The market-place then as now occupied the open square lying between
the great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. The
latter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through its
wide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues of
ancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of the
reverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule of
their order, which rarely permitted them to go singly.
The market-place itself was lively this morning with the number of carts
and stalls ranged on either side of the bright little rivulet which
ran under the old elms that intersected the square, the trees affording
shade and the rivulet drink for man and beast.
A bustling, loquacious crowd of habitans and citizens, wives and
maid-servants, were buying, selling, exchanging compliments, or
complaining of hard times. The marketplace was full, and all were glad
at the termination of the terrible war, and hopeful of the happy effect
of peace in bringing plenty back again to the old market.
The people bustled up and down, testing their weak purses against their
strong desires to fill their baskets with the ripe autumnal fruits
and the products of field and garden, river and basse cour, which lay
temptingly exposed in the little carts of the marketmen and women who on
every side extolled the quality and cheapness of their wares.
There were apples from the Côte de Beaupré, small in size but
impregnated with the flavor of honey; pears grown in the old orchards
about Ange Gardien, and grapes worthy of Bacchus, from the Isle of
Orleans, with baskets of the delicious bilberries that cover the wild
hills of the north shore from the first wane of summer until late in the
autumn.
The drain of the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but Indians
and hunters took their places for the nonce with an abundance of game
of all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly during the years that
men had taken to killing Bostonnais and English instead of deer and wild
turkeys.
Fish was in especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits still
rested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed metaphorically
with money in their mouths.
There were piles of speckled trout fit to be eaten by popes and kings,
taken in the little pure lakes and streams tributary to the Montmorency;
lordly salmon that swarmed in the tidal weirs along the shores of the
St. Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the fisher who drew
them up from their rich river-beds.
There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the seigniories
for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the pride
of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen,
and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eat
tartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cry
of their frugal mother as she spread it thin as if it were gold-leaf:
“Mes enfants, take care of the butter!”
The Commissaries of the Army, in other words the agents of the Grand
Company, had swept the settlements far and near of their herds, and the
habitans soon discovered that the exposure for sale in the market of
the products of the dairy was speedily followed by a visit from the
purveyors of the army, and the seizure of their remaining cattle.
Roots and other esculents of field and garden were more plentiful in the
market, among which might have been seen the newly introduced potato,--a
vegetable long despised in New France, then endured, and now beginning
to be liked and widely cultivated as a prime article of sustenance.
At the upper angle of the square stood a lofty cross or Holy Rood,
overtopping the low roofs of the shops and booths in its neighborhood.
About the foot of the cross was a platform of timber raised a few feet
from the ground, giving a commanding view of the whole market-place.
A crowd of habitans were gathered round this platform listening, some
with exclamations of approval, not unmingled on the part of others with
sounds of dissent, to the fervent address of one of the Jesuit Fathers
from the College, who with crucifix in hand was preaching to the people
upon the vices and backslidings of the times.
Father Glapion, the Superior of the order in New France, a grave,
saturnine man, and several other fathers in close black cassocks and
square caps, stood behind the preacher, watching with keen eyes the
faces of the auditory as if to discover who were for and who were
against the sentiments and opinions promulgated by the preacher.
The storm of the great Jansenist controversy, which rent the Church of
France from top to bottom, had not spared the Colony, where it had early
caused trouble; for that controversy grew out of the Gallican liberties
of the national Church and the right of national participation in its
administrations and appointments. The Jesuits ever fiercely contested
these liberties; they boldly set the tiara above the crown, and
strove to subordinate all opinions of faith, morals, education, and
ecclesiastical government to the infallible judgment of the Pope alone.
The Bishop and clergy of New France had labored hard to prevent the
introduction of that mischievous controversy into the Colony, and
had for the most part succeeded in reserving their flocks, if not
themselves, from its malign influence. The growing agitation in France,
however, made it more difficult to keep down troublesome spirits in the
Colony, and the idea got abroad, not without some foundation, that the
Society of Jesus had secret commercial relations with the Friponne. This
report fanned the smouldering fires of Jansenism into a flame visible
enough and threatening enough to the peace of the Church.
The failure and bankruptcy of Father Vallette's enormous speculations
in the West Indies had filled France with bad debts and protested
obligations which the Society of Jesus repudiated, but which the
Parliament of Paris ordered them to pay. The excitement was intense all
over the Kingdom and the Colonies. On the part of the order it became a
fight for existence.
They were envied for their wealth, and feared for their ability and
their power. The secular clergy were for the most part against them. The
Parliament of Paris, in a violent decree, had declared the Jesuits to
have no legal standing in France. Voltaire and his followers, a growing
host, thundered at them from the one side. The Vatican, in a moment of
inconsistency and ingratitude, thundered at them from the other. They
were in the midst of fire, and still their ability and influence over
individual consciences, and especially over the female sex, prolonged
their power for fifteen years longer, when Louis XV., driven to the wall
by the Jansenists, issued his memorable decree declaring the Jesuits to
be rebels, traitors, and stirrers up of mischief. The King confiscated
their possessions, proscribed their persons, and banished them from the
kingdom as enemies of the State.
Padre Monti, an Italian newly arrived in the Colony, was a man very
different from the venerable Vimont and the Jogues and the Lallements,
who had preached the Evangel to the wild tribes of the forest, and
rejoiced when they won the crown of martyrdom for themselves.
Monti was a bold man in his way, and ready to dare any bold deed in the
interests of religion, which he could not dissociate from the interests
of his order. He stood up, erect and commanding, upon the platform
under the Holy Rood, while he addressed with fiery eloquence and Italian
gesticulation the crowd of people gathered round him.
The subject he chose was an exciting one. He enlarged upon the coming
of Antichrist and upon the new philosophy of the age, the growth of
Gallicanism in the Colony, with its schismatic progeny of Jansenists
and Honnêtes Gens, to the discouragement of true religion and the
endangering of immortal souls.
His covert allusions and sharp innuendoes were perfectly understood by
his hearers, and signs of dissentient feeling were rife among the crowd.
Still, the people continued to listen, on the whole respectfully;
for, whatever might be the sentiment of Old France with respect to the
Jesuits, they had in New France inherited the profound respect of the
colonists, and deserved it.
A few gentlemen, some in military, some in fashionable civil attire,
strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outside
of it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform,
listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it away
in their retentive memories, which would reproduce every word of it when
they sat round the fireside in the coming winter evenings.
One or two Recollets stood at a modest distance from the crowd, still
as statues, with their hands hid in the sleeves of their gray gowns,
shaking their heads at the arguments, and still more at the invectives
of the preacher; for the Recollets were accused, wrongfully perhaps,
of studying the five propositions of Port Royal more than beseemed the
humble followers of St. Francis to do, and they either could not or
would not repel the accusation.
“Padre Monti deserves the best thanks of the Intendant for this sermon,”
remarked the Sieur d'Estebe to Le Mercier, who accompanied him.
“And the worst thanks of His Excellency the Count! It was bold of the
Italian to beard the Governor in that manner! But La Galissonière is too
great a philosopher to mind a priest!” was the half-scoffing reply of Le
Mercier.
“Is he? I do not think so, Le Mercier. I hate them myself, but egad! I
am not philosophic enough to let them know it. One may do so in Paris,
but not in New France. Besides, the Jesuits are just now our fast
friends, and it does not do to quarrel with your supporters.”
“True, D'Estebe! We get no help from the Recollets. Look yonder at
Brothers Ambrose and Daniel! They would like to tie Padre Monti neck and
heels with the cords of St. Francis, and bind him over to keep the peace
towards Port Royal; but the gray gowns are afraid of the black robes.
Padre Monti knew they would not catch the ball when he threw it. The
Recollets are all afraid to hurl it back.”
“Not all,” was the reply; “the Reverend Father de Berey would have
thrown it back with a vengeance. But I confess, Le Mercier, the Padre is
a bold fellow to pitch into the Honnêtes Gens the way he does. I did not
think he would have ventured upon it here in the market, in face of so
many habitans, who swear by the Bourgeois Philibert.”
The bold denunciations by the preacher against the Honnêtes Gens and
against the people's friend and protector, the Bourgeois Philibert,
caused a commotion in the crowd of habitans, who began to utter louder
and louder exclamations of dissent and remonstrance. A close observer
would have noticed angry looks and clenched fists in many parts of the
crowd, pressing closer and closer round the platform.
The signs of increasing tumult in the crowd did not escape the sharp
eyes of Father Glapion, who, seeing that the hot-blooded Italian was
overstepping the bounds of prudence in his harangue, called him by name,
and with a half angry sign brought his sermon suddenly to a close.
Padre Monti obeyed with the unquestioning promptness of an automaton. He
stopped instantly, without rounding the period or finishing the sentence
that was in his mouth.
His flushed and ardent manner changed to the calmness of marble as,
lifting up his hands with a devout oremus, he uttered a brief prayer and
left the puzzled people to finish his speech and digest at leisure his
singular sermon.