The White and the Gold (40 page)

“There is no village priest in France,” wrote one of his most fervent admirers, “who is not better nourished, better clad, and better lodged than was the bishop of New France.”

This was in no sense an exaggeration. He had two meals a day only, never indulging in breakfast despite the early hour of his rising. They were extremely frugal meals. He subsisted largely on soups, but the favorite bouillons of the colony were never found on his table. It is probable that he did not know the taste of the rich bisques of pigeons and clams or the
boullie de blé d’inde
. The plainest of broths were served to him and, when they seemed too rich and savory, he diluted them with hot water. He never indulged in fresh meats, saying that his teeth were too tender for such fare. Accordingly his meat was kept a week after it had been cooked, and in hot weather it had to be washed in warm water to remove the worms which swarmed in it. He drank the thinnest of wines. The poorest habitant often indulged a sweet tooth with such delicacies as
crêpes de Tante Marie
or cakes filled with almond paste, spices, or raisins. The bishop refused desserts and even on feast days or special occasions he would thrust aside the
gâteau d’anis
, the aniseed cake which was the pride of the French-Canadian housewife.

The bishop laid on himself a stern injunction never to spend a sou on his own comfort. Although over the years he became shabby and threadbare, he did not buy clothes. All his small income went for alms, and so he depended on the stores of the seminary he had established for the training of native-born priests as much as the poorest novice. His faithful servant, Houssard, who was with him through his final days, wrote that in the course of twenty years the good old man had possessed only two winter cassocks and that when he came to die the last one was mended and ragged from long wear. Always, however, he had a supply of clothing on hand for distribution to the poor, purchased out of his inadequate income.

The austerity he inaugurated when he moved into the little house of Madame de la Peltrie was continued throughout his life. A straw mattress spread on hard boards was his couch, and he never allowed himself the luxury of sheets. No touch of luxury or graciousness was seen about his rooms. The furnishings were plain and cheap and practical. His supply of books was too small to warrant the designation of library. He read every day in the
Lives of the Saints
but rarely indulged any excursions into discussion of mundane matters. He refused to have a carriage and so he was, perhaps, the only
bishop in the world who walked about his rounds. In his later years, when the weakness of his legs, tightly bound because of varicose veins (he bound them himself by the light of a candle when he first rose), made walking almost an impossibility, he would sometimes borrow a carriage or allow himself to be carried by the
engagés
at the seminary.

Such was the life of this stern disciplinarian who was always harder on himself than on anyone about him. Despite his personal austerity he believed in maintaining to the full the splendor of the Church. In the vessels of worship he wanted the glow of gold and the luster of silver. Rich coverings and the deep colors of stained glass pleased him beyond measure. The way he governed his own life was a compact between himself and his Maker, but he was eager to contend that when men gathered to worship God they should do so with proper majesty and opulence.

He had brought to his new post a conviction that the Church in Canada should be molded along new lines. The rigidity into which the mother church had settled over the centuries would not serve in this strange new land. The practice in France, to quote one of the major points, was to allow a curé to remain a full lifetime in the parish to which he was first assigned and to remove him only if his unfitness was unmistakably revealed; with the result that a slothful or indifferent priest could chill the spiritual zeal of his flock into an enduring apathy. Laval was determined to keep in his hands the power to remove a priest from any post where he was failing to function with zeal and understanding. He wanted also to have supervision over the selection and training of the priests who were to carry on the work in the colony. All this pointed to the need for a seminary where young men born or reared in Canada could be trained for holy orders under his own stern eye.

This was the first major change which the vicar-apostolic brought into effect. He was sadly hampered for funds in the early stages. Perhaps he regretted the excess of zeal which had induced him to part with all his personal property, for everything which remained to him would undoubtedly have been applied to the cost of the building and its maintenance. Having nothing, he raised funds among his kinsmen and friends in France and he strove, not too successfully, to impose a tithe on the settlers. In later years, when the seminary was firmly grounded and was fulfilling its function to his satisfaction, he put himself in the way of receiving land grants which
he turned over in perpetuity to the institution. In this way the valuable acres of Beaupré, the Island of Jesus, and what was once the seigneury of the Petite Nation remain today among the possessions of the school.

Ramparts now circled the crest of the rock. Reaching the top, a visitor saw to the left the jumble of stone and framework which was called the citadel of St. Louis and over which the white flag of France waved. To the right was the Couillard house, occupying some of the land originally granted to Louis Hébert. Between the Couillard property and the square on which the Jesuit college and the cathedral fronted was an open stretch of land. This the young bishop selected as the site for his seminary and here he built a far from pretentious training school for the first of the youth of New France who offered themselves to the Church.

One of the finest things about Bishop Laval was his intense love for this institution of his own founding. He planned and directed it on the soundest lines. It was to be not only a school but a sanctuary to which the clergy of Canada could turn in sickness or weariness of spirit and where they could spend their last years. Around it he gradually created subsidiary establishments: a school for the elementary education of boys who might elect to join the priesthood, which was started in 1668 in the Couillard house, and a farm school for manual training. Out of this system of schools came in time Laval University, which stands as proof of the farsightedness of this stormy and controversial figure.

M
ARCH 9, 1661. Young King Louis XIV had been alone in his rooms ever since Cardinal Mazarin had succumbed earlier in the day to his illnesses and a final attack of gout. The courtiers and officials who had flocked out to the castle of Vincennes, which occasionally served as a royal residence, stood about in low-speaking groups and discussed the meaning of this long seclusion. The King had been grief-stricken over the death of his able minister but had recovered quickly enough after a brief outburst of tears. He had been dry-eyed when he announced his intention of giving himself up to solitary thought; and so, clearly enough, it was not sorrow which was occupying him. What problems, then, filled the royal mind?

The courtiers sometimes abandoned their nervous speculation on the lengthy absence of the King to discuss the passing of the chief minister. Was it true that the dying man had been impatient with the Queen Mother because she sat so faithfully at the side of his couch? Could it be that he said in a final attack of umbrage: “This woman will kill me with her importunities. Will she never leave me in peace?” Poor Anne of Austria had accepted this upbraiding with resignation, for it was known that she still sat by the bedside and wept bitterly. The whole nation knew, of course, that she had loved the cardinal devotedly, and in a very few hours the streets of Paris would be resounding with coarse songs and scurrilous couplets.

Another point of discussion in the crowded anterooms was the disposal of Mazarin’s great fortune. Did he actually possess two
hundred million francs as well as his many houses, his fabulous art treasures, and his great library? Was it a fact, people asked themselves anxiously, that the young King had been foolish enough to refuse when the cardinal offered to will everything to him? Surely, surely, he had displayed more common sense than that! Did he want this huge accumulation of wealth to be divided among Mazarin’s nieces, the avaricious Mancinis?

It was two hours before the King emerged from his secretarial closet. There was an air of gravity about him as he halted and glanced around the room. That he had changed into a close-bodied black velvet coat with white lining did not detract at all from his appearance. The color, in fact, set off the lines of his fine legs, and this led him to strut a little. There was a single sheet of paper in one hand. Pausing in the doorway, he motioned to a few of his immediate circle to draw in close about him.

He had been considering the future, he said in a low tone. Here—on this sheet of paper—he had set down the decisions at which he had arrived. First—glancing particularly at a man in a green frock coat who had placed himself directly under the royal eye as though conscious of this being his right—he had made up his mind to follow the advice of the late cardinal. Another quick glance at the man in green and he added that he was going to be his own first minister.

There was an almost incredulous gasp at this announcement. The debonair young King was very popular, but he was not regarded as in any sense intellectual or ambitious. It had been assumed that he would do as his father had done before him. Had not Mazarin been quite open in declaring that Louis would not be
trop instruit?

The King then proceeded to pledge himself to a life of effort and hard work, checking off the items on the paper as he spoke. His days were to be so divided that no aspect of his life would be neglected; so many hours for sleep, so many for meals (like all the Bourbons, he was an enormous eater), so many for recreation, a quite considerable time for prayers. The most important stiuplation was six to eight hours a day for work, and under this heading he was not including such kingly duties as receptions and appearances. The young monarch, in other words, was dedicating himself to a life of assiduous toil.

The one member of the royal staff who felt the most surprise, and the most disappointment, was the man in the green coat, Nicholas Fouquet, the Intendant of Finance. This brilliant official had fully
expected to succeed Mazarin. In addition to such expectations, he had good reason to dread any innovations in the order of things. Change might lead to an investigation of the affairs of his department. He desired above everything else to avoid this, for he had been despoiling the country and at the same time robbing the King in the process of accumulating a large personal fortune for himself. It would be demonstrated later that only a very small percentage of the taxes collected ever reached the royal coffers. The showy and venal Fouquet had been uneasy for some time. He had been so conscious of the corruption in his department that he had begun to build a great fortress on his island off the coast of Brittany which was known as Belle-Isle. His plan (or so it was whispered) was to provide himself with an impregnable sanctuary in the event of the King’s turning against him.

The minister who felt the least concern at the announcement was Jean Baptiste Colbert, who was in almost all respects the exact opposite of the handsome and vulnerable Fouquet. Colbert claimed to have Scottish blood in his veins and gave credit to this mixture of ancestry for his extraordinary aptitude in the field of finance. He was a rather glum individual who dressed in frumpish clothes and had the reputation of being a heavy drinker. Wherever he went he carried a black velvet bag with him from which he could produce at any moment all the figures and documents which might be necessary. He was farseeing, sound in his judgment, an undeniable wizard with figures, and absolutely without scruples. It had been by acting on his advice that Mazarin, after impoverishing himself in the civil wars of the Fronde, had succeeded in creating for himself an immense fortune in the years which followed.

Colbert was already deep in the King’s confidence. He was in a position to produce from his invaluable bag the proofs of Fouquet’s astounding peculations. Fouquet could feel the hot breath of this rival on the back of his neck and was struggling to shake him off. The struggle between them was a matter of public knowledge, and at court men were taking sides. The general public, which of course was made up of dupes, favored the glittering minister who robbed them. Having nothing but contempt for the unimpressive Colbert, people jeered him on the streets and saw to it that scurrilous verses were on his desk every morning.

The outcome was never in doubt. One day a certain Monsieur d’Artagnan, who served as lieutenant of the King’s musketeers and
was destined to receive much posthumous acclaim which would have astonished him very much, tapped the great Fouquet on the shoulder and said, “I arrest you in the King’s name.”