_A CANADIAN HOME._
THE house occupied by Jacques Le Ber in Ville Marie stood at the
corner of St. Paul and St. Joseph streets. The front windows commanded a
view of the St. Lawrence, while those at the back overlooked undulating
meadows and woodlands, crowned by Mount Royal, on whose summit, amidst
the thick foliage, gleamed the tall cross which in fulfilment of his vow
Maisonneuve had himself borne up the steep mountain track. The house was
a substantial building, long and low, with high peaked roof and
overhanging eaves. The rooms were large, with low ceilings and immense
chimneys taking up half one side of the wall. The furnishings bore
evidence of wealth and comfort, displayed in old chairs and tabourets,
their covers worked in satin stitch, the buffet and tables of
cherry-wood all in plain solid bourgeois style. On either side of the
street door were placed wooden benches, where the family and visitors
gathered for recreation in the summer evenings. In a wing or annex
adjoining was the shop, the foundation of the successful trader’s
wealth, in which were stored quantities of beaver-skins awaiting
shipment to France, as well as various commodities required by the
settlers, and such provisions as were considered necessary in fitting
out the voyageurs for their long expeditions to the West and for
purposes of trade with the Indian tribes. At the back of the house the
garden bloomed with fragrant, old-fashioned flowers; there, too,
carefully cultivated pear and plum trees revived a memory of Old France.
Though Le Ber’s own family consisted of but a daughter and three sons,
the household was a large one. His home was a capacious abode, extending
a kindly welcome to all who might care to seek its shelter. And it was
always full to overflowing; friends, relatives, guests, servants and
retainers thronged the roomy chambers. As at the settlement, its
occupants were divided into two clearly defined parties who were always
at daggers drawn—the worldly and the devout. In its earliest days Ville
Marie had been regulated like a religious community. The mental
atmosphere was saturated with hare-brained enthusiasm; it was an age of
miracles—the very existence of the little colony was a marvel. But the
severity of the ecclesiastical rule and the unrelenting vigilance of the
Jesuits were resented by many of the more worldly spirits. In the midst
of pressing dangers and heroic struggles there was a natural reaction in
favor of the frivolous gaiety so characteristic of the volatile French
temperament. The presence of a number of officers from France, too,
whose piety was less conspicuous than their love of pleasure, served to
keep this spirit of resistance alive.
The wealthy burgher’s home had, owing to his daughter’s renunciation of
the world and its pleasures, acquired a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of
his co-religionists. She, the richest heiress of New France, had in the
bloom of her youth taken a vow of perpetual seclusion, poverty and
chastity, in order to devote herself to a life of contemplation. The
god-child of Chomody de Maisonneuve and Marguerite Bourgeois, brought up
in an atmosphere of visions and miracles, the halo of saintship
glittered before her young eyes like a diamond crown, and she
entertained a firm determination to scale the steepest heights of virtue
and self-sacrifice. Looking down with spiritual pride upon the common
herd of Christians, busied with the ordinary duties of life, she
eschewed the visible and present, aspiring only to live for the heaven
beyond. Lost in the vagaries of an absorbing mysticism, Jeanne Le Ber
was unrelenting in the practice of humiliation and self-abnegation.
Wonderful stories of her superior sanctity were whispered abroad. She
wore a horse-hair skirt and belt, allowed herself scarcely any sleep,
and confined her diet to the coarsest and meanest of food. She held no
communication with those nearest to her by ties of blood. Two years
after her retirement from the world her mother was attacked by fatal
illness, and though the sound of the poor woman’s groans penetrated to
her daughter’s chamber, the would-be saint denied herself the privilege
of attending her parent’s death-bed. Though Jeanne Le Ber’s face was
never seen except by the one person who waited upon her, nor her voice
ever heard by those most closely connected with her, yet from the
secluded chamber which for several years she had never quitted, that
voiceless presence exercised a potent ascendency.
This influence had operated most powerfully upon her brother Pierre, a
youth of mystical tendencies. Sensitive, full of refinement, quick and
impatient as a thoroughbred, he had been one of Charon’s early
associates—the only one who remained faithful to the end. Possessing
keen artistic perceptions, he yet lacked power of execution. Few in the
colony had either leisure or inclination for the cultivation of the fine
arts, and Pierre Le Ber’s paintings were received by his contemporaries
with an admiration untinged by criticism. His early training had
predisposed him to aceticism, but his natural temperament, against which
he battled with ceaseless resistance, inclined him to a sensuous delight
in beauty, harmony, and brightness. His religion was that of the
affections and sentiments; his imagination, warmed by the ardor of his
faith, shaped the ideal forms of his worship into visible realities. He
displayed a curious ingenuity in inventing torments for himself, wearing
a belt covered with sharp points, whipping himself with a scourge of
small cords until his shoulders were one great wound, playing at beggar,
eating mouldy food, and performing the most repulsive and disagreeable
offices in hospitals. More than once the rich merchant’s eldest son had
been seen staggering through St. Paul Street with a lame beggar, whom he
was bearing through the mud, seated on his back. As Jacques Le Ber de
Senneville, the second son, was a man of the world of fashion and of
courts, and Jean Le Ber du Chesne a man of action and energy, so Pierre
was a dreamer of dreams, a beholder of visions.
The relations between Le Ber and the Marquise de Monesthrol had at one
time furnished gossip to the small community at Ville Marie, which,
during the long winter months cut off from the world, had little but
scandal to serve as a diversion. On his return from a voyage to France
the merchant was accompanied by the Marquise (a perfect type of the
_grande dame_ of the period), a child two years old, and a young
attendant. Even to his closest friends Le Ber had never offered further
explanation than to say that in his youth he had been under obligations
to Madame de Monesthrol’s family, and that on his return to France,
finding her widowed and in trouble, he had been proud to offer her a
home for herself and her orphan niece in the New World. The lady on her
part always warmly acknowledged her indebtedness to the Canadian
merchant. People coming out from France brought rumors of great
pecuniary trouble which had fallen upon Madame’s branch of the family,
and of a terrible tragedy which had deprived her of her husband; but the
most rampant curiosity sank abashed before the lady’s dignified grace,
while the maid Nanon’s sharp tongue and ready wit were capable of
repulsing all intrusive questions. Though Diane persisted in calling Le
Ber her uncle, and in claiming his sons as cousins, it was plain that no
tie of blood existed between them. The line of demarcation between
patrician and plebeian was very clearly defined in those days; no one
could doubt the claim of the de Monesthrols to noble birth—indeed the
family was one of the most noble and powerful of the kingdom of
France—while Le Ber boasted of no pretension higher than the
respectable _bourgeoisie_.
Nor was the obligation altogether on one side. It was whispered that
even in her fallen fortunes the Marquise retained considerable influence
at Court, that the appointment of Le Ber’s second son as one of the
Dauphin’s pages, and later his commission in the Marines, had been due
to her influence, and that the patent of nobility upon which the trader
had set his heart would yet be obtained by the same favor. While anxious
to obtain a high place for himself and his children in the heavenly
kingdom, Le Ber’s affections had by no means become alienated from the
affairs of this world. It was conjectured by those who knew him best
that a sincere reverence for rank was one of his prominent traits. As
his daughter’s aspirations after saintliness conferred upon him an
especial distinction with the ecclesiastical authorities, so the
Marquise’s sojourn beneath his roof bestowed upon his home a stamp of
fashion and exclusiveness to which he otherwise would have had no
pretension. A patent of nobility had, some time before, been conferred
upon his brother-in-law, Charles le Moyne, and it was bitter to the
ambitious man that his own sons should be debarred from wearing the
sword with which his nephews swaggered so gallantly.
Though born and bred in the focus of a most gorgeous civilization,
reared like a princess amidst obsequious troops of vassals and
retainers, having enjoyed a life of wit and splendor amidst a brilliant
and dazzling society, and then suddenly, in her downfall, banished away
to the ends of the earth, surrounded by perils and privations, Madame de
Monesthrol wasted no time in vain regrets. Like many another of her
class, she displayed a marvellous power of accommodating herself to
circumstances and extracting pleasure and profit from them. In her
former life she had loved, rejoiced and suffered with her whole heart;
now there was nothing for it but to make acquaintance with the practical
and inexorable. She coolly counted chances and weighed consequences, and
then, fully and freely, accepted the situation and its conditions. A
submissive spirit might be patient, a strong will could supply
resolution; here existed an elastic mind, a willingness to seek comfort,
a power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding enjoyment
in many simple occupations which carried her away from the memory of her
sorrows.
In her fantastic French desire to act the new role to perfection she
would fain have adapted herself more quickly than was possible to her
new surroundings. She saw no reason why, with all the ease of a woman of
the world and the loftiness of a great lady, she should not sell in the
shop or undertake a share of the superintendence of the domestic
affairs, as Le Ber’s wife had done. She was promptly called from these
delusions by Demoiselle[3] Le Ber’s bewildered consternation, Nanon’s
shrill clamor, and more than all by the shocked and genuine distress of
the trader himself.
“I am well aware, Madam la Marquise, that the home I have been able to
offer is entirely unworthy your dignity. Have I failed in showing my
appreciation of the honor your coming has conferred upon me that you
should treat me thus?” the host reproached his guest.
“Even a dog can die,” the lady replied with spirit. “I am not of puddle
blood—I, Adrienne Monesthrol—that I should perish at the first breath
of adversity. Still, my old and good friend, to whom I owe so
much”—Madame laid her white jewelled hand upon the merchant’s arm, and
when she softened there was something wonderfully winning in this
woman’s proud gentleness—“if it pleases you best that I should remain
seated like an image I must even yield, and give up all hope of being
useful.”
Then Le Ber kissed the gracious hand respectfully, for by him the French
lady was encircled with a halo of reverence.
Perceiving that her well-intentioned efforts had failed, Madame,
philosophically reviewing all the facts of the case, graciously
permitted herself to remain upon the pedestal where the loyalty of her
devoted friend had placed her.
In New France the appendages of an old-established civilization
flourished side by side with the rough usages of an almost unbroken
wilderness. Amidst the solid comforts of this bourgeois home, the
Marquise established a little court over which she reigned by sheer
majesty, ruling without effort or design, governing because it was her
nature so to do.
Madame’s bedroom, which was the great chamber of reception, was always
warm and heavily perfumed. In the upper part the bed was placed, raised
above the rest of the room by a few steps, and further divided from it
by a row of slight low pillars. The bed was an immense four-poster,
seven feet each way, with gauze and silk curtains, and a blue satin
counterpane embroidered with convolvulus and carnations. The space
beside the bed, called the _ruelle_, was furnished sumptuously with
pictures, statuettes, vases, gilded mirrors, fancy tables of buhl and
ormolu, chairs and stools of various kinds covered with satin and
destined to accommodate Madame’s guests with wise adaptation to the rank
and pretensions of each.
Before the window on a stand were pots of flowers, and in small tubs
bloomed orange trees, above which hung canaries in gilt cages. There
were strips of Persian carpets on the floor; mirrors gleamed in filigree
frames; a harpsichord stood in the corner. The chairs were of gilt ebony
with cushions in tambour. Opposite Madame’s chair hung the portrait of a
young man, in lace cravat and half armor, the _cordon bleu_ of the Order
of St. Louis worn conspicuously across his velvet coat. The face was
gay, reckless, handsome; and before the picture hung a veil of silken
gauze. Most people supposed this to be the portrait of the Marquise’s
husband; Diane knew that it was that of the Marquis’ younger brother,
her own father, the Chevalier Raoul Anatole de Monesthrol, who had been
killed while fighting with the King’s armies in Flanders. On the 12th of
May every year the Marquise spent the day in fasting and prayer. Though
the subject was never alluded to, nor explanations ever offered, the
young girl understood that this custom was in some way connected with
her father’s death.
A draped recess held an ivory crucifix and a Book of Hours. A trailing
ruby velvet curtain veiled the door. A quaint sensuous charm hung about
the apartment, which was enhanced by the stately figure of the lady
herself. Like others of her station, Madame, however heavy at heart, was
consummate mistress of her outward behavior. She sat with fan hanging on
one arm and jewelled snuff-box within reach, her mobile aristocratic
features displayed to advantage by her dress, a panniered robe of blue
and silver brocade. Madame’s common employment consisted in unpicking
gold lace, which Le Ber disposed of for her in the regular market as
bullion.
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[3] Only ladies of rank were styled Madame.