Chapter XLIX: The Market-Place on St. Martin's Day edit
The market-place then as now occupied the open square lying between the great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. The latter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through its wide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues of ancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of the reverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule of their order, which rarely permitted them to go singly.
The market-place itself was lively this morning with the number of carts and stalls ranged on either side of the bright little rivulet which ran under the old elms that intersected the square, the trees affording shade and the rivulet drink for man and beast.
A bustling, loquacious crowd of habitans and citizens, wives and maid-servants, were buying, selling, exchanging compliments, or complaining of hard times. The marketplace was full, and all were glad at the termination of the terrible war, and hopeful of the happy effect of peace in bringing plenty back again to the old market.
The people bustled up and down, testing their weak purses against their strong desires to fill their baskets with the ripe autumnal fruits and the products of field and garden, river and basse cour, which lay temptingly exposed in the little carts of the marketmen and women who on every side extolled the quality and cheapness of their wares.
There were apples from the Cote de Beaupre, small in size but impregnated with the flavor of honey; pears grown in the old orchards about Ange Gardien, and grapes worthy of Bacchus, from the Isle of Orleans, with baskets of the delicious bilberries that cover the wild hills of the north shore from the first wane of summer until late in the autumn.
The drain of the war had starved out the butchers' stalls, but Indians and hunters took their places for the nonce with an abundance of game of all kinds, which had multiplied exceedingly during the years that men had taken to killing Bostonnais and English instead of deer and wild turkeys.
Fish was in especial abundance; the blessing of the old Jesuits still rested on the waters of New France, and the fish swarmed metaphorically with 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 the St. Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the fisher who drew them up from their rich river-beds.
There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the seigniories for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the pride of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices. The hungry children who used to eat tartines of bread buttered on both sides were now accustomed to the cry of 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 Grand Company, had swept the settlements far and near of their herds, and the habitans soon discovered that the exposure for sale in the market of the products of the dairy was speedily followed by a visit from the purveyors of the army, and the seizure of their remaining cattle.
Roots and other esculents of field and garden were more plentiful in the market, among which might have been seen the newly introduced potato,--a vegetable long despised in New France, then endured, and now beginning to 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 feet from the ground, giving a commanding view of the whole market-place.
A crowd of habitans were gathered round this platform listening, some with exclamations of approval, not unmingled on the part of others with sounds of dissent, to the fervent address of one of the Jesuit Fathers from the College, who with crucifix in hand was preaching to the people upon 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 and square caps, stood behind the preacher, watching with keen eyes the faces of the auditory as if to discover who were for and who were against the sentiments and opinions promulgated by the preacher.
The storm of the great Jansenist controversy, which rent the Church of France from top to bottom, had not spared the Colony, where it had early caused trouble; for that controversy grew out of the Gallican liberties of the national Church and the right of national participation in its administrations and appointments. The Jesuits ever fiercely contested these liberties; they boldly set the tiara above the crown, and strove to subordinate all opinions of faith, morals, education, and ecclesiastical government to the infallible judgment of the Pope alone.
The Bishop and clergy of New France had labored hard to prevent the introduction of that mischievous controversy into the Colony, and had for the most part succeeded in reserving their flocks, if not themselves, from its malign influence. The growing agitation in France, however, made it more difficult to keep down troublesome spirits in the Colony, and the idea got abroad, not without some foundation, that the Society of Jesus had secret commercial relations with the Friponne. This report fanned the smouldering fires of Jansenism into a flame visible enough and threatening enough to the peace of the Church.
The failure and bankruptcy of Father Vallette's enormous speculations in the West Indies had filled France with bad debts and protested obligations which the Society of Jesus repudiated, but which the Parliament of Paris ordered them to pay. The excitement was intense all over the Kingdom and the Colonies. On the part of the order it became a fight for existence.
They were envied for their wealth, and feared for their ability and their power. The secular clergy were for the most part against them. The Parliament of Paris, in a violent decree, had declared the Jesuits to have no legal standing in France. Voltaire and his followers, a growing host, thundered at them from the one side. The Vatican, in a moment of inconsistency and ingratitude, thundered at them from the other. They were in the midst of fire, and still their ability and influence over individual consciences, and especially over the female sex, prolonged their power for fifteen years longer, when Louis XV., driven to the wall by the Jansenists, issued his memorable decree declaring the Jesuits to be rebels, traitors, and stirrers up of mischief. The King confiscated their possessions, proscribed their persons, and banished them from the kingdom as enemies of the State.
Padre Monti, an Italian newly arrived in the Colony, was a man very different from the venerable Vimont and the Jogues and the Lallements, who had preached the Evangel to the wild tribes of the forest, and rejoiced 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 the interests of religion, which he could not dissociate from the interests of his order. He stood up, erect and commanding, upon the platform under the Holy Rood, while he addressed with fiery eloquence and Italian gesticulation the crowd of people gathered round him.
The subject he chose was an exciting one. He enlarged upon the coming of Antichrist and upon the new philosophy of the age, the growth of Gallicanism in the Colony, with its schismatic progeny of Jansenists and Honnetes Gens, to the discouragement of true religion and the endangering of immortal souls.
His covert allusions and sharp innuendoes were perfectly understood by his 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 the Jesuits, they had in New France inherited the profound respect of the colonists, and deserved it.
A few gentlemen, some in military, some in fashionable civil attire, strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outside of it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform, listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it away in their retentive memories, which would reproduce every word of it when they sat round the fireside in the coming winter evenings.
One or two Recollets stood at a modest distance from the crowd, still as statues, with their hands hid in the sleeves of their gray gowns, shaking their heads at the arguments, and still more at the invectives of the preacher; for the Recollets were accused, wrongfully perhaps, of studying the five propositions of Port Royal more than beseemed the humble followers of St. Francis to do, and they either could not or would 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 the Italian to beard the Governor in that manner! But La Galissoniere is too great a philosopher to mind a priest!" was the half-scoffing reply of Le Mercier.
"Is he? I do not think so, Le Mercier. I hate them myself, but egad! I am 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 fast friends, and it does not do to quarrel with your supporters."
"True, D'Estebe! We get no help from the Recollets. Look yonder at Brothers Ambrose and Daniel! They would like to tie Padre Monti neck and heels with the cords of St. Francis, and bind him over to keep the peace towards 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. The Recollets are all afraid to hurl it back."
"Not all," was the reply; "the Reverend Father de Berey would have thrown it back with a vengeance. But I confess, Le Mercier, the Padre is a bold fellow to pitch into the Honnetes Gens the way he does. I did not think he would have ventured upon it here in the market, in face of so many habitans, who swear by the Bourgeois Philibert."
The bold denunciations by the preacher against the Honnetes Gens and against the people's friend and protector, the Bourgeois Philibert, caused a commotion in the crowd of habitans, who began to utter louder and louder exclamations of dissent and remonstrance. A close observer would have noticed angry looks and clenched fists in many parts of the crowd, pressing closer and closer round the platform.
The signs of increasing tumult in the crowd did not escape the sharp eyes of Father Glapion, who, seeing that the hot-blooded Italian was overstepping 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. He stopped instantly, without rounding the period or finishing the sentence that 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 and left the puzzled people to finish his speech and digest at leisure his singular sermon.