Gnie du Christianisme_ and, still
more, to Lamartine, whose _Crucifix_ might, for its fervour, have been
his own:


    Que de pleurs out coul sur tes pieds que j'adore,
    Depuis l'heure sacre o, du sein d'un martyr,
    Dans mes tremblantes mains tu passas, tide encore
                De son dernier soupir!


Then, in his quality of country doctor, he is in close touch with the
intimate side of natural humanity. And, like the Christian archetype
of his noble profession, St. Luke, he is a most persuasive steward of
the mysteries of God. What a world of difference there is between him
and Dr. Cazalis, the "Jean Lahor" of _L'Illusion_; though both are
poets and physicians. Dr. Cazalis, for all his orientalism, is
doubtful even of Nirvana:


    O nos morts bien aims, o disparaissez-vous?
    Serions-nous vos tombeaux? N'tes-vous plus qu'en nous?


We shall presently see how utterly foreign such questioning is to the
other-worldliness of Dr. Beauchemin. Not even once could he regard our
earthly existence as life in a hospital, like Mallarm, whose cripple
drags himself to the window to see delights he cannot enjoy:

    *    *    *    *    *


    Voit des galres d'or, belles commes des cygnes,
    Sur un fleuve de pourpre et des parfums dormir
    En berant l'clair fauve et riche de leurs lignes
    Dans un grand nonchaloir charg de souvenir.


No, Dr. Beauchemin is a race-patriotic, Christian poet of
French-Canadian life, full of sympathetic insight into all the moods
of man and Nature in the happy Laurentian valley where he lives and
works. But I repeat that he is no provincial local genius. My
quotations would soon correct any such impression. And I might add
that some of his poetry which I have no room to quote is also of high
quality and accordant with that of many good poets in the
"Mre-Patrie," from the time before La Nouvelle France was thought of
down to our own day. Taillefer was no stouter bard at Hastings, when
he


          ...alloit chantant
    De Charlemagne et de Rolant.


Ronsard would have no cause to blush for this far-off scion of the old
masters in metres which could run, or pause, or ripple brook-like in
praise of a French May morning centuries ago:


    Comme on void sur la branche au mois de May la rose
    En sa belle jeunesse, en sa premire fleur,
    Rendre le ciel jaloux de sa vive couleur,
    Quand l'aube de ses pleurs au poinct du jour l'arrose.


Dr. Beauchemin would make an exiled French-Canadian as homesick as
ever Brizeux could make one of his own compatriots when he


    Entonne un air breton si plaintif et si doux
    Qu'en le chantant ma voix vous ferait pleurer tous.


And, if the juxtaposition of such incongruous names can be forgiven
for the moment, I would dare to point out that there is a connection
between Dr. Beauchemin the poet and his normal antithesis in prose,
Zola. The Promised Land of that Greater France which Zola yearned for
in his _Fcondit_ is nowhere better imagined and bodied forth than in
the French-Canadian country so penetratingly seen and sung of by Dr.
Beauchemin.

As this is a purely personal impression, with no attempt at formal
criticism, I shall preface my quotations by one more point in our
poet's favour. He is distinctly fond of animals. Perhaps he would not
quite subscribe to all the dicta in the _Ancient Mariner_. He
certainly is a sportsman, on his own showing. But he is none the worse
for that; as there is the same difference between true sport and
wanton cruelty as there is between war and murder. I doubt very much
whether he is anything of an evolutionist, who can see no difference
in kind--though immeasurable differences in degree--between man and
other animals, and who rejoices at every fresh piece of evidence which
tends to bring all our fellow-beings nearer to ourselves. I also doubt
whether, as a poet, he would go so far as Alfred de Vigny goes in _La
Mort du Loup_, or so deeply as Verhaeren and Maeterlinck have gone,
time and again. And possibly he might cry "Save me from my friends!"
at what I have said already. But, no matter, he is fond of animals;
and that is enough for me, so far as he is concerned. Yet I cannot
help expressing the ardent wish that he and others like him would make
some effort to touch French-Canadians to the quick on this subject,
and change them for the better. No one admires the many good features
of French-Canadian life more than I do. But I frankly hate the common
French-Canadian behaviour to animals. There are plenty of brutal
Anglo-Canadians. But, on the whole, I am afraid it is true that the
French-Canadians supply most of the cruelty and the Anglo-Canadians
most of the prevention wherever the two races live together. Why the
Latin peoples, so advanced in many ways, are so backward in this
respect is a long enquiry, and too much beside our mark for discussion
here. But poetry is pre-eminently a sympathetic art; and so it is not
altogether outside my subject to express delight at finding a poet
who loves all our fellow-beings--especially when I find him among a
people who are mostly callous to this form of sympathy.

    *    *    *    *    *

_Les Floraisons Matutinales_ make a book of over two hundred pages,
and their forty-five poems have, all together, a fairly wide range of
theme. But the more purely French-Canadian ones outnumber all the rest
and are much the most characteristic; and of these there are twelve
typical enough to give a very good idea of the whole.

Dr. Beauchemin knows the way of the sea. The sea enters into the very
heart of the history, life and language of the French-Canadians. So
there could not be an apter poem to begin with than _La Mer_, which,
in few words, shows his _curiosa felicitas_ of expression, harmony of
sense and sound, and real imaginative insight. I wonder if he
remembered that beautiful line about one of the natural kindred of the
sea which forms such a brief interlude in a rather repellent elegy of
Propertius


    Luna moraturis sedula luminibus.


But he requires no poet of the moon to make us heed the call of his
own wild virgin sea--_das Ewig-Weibliche_ of Nature, whose voice of
many waters is the music of life and of death to all her devotees.


    La mer fauve, la mer vierge, la mer sauvage.

        *    *    *    *    *

    La mer aime le ciel: c'est pour mieux lui redire,
    A l'cart, en secret, son immense tourment,
    Que la fauve amoureuse au large se retire,

        *    *    *    *    *

    Loin des grands rochers noirs que baise la mare,
    La mer calme, la mer au murmure endormeur,
    Au large, tout l-bas, lente s'est retire,
    Et son sanglot d'amour dans l'air du soir se meurt.


The Canadian seasons are worthily celebrated in _Rayons d'Octobre_,
_Les Clochettes_, _Giboule_, _Le Merle_, and _L'Avril Boral_. Dr.
Beauchemin is fully of Heine's opinion, that landscape charms us
because of the "unendlich seliges Gefhl" which its human associations
call up from the depths of our being. And in _Rayons d'Octobre_ he
shows an almost Virgilian touch between things remembered and things
seen:


    Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

    A mi-cte, l-bas, la ferme ensoleille,
    Avec son toit pointu festonn de houblons,
    Parat toute rieuse et comme merveille
    De ses teules roux el de ses chaumes blonds.

    Aux rayons dont sa vue oblique est blouie,
    L'aeul sur le perron familier vient s'asseoir:
    D'un regain de chaleur sa chair est rjouie;
    Dans l'hiver du vieillard il fait moins froid, moins noir.

    Calme et doux, soupirant vers un lointain automne,
    Il boit la vie avec l'air des champs et des bois,
    Et cet tincelant renouveau qui l'tonne
    Lui souffle au coeur l'amour des tendres autrefois.


Dr. Beauchemin also bids us listen to


    ...le bruit de la joyeuse aire.


But nowadays this is only


    La chanson du cylindre grenant les pis


--a rather harsh mechanical _staccato_, not like the throbbing
harmonies of the old threshing-floor, which fill the grandsire's ear
when he recalls the strenuous flails of his youth.

In _Les Clochettes_ the poet comes blithely from the shrine of Our
Lady of the Snows, and exults in his strength like a giant refreshed.


    Nargue du froid! Vive l'hiver!
    C'est plaisir, quand la neige crie,
    D'our, mle au bruit banal
    Du vent, l'allgre sonnerie
    Du joyeux solstice hivernal.
    Le carillon multisonore
    Des clochettes au timbre clair
    Tinte, tincelle, tinte encore
    Et tintinnabule dans l'air.


_Giboule_ flashes diamond-and-pearl-frosted trees on the inward eye
with many a vivid epithet and nimble turn of phrase. _Le Merle_ is as
dear to our author as any English blackbird ever was to Thomas Edward
Brown. And all the world is young again in _L'Avril Boral_.


    Est-ce l'avril? Sur la colline
    Rossignole une voix cline,
        De l'aube au soir.
    Est-ce le chant de la linotte?
    Est-ce une flte? Est-ce la note
        Du merle noir?

    Le chanteur, retour des Florides,
    Du clair azur des ciels torrides
        Se souvenant,
    Dans les bras des htres en larmes
    Dit ses regrets et ses alarmes
        A tout venant.

    Quel souffle a mis ces teintes douces
    Aux pointes des frileuses pousses?
        Quel sylphe peint
    De ce charmant vert vronse
    Les jeunes bourgeons du mlze
        Et du sapin?

    Tout tait mort dans les futaies;
    Voici, tout  coup, plein les haies,
        Plein les sillons,
    Du soleil, des oiseaux, des brises,
    Plein le ciel, plein les forts grises,
        Plein les vallons.

    Ce n'est plus une voix timide
    Qui prlude dans l'air humide,
        Sous les taillis;
    C'est une aubade universelle;
    On dirait que l'azur ruisselle
        De gazouillis.


Folksong has, of course, been an inspiration to Dr. Beauchemin, as it
always has been to every national poet since poetry began. He well
repays his debt by a new variant on the old theme of _A la Claire
Fontaine_.


    Il est une claire fontaine
    O, dans un chne, nuit et jour,
    Le rossignol,  gorge pleine,
          Redit sa peine
          Et son amour....


_La Chapelle des Miracles_ is in honour of La Bonne Ste-Anne de
Beaupr. The universe of art is called upon to beautify this shrine of
insistent faith and hopeful piety; though not, be it well understood,
at the expense of


    Ces tristes _ex-voto_ sans nombre
    Qui chargent la muraille sombre.


But _Le Viatique_ is a much greater poem. It tells a simple, poignant
tale of that borderland of life and death where God and Man and Nature
meet so often, yet always under circumstances which transcend our
human commonplaces by the whole vastness of infinity. Admirers of the
Greek Anthology will remember how the glory of the stars made Ptolemy
forget that he was earth on Earth and raised his spirit to the
banquet-hall of Zeus. _Le Viatique_ shows how the _habitant_ soars to
still greater heights with what the eye of faith reveals to him in
common daylight and on the common road between his native fields.


    La cloche, lente,  voix teinte,
    Tinte au clocher paroissial,
    Et l'cho tremblant de sa plainte
    Tinte et meurt dans l'air glacial.

    L'airain sonne en branle. On coute.
    Pour qui le glas a-t-il tint!
    Et le son grave, avec le doute,
    Tombe sur le coeur attrist.

    Aux premiers branles de la cloche
    Les humbles seuils se sont ouverts.
    Un bruit de pas drus, qui s'approche,
    Frappe l'air lourd des champs dserts.

    A genoux! c'est le Viatique,
    C'est le dictame des souffrants,
    Le pain de l'au-del mystique,
    Le divin chrme des mourants.

    L'or ple et la pourpre amortie
    Du crpuscule occidental
    Au-dessus de la sainte hostie
    Forment comme un dais triomphal.

    C'est Lui: cette pompe cleste
    Proclame sa divinit,
    Et ce tant naf culte agreste
    Nous dit sa pauvre humanit.

    Quelques paysans en prire
    Suivent, leur rosaire  la main;
    Les clous des souliers de misre
    Sonnent aux cailloux du chemin.

    Oh! bienheureux ce pauvre monde
    Qui devine, et croit sans les voir,
    Les choses qu'une ombre profonde
    Cache aux matres du haut savoir.

    Du beffroi la grave harmonie
    S'teint, triste comme un adieu.
    Ange gardien de l'agonie,
    Soutiens les pas du porte-Dieu!


We might fairly expect a good poem like _Le Viatique_ from a
French-Canadian, as we should from a Breton. And, of course, we expect
every good poet to re-awaken the spirit of his native folklore, and to
celebrate the delights of his native seasons. But there is another
kind of poetry which we are always expecting and so very rarely
getting from any quarter; a kind which so seldom rings true that we
are generally forced to put up with rhymed rhetoric instead--a
miserable, makeshift substitute. For a multitude of cogent reasons
"patriotic" poetry is the most difficult of all. Patriotism is as
excellent in a citizen as it is dangerous for a poet: all the more
honour to the poet who succeeds, like Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth,
Scott, Tennyson, Rossetti and Kipling; though some of these have
failed occasionally, as nearly all others fail. No theme so noble has
been slushed over with such floods of rhyming stuff and nonsense,
except, perhaps, religion in the ordinary hymn. And the French, with
their propensity for rhetoric, are fully as bad as we are. But
Anglo-Canadians are worse off than French-Canadians, since, from the
_Maple Leaf_ down, we have enough rant and cant and twaddle to bray
ourselves to death; while their _O Canada_! is really the song of a
people. Yet, in other ways, French-Canadians have perpetrated such
wretched stuff that it is particularly pleasant to find one more poet
to number among the elect who can transmute golden deeds into golden
words.

Dr. Beauchemin treats stirring subjects in his _Iberville_, _Qubec_
and _Louisbourg_. In La Mer we saw him as a poet of the sea, pure and
simple. In _Iberville_ he appears as a distinctively naval poet and a
good one. He is quite at home on board, from keel to truck, and makes
Iberville radiant as the "Happy Warrior" of a well-contested victory.
In _Qubec_ he "looks before and after and sighs for, what is not" in
a reminiscent strain of poetic melancholy. But it is in _La Cloche de
Louisbourg_ that he soars into the full sweep of patriotic song; and
it is with a few stanzas of this moving poem in their ears that I
would fain commend him finally to those who will, I most sincerely
hope, soon form part of his growing audience. I need hardly add that
his love for what was best in the hero-age of French Canada is not at
all inconsistent with loyalty to that other Crown which has always
been the great guarantor of French-Canadian liberties. And is it not
matter for rejoicing that the fight for Canada was well enough fought
out by both sides to make each respect the prowess of the other? And
is it not also well that each should know now where it can find a
worthy fellow-soldier in the hour of need? Besides, I am inclined to
think that, should this occasion come, Dr. Beauchemin would be the
first to call his compatriots with a stirring "Vive le Roi!"


    _LA CLOCHE DE LOUISBOURG_


    Cette vieille cloche d'glise
    Qu'une gloire en larmes encor
    Blasonne, brode et fleurdelise
    Rutile  nos yeux comme l'or.

    C'est une pieuse relique:
    On peut la baiser  genoux;
    Elle est franaise et catholique,
    Comme les cloches de chez nous.

    Elle fut bnite. Elle est ointe.
    Souvent, dans l'antique beffroi,
    Aux Ftes-Dieu sa voix est jointe
    Au canon des vaisseaux du Roy.

    Les boulets l'ont gratigne,
    Mais ces balafres et ces chocs
    L'ont  jamais damasquine
    Comme l'acier des vieux estocs.

    Oh! c'tait le coeur de la France
    Qui battait,  grands coups, alors,
    Dans la triomphale cadence
    Du grave bronze aux longs accords.

    O Cloche! c'est l'cho sonore
    Des sombres ges glorieux
    Qui soupire et sanglote encore
    Dans ton silence harmonieux.

    En nos coeurs, tes branles magiques,
    Dolents et rveurs, font vibrer
    Des souvenances nostalgiques,
    Douces  nous faire pleurer.




             PRINTED BY
    WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
              PLYMOUTH




Books by

WILLIAM WOOD

A

Three Books on Life in the Old Laurentian Parts of Canada.


1. THE KING'S BOOK OF QUEBEC.

The vice-regal souvenir of the Tercentenary of 1908. Title approved
and Dedication accepted by His Majesty King George V. Preface by His
Excellency the Earl Grey, Governor-General. Historical Introduction by
A. G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist. French libretto for the Pageant by
Ernest Myraud, Provincial Librarian. Ten Full-page Colour Plates from
Pictures specially painted by Frank Craig and George Reid. Fifteen
Folksongs, with other Music. Many additional illustrations--Colour
Plates, Photogravures, Facsimiles, &c. &c. Printed with Special Type
on Strathmore Hand-made paper. 2 volumes, 4to. Ottawa: The Mortimer
Company: 1911. _Edition de Luxe_ of 500 copies.

[The great initial cost of this work was met by the private
subscriptions of twelve patriotic gentlemen. Copies not used for
presentation were authorized for sale, through the Dominion Archivist,
at the net cost price of producing them:--$25 in Paper Covers; $35
Full-bound in Leather by Hand.]


2. IN THE HEART OF OLD CANADA.

Includes the first monographs in English on the Quebec Ursulines and
French-Canadian Folksongs, an article settling the vexed question of
Wolfe and Gray's _Elegy_, &c. &c. 1 volume, 8vo. Toronto: William
Briggs: 1913. $1.50.


3. ALOUETTE: LIFE ON THE SALT ST. LAWRENCE.

A book of travels at home, called after the _Alouette_ or sea lark of
Lower Canada. The Salt St. Lawrence extends from Quebec to
Newfoundland, Cape Breton and the Straits of Belle Isle; and the
author's Life on it includes acquaintance with most things afloat,
from birch-bark canoes to first-class battleships; with pilots and
lighthouse-keepers, smugglers and nabbers; with priest and people,
_seigneur_ and _habitant_; with tales of war by land and sea; with
Indians and trappers, harpooners and fishermen; with seals and whales,
seabirds and fish; and many other kindred of this the greatest river
mouth in all the world. [Particulars of publication in 1914.]


B

Four Books on the Naval and Military History of Canada--_all from
Original Sources_.


1. THE FIGHT FOR CANADA.

The first book to bring out the Naval side of the Conquest. Coloured
Maps and Photogravure Portraits. London: Constable, 1904; one guinea,
net. Last Edition, 7s. 6d., net. American Edition--Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., $2.50, net. Canadian Edition--Toronto: Musson, $2.50,
net. Each in 1 volume, 8vo.


2. THE LOGS OF THE CONQUEST OF CANADA.

The first book entirely devoted to Naval campaigns in Canada. Charts
and Plans. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1909. 1 volume, 8vo.
[Issued to Members only.]


3. SELECT BRITISH DOCUMENTS OF THE CANADIAN WAR OF 1812.

The first systematic selection concerned with the Naval and Military
aspects of the whole Canadian scene of action. Maps, Plans, Portraits
and Facsimiles. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1914. 3 volumes, 8vo.
[Issued to Members only.]


4. THE FIVE INVASIONS OF CANADA.

The first book to treat all the Invasions as one connected whole.
Maps, Plans and Portraits. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook &: Co., 1914. 1
volume, 8vo. [Price to be determined later.]


C

Five Volumes in the Chronicles of Canada, a Series of Short Studies,
in 32 volumes, 16mo.

Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co., 1913-14. [The following five volumes
will not be sold apart from the complete set of thirty-two. Price to
be determined later.]


1. THE GREAT FORTRESS: A CHRONICLE OF LOUISBOURG.


2. THE LAST STAND FOR FRENCH DOMINION: A CHRONICLE OF MONTCALM.


3. THE WINNING OF CANADA: A CHRONICLE OF WOLFE.


4. THE BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812: A CHRONICLE OF THE LAST FIGHT WITH THE
UNITED STATES.


5. ALL AFLOAT: A CHRONICLE OF CRAFT AND WATERWAYS.




[End of _In the Heart of Old Canada_ by William Wood]
