The White and the Gold (39 page)

There was, first of all, the question as to where they should be seated in church. Argenson contended that he should be in the sanctuary, that section of church close to the altar. Laval did not agree. They finally called in the Sieur d’Ailleboust to act as arbitrator. After much consideration D’Ailleboust gave the decision to the head of the Church: the bishop would sit inside the rail, the governor outside.

A bitter incident occurred during midnight Mass on Christmas Eve when the deacon sent a subordinate incense carrier to the governor. In this instance the head of the Church, realizing that his officer had gone too far, ruled that in future the deacon must do the honors
personally. He was adamant, however, in the matter of Argenson’s desire to be an honorary churchwarden. This could not be allowed.

One dispute flared up openly, and on Palm Sunday there was no procession. The governor had demanded that he and certain other gentlemen of temporal office should precede the churchwardens. To this the young bishop would not agree.

An even more flagrant display of disagreement occurred on the Feast of Corpus Christi, which fell on the sixteenth of June. The procession was to stop at various points in the town where altars had been raised, and this brought up the point as to what the soldiers should do about removing their hats when the procession reached the citadel. Laval declared positively that no stop would be made at the citadel if the proceedings were to be marred by covered heads. The governor, realizing perhaps how fond the people were of the strict observance of church ritual, gave in finally. Laval discovered, however, that his victory had been only a partial one. The soldiers refused to kneel when the procession, headed by the sumptuously vested officers of the Church, stopped at the entrance to the fort. The governor had been prevented from attending by ill-health, and so the proceedings were halted while word of the situation was dispatched to him. He replied shortly that it was the duty of soldiers to remain in an upright position, that vigilance was their excuse for being, and that he would not permit what the bishop demanded. Monseigneur Laval ordered the procession on at once without performing the customary service at the altar of the garrison. The following comment on this clash is found in the
Jesuit Journal
: “On such occasions the King’s guards kneel down on one knee without removing their hats.… This matter should have been previously elucidated and agreed upon.”

It was during Avagour’s brief term of office that the incident of the blessing of bread threatened to develop into an open rupture. The new governor, who was older than Argenson and somewhat obstinate, liked to do things his own way. On an occasion when he had supplied the bread to be blessed, he had it carried into the edifice during the celebration of Mass to the sound of drum and fife. Laval was incensed at this interruption and resentful, moreover, of a form of ostentation like the carrying in to music of a Yuletide boar’s head or the piping in of a dish of haggis to a laird’s table. The two officials disputed the point with a great deal of bitterness. Again the bishop prevailed. At any rate, it was decided that, if the governor must have
his fifes and drums, it should be all finished and done with before Mass began.

The bickering did not stop with matters concerning church observance. During February a public catechism was held in the school and, as both governor and bishop were to be present, it was decided the pupils would disregard them. It was rather solemnly engaged that the infant hands would be kept too busy for a salute to either man. This was carefully explained to the children, and it was believed that the difficulty over precedence could be skirted successfully. Two of the boys, however, got out of hand. Charles Couillard and Ignace de Repentigny, scions of two of the best families, had either been secretly coached by their parents (as was later contended by the church officers) or they were carried away by the arrival of the governor in all the glory of plumed hat and velvet doublet and the sparkling of jewels on his sword hilt. They stood up and saluted the governor with a brisk flourish.

It would be pleasant if the episode could be closed with an intimation that the mistake was passed over with good-natured indifference. But, alas, such was not the case. The sequel is thus dealt with in the
Jesuit Journal
: “This greatly offended Monseigneur the Bishop. We tried to appease him; and the two children were whipped on the following morning for having disobeyed.”

This far from flattering incident must be told because it is part of the picture of this early phase of Bishop Laval’s life. It should not be used, however, except as contrast to a later episode. When the bishop had become an old man and was so badly crippled that walking was a matter of great difficulty, he found himself one night unable to sleep. Muffling himself up in his threadbare cloak, he hobbled out on the silent streets. It was in the middle of winter and a cold wind was blowing down from the battlements. He encountered on his walk a small boy who had nowhere to go, having been turned out of his home. The child was thinly clad and was shivering with the cold. The old man took him back at once to his own quarters at the seminary, where he removed his clothes and gave him a warm bath. Then, while the boy slept in the bishop’s own bed, the latter found in the supply of wearing apparel which he kept for charitable distribution a suit of clothes as well as stockings and shoes. All through the night the gentle old man sat by the bedside while the boy slept, and the next day he made arrangements for his permanent care. This incident, a true one, was used in one of the better known of the
many novels which have been written with early Quebec as a background.

Bishop Laval, in his first phase, was another Thomas à Becket, determined to assert the supremacy of Church over State, and so convinced of the importance of the issue that he was prepared to war unceasingly with governors and to be severe with school disobedience. Much stress has been laid on this unsympathetic period, but viewed with the perspective of time, it seems of small importance. It was soon over and done with, although to the end of his days the bishop would not tolerate any interference with his work and was always prepared to carry an issue to the ear of the King. The stern eye, the determined mien, which seemed at first the earmarks of an inflexible severity, were recognized as the years passed as the armor of his devotion.

The difference between the two ranking officers of the colony did not end with such relatively small matters as the incidents quoted above. There was, above everything else, the question of supplying liquor to the Indians. From the first moment of his arrival Bishop Laval found it necessary to protest on this point. In spite of the willingness of the governors to assist him, the traffic continued and the Indians were reduced to ever-lower depths of degradation.

Laval finally took an extreme step. He announced that all Frenchmen convicted of sharing in the profits of this nefarious trade would be excommunicated. This at first had the desired effect. It is recorded in the
Relations
that “one of the most remarkable occurrences is the almost complete suppression of drunkenness among our savages.… After the King’s orders and the governor’s decree had proved ineffectual, he [Laval], by excommunicating all the French who shall give liquor to the savages, suppressed all these disorders.”

This was taking too rosy a view of the situation. The suppression proved to be temporary only. The traffic was not confined to the relatively few traders who dealt directly with the Indians. It was deep-seated, going right back to the sources of supply. Most of the colonial merchants were concerned in it in some degree. A large proportion of the sober citizens who heard Mass with earnest faces had money in their pockets which could be traced to the illicit sale of brandy. The traffic, accordingly, went on in spite of civil ordinances and ecclesiastical thunderings. Death and violence followed in the wake of the canoes of the white men.

Matters came to a head after the arrival of Baron Dubois d’Avagour to succeed Argenson as governor. He was an old soldier, blunt of speech and hasty of temper, but honest and sincerely anxious to fulfill his oaths of office. He had heard all about the difficulties his predecessor had experienced with the unbending head of the Church and he came to his post with his guard raised. They got along well enough for a time, but in due course the major issue of the liquor traffic came up to place them in open antagonism.

The excommunication threat had not done more than put a temporary check on the trade. A tangible form of punishment was needed, and Laval did not hesitate to demand that the death penalty be exacted. The new governor found that a current of strong opposition to this step ran under the surface. The citizenry did not dare stand openly against the zealous bishop, but they were prepared to show their opposition in other ways. Avagour hesitated and temporized. Finally, however, he was overborne; he gave in and authorized the decree.

Traders who had broken the law were brought before him at once. In the
Jesuit Journal
the results were briefly recorded as follows: “On the 7th [of October] Daniel Will was hanged—or rather shot—and on the 11th another named La Violette; and one was flogged on Monday the 10th.” The brevity of this announcement bears no relation to the feeling which had developed in the colony. There seems to have been a general impression that such measures were excessive. The good citizens were uneasy. Where, they asked themselves, would such severity end?

Then a woman was brought in for illicit selling of brandy. The death penalty was not exacted in this case, but she was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. There were extenuating circumstances—she was a widow with a family to support—and Father Lalemant went to the governor with a plea for clemency. This was too much for the blunt soldier. He had been harried into confirming the decree in the first place, and now he was being asked to discriminate in carrying it out. He listened to the Jesuit with an impatience which culminated in an indignant outburst. No longer, he declared, would he be subjected to such contradictions.

“Since it is not a crime for this woman,” he exclaimed, “it shall not be a crime for anybody.”

The governor stuck to his word and refused to allow any further
punishments. As a result, the sale of brandy was carried on openly and reached proportions greater than ever before. The bishop thundered from the pulpit, but to no avail. D’Avagour obstinately refused to listen. Finally Laval took the drastic step of returning to France and demanding the recall of the governor.

The sins of the colony were popularly believed to have been the cause of the great earthquake which shook the whole country on the night of February 3, 1663. It seems to have been a most violent one, although many of the reports recorded were obviously the result of inflamed imaginations. The clay beds of the St. Lawrence were disrupted by the shaking of the surface, and earthslides occurred everywhere. Streams were diverted from their courses, new waterfalls appeared in the most unexpected places, houses rocked back and forth, and the bells in church spires were set to ringing madly by the motion. Fissures opening in the earth sent people running for their lives, believing that the devil with a mighty pickax was opening new gateways to the fires of hell. No one seems to have been killed in spite of all the violent shaking of the hills and all the mighty winds, but people flocked to the churches, crying out that the end of the world was at hand and begging divine forgiveness for their sins.

It did not take long for the conviction to enter all minds, except perhaps the most hardened, that the brandy trade had been the cause. God had expressed His disapproval. The earthquake was no more than a warning of what would come to pass if men did not mend their ways.

The deep and passionate voice of the Bishop of Petraea had been at work in France in the meantime. He was given his way. Not only was Avagour recalled, but the young bishop was granted the right of selecting his successor.

It is a more pleasant task to write of the private life of François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency than to deal with the constant struggle he waged to maintain the dignity of his office on the level he deemed necessary. Even his greatest admirers are inclined to say that he sometimes erred in his official demands, but there can be nothing but praise for the exemplary life he led.

He has often been compared to Thomas à Becket, who strove in
the same cause against an arbitrary and very able king and who came to his death as a result. But there was one great difference between them. Becket had been the same king’s chancellor and a man of mighty pride before he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Laval was destined for the Church from the start and was only nine years old when he received the tonsure. At the age of fifteen, when he was already known for his devoutness, he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Evreux. When his two older brothers were killed in battle, his mother begged him to abandon his clerical intentions and take his place as head of the family. The prospect of so much wealth and power would have been irresistible to almost any other young man of his age. He not only refused, but he surrendered his titles to the seigneuries of Montigny and Montbeaudry to his younger brother, Jean Louis. Thus he stripped himself of all property, and when he was given his appointment in Canada he depended entirely on the small pension paid him out of the funds of the Queen Mother.

“He is certainly the most austere man in the world and the most indifferent to worldly advantages,” wrote Marie de l’Incarnation of the young bishop; and this high praise was well deserved.

He rose always at two o’clock in the morning. Such an early start was particularly trying in the winter, because then the fires had burned out in the inadequate braziers and a frigid cold gripped the houses. But the bishop made no distinctions in the seasons. After dressing he would rekindle his fire—a very small one, for he was frugal even in the matter of fuel for his personal use—and then pray until four. Promptly at that hour he went out into the dark and the cold, lantern in hand, and walked to the cathedral. Here he opened the doors and rang the bells himself for the first Mass of the day at four-thirty. These were duties which devolved ordinarily on minor servants of the Church, but to assume them was a matter of personal satisfaction to the bishop. For the remainder of the day he immersed himself in the work of his office, which he administered with ability and dispatch. Not content with this, he ranged far afield to find menial and dangerous work for his ready hands, making beds in the hospitals, washing the feet and bandaging the sores of the patients, visiting the ships in the harbor and tending the ill members of the crew. It was always late at night when he went to bed. So determined was he to lose as little time as possible in the luxury of sleep that he would fend off drowsiness in the last hours by walking up and down as he talked to those about him or told his beads.