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and castrated, then burned to death in the Lower Town.
    The whole of Québec society turned out for the occasion with a festive air. Two young ladies fainted straight away at the sight of the condemned man’s mutilated body, and afterwards made a show of needing to be carried thence by several gallants who made a sort of invalid’s litter with their arms.
    The sisters refused to pay for my work, which was confiscated by the bishop. Later, they begged it of him at no charge and had gowns and pantaloons painted over the naked members by one Michel Lemelin, a plasterer who owed them money for medical care.
    I never saw the painting again.
    Mistress Arlette, a Shameful Interlude
    I was bitterly disappointed, as you may guess, having found Canada a poor place for an artist to make his way.
    I began a period of spiritual decline and excessive drinking. Turning my face from God, I often borrowed money from my students or robbed the poor box to buy the cheap, watered trade brandy which the Jesuits exchanged with the up-country savages for beaver hides.
    Several times the night watch discovered me asleep in the gutter, curled up between a couple of snoring braves, with my robe over my face. It was only their affection for me and the belief, happily common in the town, that I was an artistic genius, which kept them from reporting me to Bishop Laval.
    That fall, Governor Mézy, ever more scattered in mind and suffering a theological distress, went on a pilgrimage to Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, crawling the whole way upon his knees whilst clad in his armour. He died the following spring and was buried in a pauper’s grave.
    His former friend, the bishop, took no notice.
    The Iroquois sent a mission to Québec to sue for peace, then killed a farmer named De Lorimier in broad daylight. The new governor tried three soldiers for murdering an Indian and hanged them from the wall by the city gate. The savages were appalled at what to them seemed a wasteful and barbaric punishment. They said they would just as soon have had an apology and some brandy.
    A comet appeared in the sky in the shape of a blazing canoe. Everyone agreed it was a difficult sign to interpret.
    My former student Boisvert, now aged seventeen, unemployed, and the father of two, picked my pocket during the procession on the day of the Fête-Dieu.
    At my request, he was whipped in the Upper Town, then marched to the Lower Town and set up again.
    When it was over, I was so horrified I fell on my knees before him and begged his forgiveness. Later I lent him my cloak to hide his wounds, which afterward I never saw again, Boisvert having disappeared into the forest to live with the savages.
    (It was difficult to blame the young men for thus liberating themselves from the yoke of wage work in the company warehouses, the drudgery of clearing the land or the hectoring of their young wives. In the forest, they lived the lives of nobles in Old France, hunting large mammals for food and debauching Indian maidens, who were, I was told, nubile and complaisant.)
    I took to visiting Arlette, the young man’s abandoned wife, to offer her the consolation of my ministry, not to mention taking the price of the cloak out in hot meals served close to the fire.
    She was a fat, depressed woman with a nose like a knuckle — but her desire to serve the Lord was ardent. She told me how she volunteered without a second thought to come to the New World when the religious nature of the settlement was explained to her (though I have heard certain malicious tongues say it was because of the prospect of a forced marriage).
    There was but one other artist in the colony at this time, a Jesuit missionary to the Iroquois called Father Pierron, a favourite of the bishop’s. Mother Marie de l’Incarnation (a pious woman, a letter-writer and a wonderful lace-maker, a skill not often found in these rude parts, with a wen the size of a duck’s egg on her chin) was wont to go around