THE CHOLERA MORBUS OF 1834—ADMIRABLE COURAGE AND SELF-DENIAL OF THE
PRIESTS OF ROME DURING THAT EPIDEMIC.
I had not been more than three weeks the administrator of the parish of
Charlesbourgh, when the terrible words, “The cholera morbus is in
Quebec!” sent a thrill of terror from one end to the other of Canada.
The cities of Quebec and Montreal, with many surrounding country places,
had been decimated in 1832 by the same terrible scourge. Thousands upon
thousands had fallen its victims; families in every rank of society had
disappeared; for the most skillful physicians of both Europe and America
had been unable to stop its march and ravages. But the year 1833 had
passed without hearing almost of a single case of that fatal disease: we
had all the hope that the justice of God was satisfied, and that He
would no more visit us with that horrible plague. In this, however, we
were to be sadly disappointed.
Charlesbourgh is a kind of suburb of Quebec, the greatest part of its
inhabitants had to go within its walls to sell their goods several times
every week. It was evident that we were to be among the first visited by
that messenger of a just, but angry God. I will never forget the hour
after I had heard: “The cholera is in Quebec!” It was, indeed, a most
solemn hour to me. At a glance, I measured the bottomless abyss which
was dug under my feet. We had no physicians, and there was no
possibility of having any one—for they were to have more work than they
could do in Quebec. I saw that I would have to be both the body and the
soul-physician of the numberless victims of this terrible disease.
The tortures of the dying, the cries of the widows and of the orphans,
the almost unbearable stench of the houses attacked by the scourge, the
desolation and the paralyzing fears of the whole people, the fatherless
and motherless orphans by whom I was to be surrounded, the starving poor
for whom I would have to provide food and clothing when every kind or
work and industry was stopped; but above all, the crowds of penitents
whom the terrors of an impending death would drag to my feet to make
their confessions, that I might forgive their sins, passed through my
mind as so many spectres. I fell on my knees, with a heart beating with
emotions that no pen can describe, and prostrating myself before my too
justly angry God, I cried for mercy; with torrents of tears I asked Him
to take away my life as a sacrifice for my people, but to spare them:
raising my eyes towards a beautiful statue of Mary, whom I believed to
be then the Mother of God, I supplicated her to appease the wrath of her
Son.
I was still on my knees, when several knocks at the door told me that
some one wanted to speak to me—a young woman was there, bathed in tears
and pale as death, who said to me: “My father has just returned from
Quebec, and is dying from the cholera—please come quick to hear his
confession before he expires!”
No tongue will ever be able to tell half of the horrors which strike the
eyes and the mind the first time one enters the house of a man
struggling in the agonies of death from cholera. The other diseases seem
to attack only one part of the body at once, but the cholera is like a
furious tiger, whose sharp teeth and nails tear his victim from head to
feet without sparing any part. The hands and the feet, the legs and the
arms, the stomach, the breast and the bowels are at once tortured. I had
never seen anything so terrific as the fixed eyes of that first victim
whom I had to prepare for death. He was already almost as cold as a
piece of ice. He was vomiting and ejecting an incredible quantity of a
watery and blackish matter, which filled the house with an unbearable
smell. With a feeble voice he requested me to hear the confession of his
sins, and I ordered the family to withdraw and leave me alone, that they
might not hear the sad story of his transgressions. But he had not said
five words before he cried out: “Oh my God! what horrible cramps in my
leg! For God’s sake, rub it.” And when I had given up hearing his
confession to rub the leg, he cried out again: “Oh! what horrible cramps
in my arms!—in my feet!—in my shoulders!—in my stomach!” And to the
utmost of my capacity and my strength, I rubbed his arms, his feet, his
shoulders, his breast, till I felt so exhausted and covered with
perspiration, that I feared I should faint. During that time the fetid
matter ejected from his stomach, besmeared me almost from head to foot.
I called for help, and two strong men continued with me to rub the poor
dying man.
It seemed evident that he could not live very long; his sufferings
looked so horrible and unbearable! I administered him the sacrament of
extreme-unction. But I did not leave the house after that ceremony, as
it is the custom of the priests. It was the first time that I had met
face to face with that giant which had covered so many nations with
desolation and ruin, caused so many torrents of tears to flow. I had
heard so much of him! I knew that, till then, nothing had been able to
stop his forward march! He had scornfully gone through the obstacles
which the most powerful nations had placed before him to retard his
progress. He had mocked the art and the science of the most skillful
physicians all over the world! In a single step, he had gone from Moscow
to Paris!—and in another step he had crossed the bottomless seas which
the hands of the Almighty have spread between Europe and America! That
king of terrors, after piling in their graves, by millions, the rich and
the poor, the old and the young, whom he had met on his march through
Asia, Africa, Europe and America, was now before me! Nay, he was
torturing, before my eyes, the first victim he had chosen among my
people! But the more I felt powerless in the presence of that mighty
giant, the more I wanted to see him face to face. I had as a secret
pleasure, a holy pride, in daring him. I wanted to tell him: “I do not
fear you! You mercilessly attack my people, but with the help of God, in
the strength of the One who died on Calvary for me, and who told me that
nothing was more sweet and glorious than to give my life for my friends,
I will meet and fight you everywhere when you attack any one of those
sheep who are dearer to me than my own life!”
Standing by the bedside of the dying man, whilst I rubbed his limbs to
alleviate his tortures, I exhorted him to repent. But I closely watched
that hand to hand battle—that merciless and unequal struggle between the
giant and his poor victim. His agony was long and terrible, for he was a
man of great bodily strength. But after several hours of the most
frightful pains, he quietly breathed his last. The house was crowded
with the neighbors and relations, who, forgetful of the danger of
catching the disease, had come to see him. We all knelt and prayed for
the departed soul, after which I gave them a few words about the
necessity of giving up their sins and keeping themselves ready to die
and go at the Master’s call.
I then left that desolated house with feelings of distress which no pen
can portray. When I got back to the parsonage, after praying and weeping
alone in my closet, I took a bath, and washed myself with vinegar and a
mixture of camphor, as a preventive against the epidemic. The rest of
the day, till ten at night, was spent in hearing the confessions of a
great number of people whom the fear of death had dragged around my
confessional box that I might forgive their sins. This hearing of
confession was interrupted only at ten o’clock at night, when I was
called to the cemetery to bury the first victim of the cholera in
Charlesbourgh. A great number of people had accompanied the corpse to
his last resting-place: the night was beautiful, the atmosphere balmy,
and the moon and stars had never appeared to me so bright. The stillness
of the night was broken only by the sobs of the relations and friends of
the deceased. It was one of the best opportunities God had ever given me
of exhorting the people to repentance. I took for my text: “Therefore,
be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man
cometh.” The spectacle of that grave, filled by a man who twenty-four
hours before, was full of health and life in the midst of his happy
family, was speaking more eloquently than the words of my lips, to show
that we must be always ready. And never any people entered the threshold
of their homes with more solemn thoughts than those to whom I spoke,
that night, in the midst of the graveyard.
The history of that day is the history of the forty days which
followed—for not a single one of them passed without my being called to
visit a victim of the cholera—more than one hundred people were attacked
by the terrible disease, nearly forty of whom died!
I cannot sufficiently thank my merciful God for having protected me in
such a marvelous way that I had not a single hour of disease during
those two months of hard labors and sore trials. I had to visit the sick
not only as a priest, but as physician also; for seeing, at first, the
absolute impossibility of persuading any physician from Quebec to give
up their rich city patients for our more humble farmers, I felt it was
my duty to make myself as expert as I could in the art of helping the
victims of that cruel and loathsome disease: I studied the best authors
on that subject, consulted the most skillful physicians, got a little
pharmacy which would have done honor to an old physician, and I gave my
care and my medicine gratis. Very soon the good people of Charlesbourgh
put as much, if not more confidence, in my medical care, as in any other
of the best physicians of the country. More than once, I had to rub the
limbs of so many patients in the same day, that the skin of my hands was
taken away, and several times the blood come out from the wounds. Dr.
Painchaud, one of the ablest physicians of Quebec, who was my personal
friend, told me after, that it was a most extraordinary thing that I had
not fallen a victim to that disease.
I would never have mentioned what I did, in those never-to-be-forgotten
days of the cholera of 1834, when one of the most horrible epidemics
which the world has ever seen spread desolation and death almost all
over Canada, if I had been alone to work as I did; but I am happy and
proud to say that, without a single exception, the French Canadian
priests, whose parishes were attacked by that pestilence, did the same.
I could name hundreds of them who, during several months, also, day
after day and night after night, bravely met and fought the enemy, and
fearlessly presented their breasts to its blows. I could even name
scores of them who heroically fell and died when facing the foe on that
battlefield!
We must be honest and true towards the Roman Catholic priests of Canada.
Few men, if even any, have shown more courage and self-denial in the
hour of danger than they did. I have seen them at work during the two
memorable years of 1832 and 1834, with a courage and self-denial worthy
of the admiration of heaven and earth. Though they knew well that the
most horrible tortures and death might be the price of their
devotedness, I have not known a single one of them who ever shrank
before the danger. At the first appeal, in the midst of the darkest and
stormiest nights, as well as in the light of the brightest days, they
were always ready to leave their warm and comfortable beds to run to the
rescue of the sick and dying.
But, shall we conclude from that, as the priests of Rome want us to do,
that their religion is the true and divine religion of Christ? Must we
believe that because the priests are brave, admirably brave, and die the
death of heroes on the battlefields, they are the true, the only priests
of Christ, the successors of the apostles—the ministers of the religion
out of which there is no salvation? No!
Was it because his religion was the divine and only true one that the
millionaire Stephen Gerard, when in 1793 Philadelphia was decimated by a
most frightful epidemic, went from house to house, visiting the sick,
serving, washing them with his own hands, and even helping to put them
into their coffins? I ask it again, is it because his religion was the
divine religion of Jesus that that remarkable man, during several
months, lived among the dying and the dead, to help them, when his
immense fortune allowed him to put a whole world between him and the
danger? No; for every one knows that Stephen Gerard was a deist, who did
not believe in Christ.
Was it because they followed the true religion that, in the last war
between Russia and Turkey, a whole regiment of Turks heroically ran to a
sure death to obey the order of their general, who commanded them to
charge bayonets on a Russian battery, which was pouring upon them a real
hail of bullets and canisters? No! surely no!
These Turks were brave, fearless, heroic soldiers, but nothing more. So
the priests of the Pope, who expose themselves in the hour of danger,
are brave, fearless, heroic soldiers of the Pope—but they are nothing
more.
Was it because they were good Christians that the soldiers of a French
regiment, at Austerlitz, consented to be slaughtered to the last, at the
head of a bridge where Napoleon had ordered them to remain, with these
celebrated words: “Soldiers! stand there and fight to the last; you will
all be killed; but you will save the army, and we will gain the day!”
Those soldiers were admirably well disciplined—they loved their flag
more than their lives—they knew only one thing in the world: “Obey the
command of Napoleon!” They fought like giants and died like heroes. So
the priests are a well-disciplined band of soldiers; they are trained to
love their church more than their own life; they also know only one
thing: “Obey your superior, the Pope!” they fight the battle of their
church like giants, and they die like heroes!
Who has not read the history of the renowned French man-of-war, the
“Tonnant?” When she had lost her masts, and was so crippled by the red
bullets of the English fleet that there was no possibility of escape,
what did the soldiers and mariners of that ship answer to the cries of
“Surrender!” which came from the English admiral? “We die, but do not
surrender!”
They all went to the bottom of the sea, and perished rather than see
their proud banners fall into the hands of the foe!
Is it because those French warriors were good Christians that they
preferred to die rather than give up their flag? No! But they knew that
the eyes of their country, the eyes of the whole world were upon them.
Life became to them a trifle: it became nothing when placed in the
balance against what they considered their honor, and the honor of their
fair and noble country;—nay, life became an undesirable thing, when it
was weighted against the glory of dying at the post of duty and honor.
So it is with the priest of Rome. He knows that the eyes of his people,
and of his superiors—the eyes of his whole church are upon him. He knows
that if he shrinks in the hour of danger, he will forever lose their
confidence and their esteem; that he will lose his position and live the
life of a degraded man! Death seems preferable to such a life.
Besides, it is not only in the gospel of Christ that we read: “This is
my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” “Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends.” Our great God has written these words in the hearts of all the
children of Adam. He has written them in the very heart of humanity.
These words are engraven in the hearts of the Turks of Constantinople,
as well as in the hearts of the priests of Canada. They are engraven in
the hearts of the Esquimaux of the icy regions of Greenland, as well as
in the hearts of the refined citizens of Paris.
Hence, in the midst of the wreck of almost all the other virtues, we
find a spark of that sacred fire, kept alive, everywhere. For again, God
Almighty himself has breathed that spark of fire and life into the heart
of man when he made him in his own image. We find that spark of holy and
inextinguishable fire of love and life even among the most depraved
nations. For that nation must infallibly perish and disappear the day it
has lost it entirely. This is the reason why, even among the degraded
idolaters of ancient and modern times, we find acts of admirable
devotedness and self-sacrifice. Read the history of the Iroquois,
written by the Jesuit Father, Charlevoix, and you will see how the
savages of our forests often raised themselves to the very stature of
giants at the approach of death, when the honor of their nations, or the
interests of their friends, or their own reputation was at stake. No men
have ever carried the contempt of pain and death so far, perhaps, as the
heathen Iroquois of this continent.
Yes! let the people of Canada read the history of “La Nouvelle France,”
and they will cease from presenting to us the courage of their priests
as an indication of the divinity of their religion. For there they will
see that the worshippers of the wooden gods of the forests have
equalled, if not surpassed, in courage and self-denial in the face of
death, the courage and self-denial of the priests of the wafer god of
Rome.