GRANDMOULIN.
"Que Demosthènes,
En haranguant,
Entraine Athènes,
Come un torrent!"
--JACQUES VIORR--LE JARGON DU BEL-ESPRIT.
The events to which all others were leading now began to happen.
The great nomination day,--Sunday--is here. Mass is over, the whole
parish, aye and crowds from far and near behind, surge all over the
square, where the Church looks down upon them in serenity and silence.
When Chrysler came up, the Cure and his vicar were sitting on their
gallery, and a man of strong frame stood upon the crier's rostrum
looking round with the assertive consciousness that he was a recognized
figure. His face wore a beard of strong but thin black wisps, which
would have been Vandyke in form had it been heavier, but allowed the
forcible outlines of his chin and cheek to be visible; and his locks,
imitated by many a follower throughout the Province, were worn like
Gainbetta's in a long and swelling black mass behind. His countenance,
evidently from long experience, was so controlled that no trace of
natural expression could be discerned upon it beyond an appearance of
caution and diplomacy; but whatever its specific character, it bore
without gainsay the stamp of power.
The man was Grandmoulin.
After looking this way and that way for several moments allowing the
assemblage to hush, he began in a quiet tone.
"My friends!"
He paused deliberately some moments to permit the people's curiosity to
concentrate upon him.
"My brothers!"
This with a rising, powerful voice.--Then higher:
"French--Canadians!!" separating the two words.
The audience strained with attention to hear him. What he had to say
next became a matter of suspense.
Then with inflection of passionate enthusiasm:
"Canadian FRENCHMEN!!!" he cried, hurling out all his force. And the
people could no longer restrain themselves; the rhetorical artifice took
them by storm, and they shouted and cheered with one loud, far-echoing,
unanimous voice.
Grandmoulin kept his attitude erect and immovable.
"My friends," he proceeded, when the applause began to subside, "I
address you as heritors and representatives of a glorious national
title. To wear it--to be called 'Frenchman' is to stand in the ranks of
the nobility of the human race. I address you as a generous, a great, a
devoted people, a people brave of heart and unequalled in intellectual
ability, a people proud of themselves, their deeds and the deeds of
their fathers in New France and in the fair France of the past, a people
above all intensely national, patriotic, jealous for the advancement of
their tongue and their race. I address you as faithful of the ancient
Church which was founded on the Petrine Rock, and names itself Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman; whose altars God has preserved unshaken through the
centuries amid terrible hosts of enemies, bitter oppressions, diabolical
persecutions; of whose faith your hearts, your bodies, your race itself,
are the consecrated depositories set apart and blessed of Heaven."
"I address you further, Frenchmen of Canada, as an oppressed remnant,
long crushed and evil treated under alien conquerors; who despoiled you
of your dominion, your freedom and your future, and whose military
despotism, history records, spurned your cry during eighty years with
unspeakable arrogance; till you rose like men in the despair of the '37,
for the simplest rights, brandishing in your hands poor scythes and
knives against armies with cannon, O my compatriots!--and compelled them
to dole you a little justice!"
"The brave and generous who still remain of the generation before,
recount to you those living scenes, and your hearts take part with the
wronged and valiant of your blood!"
"In this secluded countryside you see too little how they still insult
you. Ask yourselves frankly whether that for which our nation strove has
ever yet been had. What have we gained? Is not the battle still to be
fought? There are no facts more patent than that the English are our
conquerors, that they rule our country, that they are aliens, heretics,
enemies of our Holy Religion, and that they are heaping up unrighteous
riches, while we are becoming despised and poor."
"Think not that I speak without emotions in my breast. There was a day,
my poor French-Canadian brothers,--a solemn day, when I bound myself by
a great oath to the cause of my people. It was when my father told me,
his voice choking with, tears, of the murder of my grandfather,
ignominiously thrown from the gallows for the felony of patriotism! Was
I wrong to rise in grief and wrath, and swear with tears and prayers
before our good Ste. Anne that I would never rest or taste a pleasure
until I free the French-Canadians?"
"'It is I who will defend my race and my religion!' cried I then, and I
have ever striven to do this, and still so strive."
Having thus played along each different key of his hearer's prejudices,
he turned them towards his end.
"It is possible you may think I have, been speaking of everything but
politics, and that you are asking yourselves what I really mean. Do you
know what this election signifies? _It is a contest of the French with
the English._ It is a question whether that arrogant minority shall
continue to impose their ideas, their leaders, their execrable heresies,
their taxes and restrictions upon this great French-Canadian
Province--the only country which you have been able to hold for your
own. You are here, at least, the majority! If their artifices have
succeeded in excluding you from a part in governing the Dominion, there
is one thing left; _you can govern this Province if you stand by me!_ If
you stand by my me you can make our country purely and powerfully
French! The ballot gives us the government: we will legislate the
English. We will repay their oppressions with taxes and leave the
Frenchman free; we will overvalue their properties, and undervalue our
own; we will divide their constituencies; we will proclaim parishes out
of townships; we will deprive them of offices, harass their commerce,
vex their heretical altars; we will force new privileges from the
Federal power; we will colonize the public lands with our own people
exclusively, and repatriate our children lost; we will possess ourselves
of those palaces and that vast wealth they wring from our labor, and
finally, free as these great stretches of the valley, we shall live at
peace in our own land."
A sullen murmur passed about. The passions were being roused. "The
English eat the French-Canadians," repeated several.
"Messieurs of Dormillière, you can judge of me! They have said of me all
sorts of calumnies, all kinds of insinuations. I have been painted as
black as the evil spirits. Men are here who will tell you 'Grandmoulin
is a hypocrite; Grandmoulin is a robber, a liar, a libertine,'--that I
have ruined my Province and sold my people and committed all the list of
mortal sins. But, my brothers, I turn from those who assert these wicked
falsehoods and I justify myself to you."
"Because I have not sought peace with the strong--because I have not
acted a vanquished to the victors--because I have suffered--but that is
nothing--because I have freely poured out every energy, as I do to-day,"
(and there was certainly vast physical effort in the output he was then
making of himself) "they have branded me that disturber, that robber,
that murderer, that liar and that villain."
"Messieurs, let me tell you a secret that will explain! Scan close and
you will find that there is no man who says these things of me who is
not either a friend of the English, and traitor to you, or else has been
rejected by my associates as unworthy to represent our patriotic
ambitions. I must speak even of the agreeable young man of intellect and
eloquence who opposes me. I do not blame him: I forgive him. He is young
and inexperienced, and he sees things from certain aspects only. Have
you never considered that it was natural for one whose father was an
Englishman, and whose Protestant grandfather came across the seas among
the army that conquered us, to look from a standpoint different from
ours. If his birth and sympathies lead him in another direction from me,
and my enemies have succeeded in prejudicing his mind, make allowance
for him as I myself do, _and trust me_. I adjure you by the holy names
of Mary and Joseph, I am your friend: understand only that Grandmoulin
is your friend! Let the confidence be complete, and the triumph of your
race in the Province of Quebec is secure!"
To Chrysler's utter surprise, the orator, pausing a moment, singled him
out; pointed his finger towards him, and, turning to the people, cried:
"Have I not said Mr. Haviland was a friend of your conquerors? Let me
show you his adviser at this crisis of his plans!"
Grandmoulin knew he was in a community saturated with the Rouge
tradition. He knew that even with all the weak and corruptible elements
of the "back parishes" his chances were inferior on their face to
Chamilly's, and he felt that he must at least retain his adherents here
or lose the county. It was only after a final, truly magnificent effort
of eloquence that he withdrew, and cheers upon cheers followed him,
especially from a party among whom Cuiller, in a state of intoxication,
was prominent. It was the first time that Grandmoulin had appeared in
the neighborhood, and he had evidently created a great impression.