1691-1695.
An Interlude.
Appeal of Frontenac • His Opponents • His Services • Rivalry and Strife
• Bishop Saint-Vallier • Society at the Château • Private Theatricals •
Alarm of the Clergy • Tartuffe • A Singular Bargain • Mareuil and the
Bishop • Mareuil on Trial • Zeal of Saint-Vallier • Scandals at Montreal
• Appeal to the King • The Strife composed • Libel against Frontenac.
While the Canadians hailed Frontenac as a father, he found also some
recognition of his services from his masters at the court. The king
wrote him a letter with his own hand, to express satisfaction at the
defence of Quebec, and sent him a gift of two thousand crowns. He
greatly needed the money, but prized the letter still more, and wrote to
his relative, the minister Ponchartrain: "The gift you procured for me,
this year, has helped me very much towards paying the great expenses
which the crisis of our affairs and the excessive cost of living here
have caused me; but, though I receive this mark of his Majesty's
goodness with the utmost respect and gratitude, I confess that I feel
far more deeply the satisfaction that he has been pleased to express
with my services. The raising of the siege of Quebec did not deserve all
the attention that I hear he has given it in the midst of so many
important events, and therefore I must needs ascribe it to your kindness
in commending it to his notice. This leads me to hope that whenever some
office, or permanent employment, or some mark of dignity or distinction,
may offer itself, you will put me on the list as well as others who have
the honor to be as closely connected with you as I am; for it would be
very hard to find myself forgotten because I am in a remote country,
where it is more difficult and dangerous to serve the king than
elsewhere. I have consumed all my property. Nothing is left but what the
king gives me; and I have reached an age where, though neither strength
nor goodwill fail me as yet, and though the latter will last as long as
I live, I see myself on the eve of losing the former: so that a post a
little more secure and tranquil than the government of Canada will soon
suit my time of life; and, if I can be assured of your support, I shall
not despair of getting such a one. Please then to permit my wife and my
friends to refresh your memory now and then on this point." [1] Again,
in the following year: "I have been encouraged to believe that the gift
of two thousand crowns, which his Majesty made me last year, would be
continued; but apparently you have not been able to obtain it, for I
think that you know the difficulty I have in living here on my salary. I
hope that, when you find a better opportunity, you will try to procure
me this favor. My only trust is in your support; and I am persuaded
that, having the honor to be so closely connected with you, you would
reproach yourself, if you saw me sink into decrepitude, without
resources and without honors." [2] And still again he appeals to the
minister for "some permanent and honorable place attended with the marks
of distinction, which are more grateful than all the rest to a heart
shaped after the right pattern." [3] In return for these sturdy
applications, he got nothing for the present but a continuance of the
king's gift of two thousand crowns.
[1] Frontenac au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1691.
[2] Frontenac au Ministre, 15 Sept., 1692.
[3] Ibid., 25 Oct., 1693.
Not every voice in the colony sounded the governor's praise. Now, as
always, he had enemies in state and Church. It is true that the quarrels
and the bursts of passion that marked his first term of government now
rarely occurred, but this was not so much due to a change in Frontenac
himself as to a change in the conditions around him. The war made him
indispensable. He had gained what he wanted, the consciousness of
mastery; and under its soothing influence he was less irritable and
exacting. He lived with the bishop on terms of mutual courtesy, while
his relations with his colleague, the intendant, were commonly smooth
enough on the surface; for Champigny, warned by the court not to offend
him, treated him with studied deference, and was usually treated in
return with urbane condescension. During all this time, the intendant
was complaining of him to the minister. "He is spending a great deal of
money; but he is master, and does what he pleases. I can only keep the
peace by yielding every thing." [4] "He wants to reduce me to a nobody."
And, among other similar charges, he says that the governor receives pay
for garrisons that do not exist, and keeps it for himself. "Do not tell
that I said so," adds the prudent Champigny, "for it would make great
trouble, if he knew it." [5] Frontenac, perfectly aware of these covert
attacks, desires the minister not to heed "the falsehoods and impostures
uttered against me by persons who meddle with what does not concern
them." [6] He alludes to Champigny's allies, the Jesuits, who, as he
thought, had also maligned him. "Since I have been here, I have spared
no pains to gain the goodwill of Monsieur the intendant, and may God
grant that the counsels which he is too ready to receive from certain
persons who have never been friends of peace and harmony do not sometime
make division between us. But I close my eyes to all that, and shall
still persevere." [7] In another letter to Ponchartrain, he says: "I
write you this in private, because I have been informed by my wife that
charges have been made to you against my conduct since my return to this
country. I promise you, Monseigneur, that, whatever my accusers do, they
will not make me change conduct towards them, and that I shall still
treat them with consideration. I merely ask your leave most humbly to
represent that, having maintained this colony in full prosperity during
the ten years when I formerly held the government of it, I nevertheless
fell a sacrifice to the artifice and fury of those whose encroachments,
and whose excessive and unauthorized power, my duty and my passionate
affection for the service of the king obliged me in conscience to
repress. My recall, which made them masters in the conduct of the
government, was followed by all the disasters which overwhelmed this
unhappy colony. The millions that the king spent here, the troops that
he sent out, and the Canadians that he took into pay, all went for
nothing. Most of the soldiers, and no small number of brave Canadians,
perished in enterprises ill devised and ruinous to the country, which I
found on my arrival ravaged with unheard-of cruelty by the Iroquois,
without resistance, and in sight of the troops and of the forts. The
inhabitants were discouraged, and unnerved by want of confidence in
their chiefs; while the friendly Indians, seeing our weakness, were
ready to join our enemies. I was fortunate enough and diligent enough to
change this deplorable state of things, and drive away the English, whom
my predecessors did not have on their hands, and this too with only half
as many troops as they had. I am far from wishing to blame their
conduct. I leave you to judge it. But I cannot have the tranquillity and
freedom of mind which I need for the work I have to do here, without
feeling entire confidence that the cabal which is again forming against
me cannot produce impressions which may prevent you from doing me
justice. For the rest, if it is thought fit that I should leave the
priests to do as they like, I shall be delivered from an infinity of
troubles and cares, in which I can have no other interest than the good
of the colony, the trade of the kingdom, and the peace of the king's
subjects, and of which I alone bear the burden, as well as the jealousy
of sundry persons, and the iniquity of the ecclesiastics, who begin to
call impious those who are obliged to oppose their passions and their
interests." [8]
[4] Champigny au Ministre, 12 Oct., 1691.
[5] Ibid., 4 Nov., 1693.
[6] Frontenac au Ministre, 15 Sept., 1692.
[7] Ibid., 20 Oct., 1691.
[8] "L'iniquité des ecclésiastiques qui commencent à traiter d'impies
ceux qui sont obligés de resister à leurs passions et à leurs interêts."
Frontenac au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1691.
As Champigny always sided with the Jesuits, his relations with Frontenac
grew daily more critical. Open rupture at length seemed imminent, and
the king interposed to keep the peace. "There has been discord between
you under a show of harmony," he wrote to the disputants. [9] Frontenac
was exhorted to forbearance and calmness; while the intendant was told
that he allowed himself to be made an instrument of others, and that his
charges against the governor proved nothing but his own ill-temper. [10]
The minister wrote in vain. The bickerings that he reproved were but
premonitions of a greater strife.
[9] Mémoire du Roy pour Frontenac et Champigny, 1694.
[10] Le Ministre à Frontenac, 8 May, 1694; Le Ministre à Champigny, même
date.
Bishop Saint-Vallier was a rigid, austere, and contentious prelate, who
loved power as much as Frontenac himself, and thought that, as the
deputy of Christ, it was his duty to exercise it to the utmost. The
governor watched him with a jealous eye, well aware that, though the
pretensions of the Church to supremacy over the civil power had suffered
a check, Saint-Vallier would revive them the moment he thought he could
do so with success. I have shown elsewhere the severity of the
ecclesiastical rule at Quebec, where the zealous pastors watched their
flock with unrelenting vigilance, and associations of pious women helped
them in the work. [11] This naturally produced revolt, and tended to
divide the town into two parties, the worldly and the devout. The love
of pleasure was not extinguished, and various influences helped to keep
it alive. Perhaps none of these was so potent as the presence in winter
of a considerable number of officers from France, whose piety was often
less conspicuous than their love of enjoyment. At the Château St. Louis
a circle of young men, more or less brilliant and accomplished,
surrounded the governor, and formed a centre of social attraction.
Frontenac was not without religion, and he held it becoming a man of his
station not to fail in its observances; but he would not have a Jesuit
confessor, and placed his conscience in the keeping of the Récollet
friars, who were not politically aggressive, and who had been sent to
Canada expressly as a foil to the rival order. They found no favor in
the eyes of the bishop and his adherents, and the governor found none
for the support he lent them.
[11] Old Régime, chap. xix.
The winter that followed the arrival of the furs from the upper lakes
was a season of gayety without precedent since the war began. All was
harmony at Quebec till the carnival approached, when Frontenac, whose
youthful instincts survived his seventy-four years, introduced a
startling novelty which proved the signal of discord. One of his
military circle, the sharp-witted La Motte-Cadillac, thus relates this
untoward event in a letter to a friend: "The winter passed very
pleasantly, especially to the officers, who lived together like
comrades; and, to contribute to their honest enjoyment, the count caused
two plays to be acted, 'Nicomede' and 'Mithridate.'" It was an amateur
performance, in which the officers took part along with some of the
ladies of Quebec. The success was prodigious, and so was the storm that
followed. Half a century before, the Jesuits had grieved over the first
ball in Canada. Private theatricals were still more baneful. "The
clergy," continues La Motte, "beat their alarm drums, armed cap-a-pie,
and snatched their bows and arrows. The Sieur Glandelet was first to
begin, and preached two sermons, in which he tried to prove that nobody
could go to a play without mortal sin. The bishop issued a mandate, and
had it read from the pulpits, in which he speaks of certain impious,
impure, and noxious comedies, insinuating that those which had been
acted were such. The credulous and infatuated people, seduced by the
sermons and the mandate, began already to regard the count as a
corrupter of morals and a destroyer of religion. The numerous party of
the pretended devotees mustered in the streets and public places, and
presently made their way into the houses, to confirm the weak-minded in
their illusion, and tried to make the stronger share it; but, as they
failed in this almost completely, they resolved at last to conquer or
die, and persuaded the bishop to use a strange device, which was to
publish a mandate in the church, whereby the Sieur de Mareuil, a
half-pay lieutenant, was interdicted the use of the sacraments." [12]
[12] La Motte-Cadillac à------, 28 Sept., 1694.
This story needs explanation. Not only had the amateur actors at the
château played two pieces inoffensive enough in themselves, but a report
had been spread that they meant next to perform the famous "Tartuffe" of
Molière, a satire which, while purporting to be levelled against
falsehood, lust, greed, and ambition, covered with a mask of religion,
was rightly thought by a portion of the clergy to be levelled against
themselves. The friends of Frontenac say that the report was a hoax. Be
this as it may, the bishop believed it. "This worthy prelate," continues
the irreverent La Motte, "was afraid of 'Tartuffe,' and had got it into
his head that the count meant to have it played, though he had never
thought of such a thing. Monsieur de Saint-Vallier sweated blood and
water to stop a torrent which existed only in his imagination." It was
now that he launched his two mandates, both on the same day; one
denouncing comedies in general and "Tartuffe" in particular, and the
other smiting Mareuil, who, he says, "uses language capable of making
Heaven blush," and whom he elsewhere stigmatizes as "worse than a
Protestant." [13] It was Mareuil who, as reported, was to play the part
of Tartuffe; and on him, therefore, the brunt of episcopal indignation
fell. He was not a wholly exemplary person. "I mean," says La Motte, "to
show you the truth in all its nakedness. The fact is that, about two
years ago, when the Sieur de Mareuil first came to Canada, and was
carousing with his friends, he sang some indecent song or other. The
count was told of it, and gave him a severe reprimand. This is the
charge against him. After a two years' silence, the pastoral zeal has
wakened, because a play is to be acted which the clergy mean to stop at
any cost."
[13] Mandement au Sujet des Comédies, 16 Jan., 1694; Mandement au Sujet
de certaines Personnes qui tenoient des Discours impies, même date;
Registre du Conseil Souverain.
The bishop found another way of stopping it. He met Frontenac, with the
intendant, near the Jesuit chapel, accosted him on the subject which
filled his thoughts, and offered him a hundred pistoles if he would
prevent the playing of "Tartuffe." Frontenac laughed, and closed the
bargain. Saint-Vallier wrote his note on the spot; and the governor took
it, apparently well pleased to have made the bishop disburse. "I
thought," writes the intendant, "that Monsieur de Frontenac would have
given him back the paper." He did no such thing, but drew the money on
the next day and gave it to the hospitals. [14]
[14] This incident is mentioned by La Motte-Cadillac; by the intendant,
who reports it to the minister; by the minister Ponchartrain, who asks
Frontenac for an explanation; by Frontenac, who passes it off as a jest;
and by several other contemporary writers.
Mareuil, deprived of the sacraments, and held up to reprobation, went to
see the bishop, who refused to receive him; and it is said that he was
taken by the shoulders and put out of doors. He now resolved to bring
his case before the council; but the bishop was informed of his purpose,
and anticipated it. La Motte says "he went before the council on the
first of February, and denounced the Sieur de Mareuil, whom he declared
guilty of impiety towards God, the Virgin, and the Saints, and made a
fine speech in the absence of the count, interrupted by the effusions of
a heart which seemed filled with a profound and infinite charity, but
which, as he said, was pushed to extremity by the rebellion of an
indocile child, who had neglected all his warnings. This was,
nevertheless, assumed; I will not say entirely false."
The bishop did, in fact, make a vehement speech against Mareuil before
the council on the day in question; Mareuil stoutly defending himself,
and entering his appeal against the episcopal mandate. [15] The battle
was now fairly joined. Frontenac stood alone for the accused. The
intendant tacitly favored his opponents. Auteuil, the attorney-general,
and Villeray, the first councillor, owed the governor an old grudge; and
they and their colleagues sided with the bishop, with the outside
support of all the clergy, except the Récollets, who, as usual, ranged
themselves with their patron. At first, Frontenac showed great
moderation, but grew vehement, and then violent, as the dispute
proceeded; as did also the attorney-general, who seems to have done his
best to exasperate him. Frontenac affirmed that, in depriving Mareuil
and others of the sacraments, with no proof of guilt and no previous
warning, and on allegations which, even if true, could not justify the
act, the bishop exceeded his powers, and trenched on those of the king.
The point was delicate. The attorney-general avoided the issue, tried to
raise others, and revived the old quarrel about Frontenac's place in the
council, which had been settled fourteen years before. Other questions
were brought up, and angrily debated. The governor demanded that the
debates, along with the papers which introduced them, should be entered
on the record, that the king might be informed of every thing; but the
demand was refused. The discords of the council chamber spread into the
town. Quebec was divided against itself. Mareuil insulted the bishop;
and some of his scapegrace sympathizers broke the prelate's windows at
night, and smashed his chamber-door. [16] Mareuil was at last ordered to
prison, and the whole affair was referred to the king. [17]
[15] Registre du Conseil Souverain, 1 et 8 Fév., 1694.
[16] Champigny au Ministre, 27 Oct., 1694.
[17] Registre du Conseil Souverain; Requeste du Sieur de Mareuil, Nov.,
1694.
These proceedings consumed the spring, the summer, and a part of the
autumn. Meanwhile, an access of zeal appeared to seize the bishop; and
he launched interdictions to the right and left. Even Champigny was
startled when he refused the sacraments to all but four or five of the
military officers for alleged tampering with the pay of their soldiers,
a matter wholly within the province of the temporal authorities. [18]
During a recess of the council, he set out on a pastoral tour, and,
arriving at Three Rivers, excommunicated an officer named Desjordis for
a reputed intrigue with the wife of another officer. He next repaired to
Sorel, and, being there on a Sunday, was told that two officers had
neglected to go to mass. He wrote to Frontenac, complaining of the
offence. Frontenac sent for the culprits, and rebuked them; but
retracted his words when they proved by several witnesses that they had
been duly present at the rite. [19] The bishop then went up to Montreal,
and discord went with him.
[18] Champigny au Ministre, 24 Oct., 1694. Trouble on this matter had
begun some time before. Mémoire du Roy pour Frontenac et Champigny,
1694; Le Ministre à l'Évêque, 8 Mai, 1694.
[19] La Motte-Cadillac à------, 28 Sept., 1694; Champigny au Ministre,
27 Oct., 1694.
Except Frontenac alone, Callières, the local governor, was the man in
all Canada to whom the country owed most; but, like his chief, he was a
friend of the Récollets, and this did not commend him to the bishop. The
friars were about to receive two novices into their order, and they
invited the bishop to officiate at the ceremony. Callières was also
present, kneeling at a prie-dieu, or prayer-desk, near the middle of the
church. Saint-Vallier, having just said mass, was seating himself in his
arm-chair, close to the altar, when he saw Callières at the prie-dieu,
with the position of which he had already found fault as being too
honorable for a subordinate governor. He now rose, approached the object
of his disapproval, and said, "Monsieur, you are taking a place which
belongs only to Monsieur de Frontenac." Callières replied that the place
was that which properly belonged to him. The bishop rejoined that, if he
did not leave it, he himself would leave the church. "You can do as you
please," said Callières; and the prelate withdrew abruptly through the
sacristy, refusing any farther part in the ceremony. [20] When the
services were over, he ordered the friars to remove the obnoxious
prie-dieu. They obeyed; but an officer of Callières replaced it, and,
unwilling to offend him, they allowed it to remain. On this, the bishop
laid their church under an interdict; that is, he closed it against the
celebration of all the rites of religion. [21] He then issued a pastoral
mandate, in which he charged Father Joseph Denys, their superior, with
offences which he "dared not name for fear of making the paper blush."
[22] His tongue was less bashful than his pen; and he gave out publicly
that the father superior had acted as go-between in an intrigue of his
sister with the Chevalier de Callières. [23] It is said that the
accusation was groundless, and the character of the woman wholly
irreproachable. The Récollets submitted for two months to the bishop's
interdict, then refused to obey longer, and opened their church again.
[20] Procès-verbal du Père Hyacinthe Perrault, Commissaire Provincial
des Récollets (Archives Nationales); Mémoire touchant le Démeslé entre
M. l'Évesque de Québec et le Chevalier de Callières (Ibid.).
[21] Mandement ordonnant de fermer l'Église des Récollets, 13 Mai, 1694.
[22] "Le Supérieur du dit Couvent estant lié avec le Gouverneur de la
dite ville par des interests que tout le monde scait et qu'on n'oseroit
exprimer de peur de faire rougir le papier." Extrait du Mandement de
l'Évesque de Québec (Archives Nationales). He had before charged Mareuil
with language "capable de faire rougir le ciel."
[23] "Mr. l'Évesque accuse publiquement le Rev. Père Joseph, supérieur
des Récollets de Montréal, d'être l'entremetteur d'une galanterie entre
sa sœur et le Gouverneur. Cependant Mr. l'Évesque sait certainement que
le Père Joseph est l'un des meilleurs et des plus saints religieux de
son ordre. Ce qu'il allègue du prétendu commerce entre le Gouverneur et
la Dame de la Naudière (sœur du Père Joseph) est entièrement faux, et il
l'a publié avec scandale, sans preuve et contre toute apparence, la
ditte Dame ayant toujours eu une conduite irréprochable." Mémoire
touchant le Démeslé, etc. Champigny also says that the bishop has
brought this charge, and that Callières declares that he has told a
falsehood. Champigny au Ministre, 27 Oct., 1694.
Quebec, Three Rivers, Sorel, and Montreal had all been ruffled by the
breeze of these dissensions, and the farthest outposts of the wilderness
were not too remote to feel it. La Motte-Cadillac had been sent to
replace Louvigny in the command of Michillimackinac, where he had
scarcely arrived, when trouble fell upon him. "Poor Monsieur de la
Motte-Cadillac," says Frontenac, "would have sent you a journal to show
you the persecutions he has suffered at the post where I placed him, and
where he does wonders, having great influence over the Indians, who both
love and fear him, but he has had no time to copy it. Means have been
found to excite against him three or four officers of the posts
dependent on his, who have put upon him such strange and unheard of
affronts, that I was obliged to send them to prison when they came down
to the colony. A certain Father Carheil, the Jesuit who wrote me such
insolent letters a few years ago, has played an amazing part in this
affair. I shall write about it to Father La Chaise, that he may set it
right. Some remedy must be found; for, if it continues, none of the
officers who were sent to Michillimackinac, the Miamis, the Illinois,
and other places, can stay there on account of the persecutions to which
they are subjected, and the refusal of absolution as soon as they fail
to do what is wanted of them. Joined to all this is a shameful traffic
in influence and money. Monsieur de Tonty could have written to you
about it, if he had not been obliged to go off to the Assinneboins, to
rid himself of all these torments." [24] In fact, there was a chronic
dispute at the forest outposts between the officers and the Jesuits,
concerning which matter much might be said on both sides.
[24] Frontenac à M. de Lagny, 2 Nov., 1695.
The bishop sailed for France. "He has gone," writes Callières, "after
quarrelling with everybody." The various points in dispute were set
before the king. An avalanche of memorials, letters, and procès-verbaux,
descended upon the unfortunate monarch; some concerning Mareuil and the
quarrels in the council, others on the excommunication of Desjordis, and
others on the troubles at Montreal. They were all referred to the king's
privy council. [25] An adjustment was effected: order, if not harmony,
was restored; and the usual distribution of advice, exhortation,
reproof, and menace, was made to the parties in the strife. Frontenac
was commended for defending the royal prerogative, censured for
violence, and admonished to avoid future quarrels. [26] Champigny was
reproved for not supporting the governor, and told that "his Majesty
sees with great pain that, while he is making extraordinary efforts to
sustain Canada at a time so critical, all his cares and all his outlays
are made useless by your misunderstanding with Monsieur de Frontenac."
[27] The attorney-general was sharply reprimanded, told that he must
mend his ways or lose his place, and ordered to make an apology to the
governor. [28] Villeray was not honored by a letter, but the intendant
was directed to tell him that his behavior had greatly displeased the
king. Callières was mildly advised not to take part in the disputes of
the bishop and the Récollets. [29] Thus was conjured down one of the
most bitter as well as the most needless, trivial, and untimely, of the
quarrels that enliven the annals of New France.
[25] Arrest qui ordonne que les Procédures faites entre le Sieur Évesque
de Québec et les Sieurs Mareuil, Desjordis, etc., seront évoquez au
Conseil Privé de Sa Majesté, 3 Juillet, 1695.
[26] Le Ministre à Frontenac, 4 Juin, 1695; Ibid., 8 Juin, 1695.
[27] Le Ministre à Champigny, 4 Juin, 1695; Ibid., 8 Juin, 1695.
[28] Le Ministre à d'Auteuil, 8 Juin, 1695.
[29] Le Ministre à Callières, 8 Juin, 1695.
A generation later, when its incidents had faded from memory, a
passionate and reckless partisan, Abbé La Tour, published, and probably
invented, a story which later writers have copied, till it now forms an
accepted episode of Canadian history. According to him, Frontenac, in
order to ridicule the clergy, formed an amateur company of comedians
expressly to play "Tartuffe;" and, after rehearsing at the château
during three or four months, they acted the piece before a large
audience. "He was not satisfied with having it played at the château,
but wanted the actors and actresses and the dancers, male and female, to
go in full costume, with violins, to play it in all the religious
communities, except the Récollets. He took them first to the house of
the Jesuits, where the crowd entered with him; then to the Hospital, to
the hall of the paupers, whither the nuns were ordered to repair; then
he went to the Ursuline Convent, assembled the sisterhood, and had the
piece played before them. To crown the insult, he wanted next to go to
the seminary, and repeat the spectacle there; but, warning having been
given, he was met on the way, and begged to refrain. He dared not
persist, and withdrew in very ill-humor." [30]
[30] La Tour, Vie de Laval, liv. xii.
Not one of numerous contemporary papers, both official and private, and
written in great part by enemies of Frontenac, contains the slightest
allusion to any such story, and many of them are wholly inconsistent
with it. It may safely be set down as a fabrication to blacken the
memory of the governor, and exhibit the bishop and his adherents as
victims of persecution. [31]
[31] Had an outrage, like that with which Frontenac is here charged,
actually taken place, the registers of the council, the letters of the
intendant and the attorney-general, and the records of the bishopric of
Quebec would not have failed to show it. They show nothing beyond a
report that "Tartuffe" was to be played, and a payment of money by the
bishop in order to prevent it. We are left to infer that it was
prevented accordingly. I have the best authority--that of the superior
of the convent (1871), herself a diligent investigator into the history
of her community--for stating that neither record nor tradition of the
occurrence exists among the Ursulines of Quebec; and I have been unable
to learn that any such exists among the nuns of the Hospital
(Hôtel-Dieu). The contemporary Récit d'une Religieuse Ursuline speaks of
Frontenac with gratitude, as a friend and benefactor, as does also
Mother Juchereau, superior of the Hôtel-Dieu.