when the said acts were pronounced lawful by the governor. The reply to the memorial denies to the bishop the power of excommunication in civil matters, assigns to him the second place in meetings and ceremonies of a civil character, and is very reticent as to the rest.1 Argenson had a brother, a counsellor of State, and a fast friend of the Jesuits. Laval was in correspondence with him, and, apparently sure of sympathy, wrote to him touching his relations with the governor. "Your brother," he begins, "received me on my arrival with extraordinary kindness;" but he proceeds to say, that, perceiving with sorrow that he entertained a groundless distrust of those good servants of God, the Jesuit fathers, he, the bishop, thought it his duty to give him in private a candid warning which ought to have done good, but which, to his surprise, the governor had taken amiss, and had conceived, in consequence, a prejudice against his monitor.2 Argenson, on his part, writes to the same brother, at about the same time. "The Bishop of Petræa is so stiff in opinion, and so often transported by his zeal beyond the rights of his position, that he makes no difficulty in encroaching on the functions of others; and this with so much heat that he will 1 Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France. 2 Lettre de Laval à M. d'Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20 Oct., 1659-60.] CLERICAL VIGOR. 171 listen to nobody. A few days ago he carried off a servant girl of one of the inhabitants here, and placed her by his own authority in the Ursuline convent, on the sole pretext that he wanted to have her instructed, thus depriving her master of her services, though he had been at great expense in bringing her from France. This inhabitant is M. Denis, who, not knowing who had carried her off, came to me with a petition to get her out of the convent. I kept the petition three days without answering it, to prevent the affair from being noised abroad. The Reverend Father Lalemant, with whom I communicated on the subject, and who greatly blamed the Bishop of Petræa, did all in his power to have the girl given up quietly, but without the least success, so that I was forced to answer the petition, and permit M. Denis to take his servant wherever he should find her; and if I had not used means to bring about an accommodation, and if M. Denis, on the refusal which was made him to give her up, had brought the matter into court, I should have been compelled to take measures which would have caused great scandal, and all from the self-will of the Bishop of Petræa, who says that a bishop can do what he likes, and threatens nothing but excommunication."1 In another letter he speaks in the same strain of this redundancy of zeal on the part of the bishop, 1"-Qui dict quun Evesque peult ce qu'il veult et ne menace que dexcommunication."-Lettre d'Argenson à son Frère, 1659. which often, he says, takes the shape of obstinacy and encroachment on the rights of others. "It is greatly to be wished," he observes, "that the Bishop of Petræa would give his confidence to the Reverend Father Lalemant instead of Father Ragueneau;"1 and he praises Lalemant as a person of excellent "It would be well," he adds, "if the rest of their community were of the same mind; for in that case they would not mix themselves up with various matters in the way they do, and would leave the government to those to whom God has given it in charge." 2 sense. One of Laval's modern admirers, the worthy Abbé Ferland, after confessing that his zeal may now and then have savored of excess, adds in his defence that a vigorous hand was needed to compel the infant colony to enter "the good path," meaning, of course, the straitest path of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. We may hereafter see more of this stringent system of colonial education, its success, and the results that followed. 1 Lettre d'Argenson à son Frère, 21 Oct., 1659. CHAPTER IX. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. RECEPTION OF ARGENSON: HIS DIFFICULTIES; HIS RECALL. DUBOIS D'AVAUGOUR.—THE BRANDY QUARREL.-DISTRESS of LAVAL.-PORTENTS. - THE EARTHQUAKE. The WHEN Argenson arrived to assume the government, a curious greeting had awaited him. Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their school disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes made him speeches by turn, in prose and verse. First, Pierre du Quet, who played the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor, in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean François Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron. The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret. Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their chief.1 Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered at Quebec to greet the new "Onontio." On the next day-at his own cost, as he writes to a friend - he gave them a feast, consisting of "seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons, eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after their fashion." 2 These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois ; and he begs the proprietary 1 La Reception de Monseigneur le Vicomte d'Argenson par toutes les nations du pais de Canada à son entrée au gouvernement de la Nouvelle France; à Quebecq au College de la Compagnie de Jésus, le 28 de Juillet de l'année 1658. The speeches, in French and Indian, are here given verbatim, with the names of all the boys who took part in the ceremony. 2 Papiers d'Argenson. Kebec, 5 Sept., 1658. 8 Mémoire sur le subject (sic) de la Guerre des Iroquois, 1659. |