CHAPTER XLIX. THE MARKET-PLACE ON ST. MARTIN'S DAY.
The market-place then as now occupied the open square lying betweenthe great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. Thelatter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through itswide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues ofancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of thereverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule oftheir order, which rarely permitted them to go singly.
The market-place itself was lively this morning with the number of cartsand stalls ranged on either side of the bright little rivulet whichran under the old elms that intersected the square, the trees affordingshade and the rivulet drink for man and beast.
A bustling, loquacious crowd of habitans and citizens, wives andmaid-servants, were buying, selling, exchanging compliments, orcomplaining of hard times. The marketplace was full, and all were gladat the termination of the terrible war, and hopeful of the happy effectof peace in bringing plenty back again to the old market.
The people bustled up and down, testing their weak purses against theirstrong desires to fill their baskets with the ripe autumnal fruitsand the products of field and garden, river and basse cour, which laytemptingly exposed in the little carts of the marketmen and women who onevery side extolled the quality and cheapness of their wares.
There were apples from the Cote de Beaupre, small in size butimpregnated with the flavor of honey; pears grown in the old orchardsabout Ange Gardien, and grapes worthy of Bacchus, from the Isle ofOrleans, with baskets of the delicious bilberries that cover the wildhills of the north shore from the first wane of summer until late in theautumn.
The drain of the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but Indiansand hunters took their places for the nonce with an abundance of gameof all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly during the years thatmen had taken to killing Bostonnais and English instead of deer and wildturkeys.
Fish was in especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits stillrested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed metaphoricallywith 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 theSt. Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the fisher who drewthem up from their rich river-beds.
There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the seignioriesfor the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the prideof the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen,and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eattartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cryof 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 GrandCompany, had swept the settlements far and near of their herds, and thehabitans soon discovered that the exposure for sale in the market ofthe products of the dairy was speedily followed by a visit from thepurveyors of the army, and the seizure of their remaining cattle.
Roots and other esculents of field and garden were more plentiful in themarket, among which might have been seen the newly introduced potato,--avegetable long despised in New France, then endured, and now beginningto 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 feetfrom the ground, giving a commanding view of the whole market-place.
A crowd of habitans were gathered round this platform listening, somewith exclamations of approval, not unmingled on the part of others withsounds of dissent, to the fervent address of one of the Jesuit Fathersfrom the College, who with crucifix in hand was preaching to the peopleupon 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 andsquare caps, stood behind the preacher, watching with keen eyes thefaces of the auditory as if to discover who were for and who wereagainst the sentiments and opinions promulgated by the preacher.
The storm of the great Jansenist controversy, which rent the Church ofFrance from top to bottom, had not spared the Colony, where it had earlycaused trouble; for that controversy grew out of the Gallican libertiesof the national Church and the right of national participation in itsadministrations and appointments. The Jesuits ever fiercely contestedthese liberties; they boldly set the tiara above the crown, andstrove to subordinate all opinions of faith, morals, education, andecclesiastical government to the infallible judgment of the Pope alone.
The Bishop and clergy of New France had labored hard to prevent theintroduction of that mischievous controversy into the Colony, andhad for the most part succeeded in reserving their flocks, if notthemselves, from its malign influence. The growing agitation in France,however, made it more difficult to keep down troublesome spirits in theColony, and the idea got abroad, not without some foundation, that theSociety of Jesus had secret commercial relations with the Friponne. Thisreport fanned the smouldering fires of Jansenism into a flame visibleenough and threatening enough to the peace of the Church.
The failure and bankruptcy of Father Vallette's enormous speculationsin the West Indies had filled France with bad debts and protestedobligations which the Society of Jesus repudiated, but which theParliament of Paris ordered them to pay. The excitement was intense allover the Kingdom and the Colonies. On the part of the order it became afight for existence.
They were envied for their wealth, and feared for their ability andtheir power. The secular clergy were for the most part against them. TheParliament of Paris, in a violent decree, had declared the Jesuits tohave no legal standing in France. Voltaire and his followers, a growinghost, thundered at them from the one side. The Vatican, in a moment ofinconsistency and ingratitude, thundered at them from the other. Theywere in the midst of fire, and still their ability and influence overindividual consciences, and especially over the female sex, prolongedtheir power for fifteen years longer, when Louis XV., driven to the wallby the Jansenists, issued his memorable decree declaring the Jesuits tobe rebels, traitors, and stirrers up of mischief. The King confiscatedtheir possessions, proscribed their persons, and banished them from thekingdom as enemies of the State.
Padre Monti, an Italian newly arrived in the Colony, was a man verydifferent from the venerable Vimont and the Jogues and the Lallements,who had preached the Evangel to the wild tribes of the forest, andrejoiced 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 theinterests of religion, which he could not dissociate from the interestsof his order. He stood up, erect and commanding, upon the platformunder the Holy Rood, while he addressed with fiery eloquence and Italiangesticulation the crowd of people gathered round him.
The subject he chose was an exciting one. He enlarged upon the comingof Antichrist and upon the new philosophy of the age, the growth ofGallicanism in the Colony, with its schismatic progeny of Jansenistsand Honnetes Gens, to the discouragement of true religion and theendangering of immortal souls.
His covert allusions and sharp innuendoes were perfectly understood byhis 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 theJesuits, they had in New France inherited the profound respect of thecolonists, and deserved it.
A few gentlemen, some in military, some in fashionable civil attire,strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outsideof it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform,listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it awayin their retentive memories, which would
reproduce every word of it whenthey sat round the fireside in the coming winter evenings.
One or two Recollets stood at a modest distance from the crowd, stillas statues, with their hands hid in the sleeves of their gray gowns,shaking their heads at the arguments, and still more at the invectivesof the preacher; for the Recollets were accused, wrongfully perhaps,of studying the five propositions of Port Royal more than beseemed thehumble followers of St. Francis to do, and they either could not orwould 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 theItalian to beard the Governor in that manner! But La Galissoniere is toogreat a philosopher to mind a priest!" was the half-scoffing reply of LeMercier.
"Is he? I do not think so, Le Mercier. I hate them myself, but egad! Iam 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 fastfriends, and it does not do to quarrel with your supporters."
"True, D'Estebe! We get no help from the Recollets. Look yonder atBrothers Ambrose and Daniel! They would like to tie Padre Monti neck andheels with the cords of St. Francis, and bind him over to keep the peacetowards 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. TheRecollets are all afraid to hurl it back."
"Not all," was the reply; "the Reverend Father de Berey would havethrown it back with a vengeance. But I confess, Le Mercier, the Padre isa bold fellow to pitch into the Honnetes Gens the way he does. I did notthink he would have ventured upon it here in the market, in face of somany habitans, who swear by the Bourgeois Philibert."
The bold denunciations by the preacher against the Honnetes Gens andagainst the people's friend and protector, the Bourgeois Philibert,caused a commotion in the crowd of habitans, who began to utter louderand louder exclamations of dissent and remonstrance. A close observerwould have noticed angry looks and clenched fists in many parts of thecrowd, pressing closer and closer round the platform.
The signs of increasing tumult in the crowd did not escape the sharpeyes of Father Glapion, who, seeing that the hot-blooded Italian wasoverstepping 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. Hestopped instantly, without rounding the period or finishing the sentencethat 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 andleft the puzzled people to finish his speech and digest at leisure hissingular sermon.