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Authors: Beverly Swerling
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spite of himself. “Go with God, my son.” Another sign of the cross, sketched hastily in the chill air.
“Goodnight,
mon Père.”
Père Antoine watched Stewart hasten down a narrow alley between two rows of hulking cottages, listening until the ring of his boots on the cobblestones had faded. Then, despite the cold, he remained a moment longer, looking toward the charity hospital known as the Hôtel-Dieu, then letting his gaze roam upward to the redoubt outside the town walls, and the high flatland called the Plains of Abraham where a few of the locals, the
habitants,
struggled to grow crops during the desperately short growing season. Their success was limited, and not just by the endless frozen winters. Corruption riddled the Canadian economy. The fewgot hugely rich and the many starved, particularly the native population whose way of life had been so disrupted by the coming of the Europeans. In bad years, the priest had been told, the Indians were reduced to gnawing on the leather diapers of their children, though the infants had beshat them a thousand times. Père Antoine had seen hunger before. He believed the report to be entirely accurate.
There was no starvation for the wealthy Québécois living within the shelter of the city’s mighty fortifications. They ate the best of everything and lived like kings. Europe’s taste for the furs of the far north makes them rich, along with their willingness to engage in deception and thievery. They destroyed the old way of life of the Indians and made them virtual slaves, forced to trap and trade in return for the made goods they can’t now do without. Cloth and metal goods, but guns mostly. And alcohol, the devil firewater. Antoine was convinced that the Jesuits, Almighty God have mercy on them, were at the center of this vicious exchange. Under their all-powerful provincial, Louis Roget, they were black spiders in the middle of an endless web. More killing and starvation and disease and death, that’s what the savages got from the missionary efforts of Louis Roget.
Dear Jesus, let me show them Your holy and loving face. Let them be saved for You who thirst for souls.
A few Franciscans were with Champlain when he came. God help them, they had given up. The Jesuits filled the void, becoming the missionaries to the Indians of New France.
Allow us to return to the rich Canadian harvest, Lord. Grant us our chance to be martyrs whose blood will give You glory and insure the future of the order.
Père Antoine felt warm despite the frozen night. He stared a moment longer at the symbols of eminence in the city above his head, then turned to the hut a few doors from his own here in the Lower Town. It was bigger, but still a hovel. The Jesuits had seen to that. As if putting the Poor Clares in the humblest dwelling in the city did anything but make them more acceptable to the Savior.
The roof of the archbishop’s château was halfway up the steep cliff, midway between where the priest stood and the steeples of the grand churches at the top of the city. According to the Vatican, the archbishop of Québec was responsible for the spiritual welfare of all New France, which, if the entire territory it claimed were counted, was considerably larger than Europe. New France stretched from the Atlantic coast to land yet unexplored in the far west. It encompassed the valley of the Mississippi River and the area known as the Louisiana Territory. Unlike his predecessors, the current archbishop, Henri-Marie du Breuil de Pontbriand, lived mostly in Québec.
Père Antoine made yet another sign of the cross, this one in thanksgiving. How wondrous are Your ways, Lord. For if the family de Pontbriand did not haveancient debts to the family de Ruben Montaigne, the Poor Clare Colettines would not be established in a stinking, half-rotted fisherman’s cottage at the edge of the fortress city. Saving its soul. And the souls of how many savages, You alone know.
It was because of those old
“Goodnight,
mon Père.”
Père Antoine watched Stewart hasten down a narrow alley between two rows of hulking cottages, listening until the ring of his boots on the cobblestones had faded. Then, despite the cold, he remained a moment longer, looking toward the charity hospital known as the Hôtel-Dieu, then letting his gaze roam upward to the redoubt outside the town walls, and the high flatland called the Plains of Abraham where a few of the locals, the
habitants,
struggled to grow crops during the desperately short growing season. Their success was limited, and not just by the endless frozen winters. Corruption riddled the Canadian economy. The fewgot hugely rich and the many starved, particularly the native population whose way of life had been so disrupted by the coming of the Europeans. In bad years, the priest had been told, the Indians were reduced to gnawing on the leather diapers of their children, though the infants had beshat them a thousand times. Père Antoine had seen hunger before. He believed the report to be entirely accurate.
There was no starvation for the wealthy Québécois living within the shelter of the city’s mighty fortifications. They ate the best of everything and lived like kings. Europe’s taste for the furs of the far north makes them rich, along with their willingness to engage in deception and thievery. They destroyed the old way of life of the Indians and made them virtual slaves, forced to trap and trade in return for the made goods they can’t now do without. Cloth and metal goods, but guns mostly. And alcohol, the devil firewater. Antoine was convinced that the Jesuits, Almighty God have mercy on them, were at the center of this vicious exchange. Under their all-powerful provincial, Louis Roget, they were black spiders in the middle of an endless web. More killing and starvation and disease and death, that’s what the savages got from the missionary efforts of Louis Roget.
Dear Jesus, let me show them Your holy and loving face. Let them be saved for You who thirst for souls.
A few Franciscans were with Champlain when he came. God help them, they had given up. The Jesuits filled the void, becoming the missionaries to the Indians of New France.
Allow us to return to the rich Canadian harvest, Lord. Grant us our chance to be martyrs whose blood will give You glory and insure the future of the order.
Père Antoine felt warm despite the frozen night. He stared a moment longer at the symbols of eminence in the city above his head, then turned to the hut a few doors from his own here in the Lower Town. It was bigger, but still a hovel. The Jesuits had seen to that. As if putting the Poor Clares in the humblest dwelling in the city did anything but make them more acceptable to the Savior.
The roof of the archbishop’s château was halfway up the steep cliff, midway between where the priest stood and the steeples of the grand churches at the top of the city. According to the Vatican, the archbishop of Québec was responsible for the spiritual welfare of all New France, which, if the entire territory it claimed were counted, was considerably larger than Europe. New France stretched from the Atlantic coast to land yet unexplored in the far west. It encompassed the valley of the Mississippi River and the area known as the Louisiana Territory. Unlike his predecessors, the current archbishop, Henri-Marie du Breuil de Pontbriand, lived mostly in Québec.
Père Antoine made yet another sign of the cross, this one in thanksgiving. How wondrous are Your ways, Lord. For if the family de Pontbriand did not haveancient debts to the family de Ruben Montaigne, the Poor Clare Colettines would not be established in a stinking, half-rotted fisherman’s cottage at the edge of the fortress city. Saving its soul. And the souls of how many savages, You alone know.
It was because of those old
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