After everyone had had a last glass of liqueur, Madame Pommier was carried out to her sledge and tucked under her bearskin. The company proceeded slowly; pushing the chair up the steep curves of Mountain Hill and around the Récollet chapel, over fresh snow that had not packed, was a little difficult. When they reached the top of the rock, many houses were alight. Across the white ledges that sloped like a vast natural stairway down to the Cathedral, black groups were moving, families and friends in little flocks, all going toward the same goal, — the doors of the church, wide open and showing a ruddy vault in the blue darkness.

  BOOK THREE. THE LONG WINTER

  I

  ONE MORNING BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s Day a man still young, of a handsome but unstable countenance, clad in a black cassock with violet piping, and a rich fur mantle, entered the apothecary shop, greeted the proprietor politely, and asked for four boxes of sugared lemon peel.

  It was not the young Bishop’s custom to do his shopping himself; he sent his valet. This was the first time he had ever come inside the pharmacy. Auclair took off his apron as a mark of respect to a distinguished visitor, but replied firmly that, much to his regret, he had only three boxes left, and one of them he meant to send as a New Year’s greeting to Mother Juschereau, at the Hôtel Dieu. He would be happy to supply Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier with the other two; and he had several boxes of apricots put down in sugar, if they would be of any use to him. Monseigneur declared they would do very well, paid for them, and said he would carry them away himself. Auclair protested that he or his little daughter could leave them at the Palace. But no, the Bishop insisted upon carrying his parcel. As he did not leave the shop at once, Auclair begged him to be seated.

  Saint-Vallier sat down and threw back his fur mantle. “Have you by any chance seen Monseigneur de Laval of late?” he inquired. “I am deeply concerned about his health.”

  “No, Monseigneur, I have not seen him since the mass on Christmas Eve. But the bell has been ringing every morning as usual.”

  Saint-Vallier’s arched eyebrows rose still higher, and he made a graceful, conciliatory gesture with his hand. “Ah, his habits, you know; one cannot interfere with them! But his valet told mine that the ulcer on his master’s leg had broken out again, and that seems to me dangerous.”

  “I am sorry to hear it,” said Auclair. “It is hardly dangerous, but painful and distressing.”

  “Especially so, since he will not remain in bed, and conceals the extent of his suffering even from his own Seminarians.” The Bishop paused a moment, then continued in a tone so confidential as to be flattering. “I have been wondering, Monsieur Auclair, whether, provided we could obtain his consent, you would be willing to try a cauterization of the arm, to draw the inflammation away from the affected part. This was done with great success for Père La Chaise, the King’s confessor, who had an ulcer between the toes while I was in office at Versailles.”

  “That was probably a form of gout,” Auclair observed. “Monseigneur de Laval’s affliction is quite different. He suffers from enlarged and congested veins in the leg. Such ulcers are hard to heal, but they are seldom fatal.”

  “But why not at least try the simple remedy which was so beneficial in the case of Père La Chaise?” urged the Bishop. There was a shallow brilliance in his large fine eyes which made Auclair antagonistic.

  “Because, Monseigneur,” he said firmly, “I do not believe in it; and because it has been tried already. Two years ago, when you were in France, Doctor Beaudoin made a cauterization upon Monseigneur de Laval, and he has since told me that he believes it was useless.”

  The Bishop looked thoughtfully about at the white jars on the shelves. “You are very advanced in your theories of medicine, are you not, Monsieur Auclair?”

  “On the contrary, I am very old-fashioned. I think the methods of the last century better than those of the present time.”

  “Then you do not believe in progress?”

  “Change is not always progress, Monseigneur.” Auclair spoke quietly, but there was meaning in his tone. Saint-Vallier made some polite inquiry about the condition of old Doctor Beaudoin, and took his leave. His call, Auclair suspected, was one of the overtures he occasionally made to people who were known partisans of old Bishop Laval.

  During the stay in France from which he had lately returned, Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier had induced the King to reverse entirely Laval’s system for the training and government of the Canadian clergy, thus defeating the dearest wishes of the old man’s heart and undoing the devoted labour of twenty years. Everything that made Laval’s Seminary unique and specially fitted to the needs of the colony had been wiped out. His system of a movable clergy, sent hither and thither out among the parishes at the Bishop’s discretion and always returning to the Seminary as their head and centre, had been changed by royal edict to the plan of appointing curés to permanent livings, as in France, — a method ill fitted to a new, wild country where within a year the population of any parish might be reduced by half. The Seminary, which Laval had made a thing of power and the centre of ecclesiastical authority, a chapter, almost an independent order, was now reduced to the state of a small school for training young men for the priesthood.

  These were some of the griefs that made the old Bishop bear so mournful a countenance. The wilfulness of his successor (chosen by himself, he must always bitterly remember!) went even further; Saint-Vallier had taken away books and vases and furniture from the Seminary to enrich his new Palace. It was whispered that he had made his Palace so large because he intended to take away the old Bishop’s Seminarians and transfer them to the episcopal residence, to have them under his own eye. If this were done, Bishop Laval would be left living in the Priests’ House, guarding a lofty building of long, echoing corridors and empty dormitories, round a deserted courtyard where the grass would soon be growing between the stones. Monseigneur Laval’s friends could but hope that de Saint-Vallier would be off for France again before he carried out this threat.

  Saint-Vallier was a man of contradictions, and they were stamped upon his face. One saw there something slightly hysterical, and something uncertain, — though his manner was imperious, and his administration had been arrogant and despotic. Auclair had once remarked to the Count that the new Bishop looked less like a churchman than like a courtier. “Or an actor,” the Count replied with a shrug. Large almond-shaped eyes under low-growing brown hair and delicate eyebrows, a long, sharp nose — and then the lower part of his face diminished, like the neck of a pear. His mouth was large and well shaped, but seldom in repose; his chin narrow, receding, with a dimple at the end. He had a dark skin and flashing white teeth like an Italian, — indeed, his face recalled the portraits of eccentric Florentine nobles. He was still only forty-four; he had been Bishop of Quebec now twelve years, — and seven of them had been spent in France!

  Auclair had never liked de Saint-Vallier. He did not doubt the young Bishop’s piety, but he very much doubted his judgment. He was rash and precipitate, he was volatile. He acted too often without counting the cost, from some dazzling conception, — one could not say from impulse, for impulses are from the heart. He liked to reorganize and change things for the sake of change, to make a fine gesture. He destroyed the old before he had clearly thought out the new. When he first came to Canada, he won all hearts by his splendid charities; but he went back to France leaving the Seminary many thousand francs in debt as the result of his generous disbursements, and the old Bishop had to pay this debt out of the Seminary revenues. For years now, he had seemed feverishly determined to undo whatever he could of the old Bishop’s work. This was the more galling to the old man because he himself had gone to France and chosen de Saint-Vallier and recommended him to Rome. Saint-Vallier had at first exhibited the most delicate consideration for his aged predecessor, but this attitude lasted only a short while. He was as changeable and fickle as a woman. Indeed, he had received a large part of his training under a woman, though by no means a fickle or capricious one.

  When Jean Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier came to Court in the capacity of the King’s almoner, Madame de Maintenon was past the age of youthful folly, — if indeed she had ever known such an age. (A poor girl from the West Indies, landing penniless in France with all her possessions in a band-box, she had had little time for follies, except such as helped her to get on in the world.) The young priest who was one day to be the second Bishop of Quebec knew her only after she had become the grave and far-seeing woman who so greatly influenced the King for the last thirty years of his reign.

  Saint-Vallier was the seventh child of a noble family of Dauphiné. His eldest brother, Comte de Saint-Vallier, was Captain of the King’s Guard, and secured for the young priest the appointment of Aumônier ordinaire to the King when he was but twenty-three years of age. He retained that office for nearly ten years, and was constantly in accord with Madame de Maintenon in emptying the King’s purse for worthy charities. Saint-Vallier was by no means without enemies at Court. The clergy and even the Archbishop of Paris disliked him. They considered that he made his piety too conspicuous and was lacking in good taste. His oval face, with the bloom of youth upon it, his beautiful eyes, full of humility and scorn at the same time, were seen too much and too often. He had a hundred ways of making himself stand out from the throng, and his exceptional piety was like a reproach to those of the clergy who were more conventional and perhaps more worldly. He obtained from the King special permission to wear at Court the long black gown, which at that time was not worn by the priests at Versailles. So attired, he was more conspicuous than courtiers the most richly apparelled. His fellow abbés found de Saint-Vallier’s acts of humility undignified, and his brother, the Captain of the Guard, found them ridiculous. One day the Captain met the Abbé following the Sacrament through the street, ringing a little hand-bell. The Captain awaited his brother’s return to the Palace and told him angrily that his conduct was unworthy of his family, and that he had better retire to La Trappe, where his piety would be without an audience. But to be without an audience was the last thing the young Abbé desired.

  Nevertheless, in his own way he was a sincere man. He refused the rich and honourable bishopric of Tours, repeatedly offered him by the King, and accepted the bishopric of Quebec, — the poorest and most comfortless honour the Crown had to offer.

  By the time de Saint-Vallier made his third trip back to France, the King knew very well that he was not much wanted in Canada; every boat brought complaints of his arrogance and his rash impracticality. The King could not unmake a bishop, once he was consecrated, but he could detain him in France, — and that he did, for three years. During de Saint-Vallier’s long absences in Europe his duties devolved upon Monseigneur de Laval. There was no one else in Canada who could ordain priests, administer the sacrament of confirmation, consecrate the holy oils. Though in the performance of these duties the old Bishop had to make long journeys in canoes and sledges, very fatiguing at his age, he undertook them without a murmur. He was glad to take up again the burdens he had once so gladly laid down.

  II

  AFTER EPIPHANY, AUCLAIR was away from home a great deal. The old chirurgien Gervaise Beaudoin was ill, and the apothecary went to see him every afternoon, leaving Cécile to tend the shop. When he was at home, he was much occupied in making cough-syrups from pine tops, and from horehound and honey with a little laudanum; or he was compounding tonics, and liniments for rheumatism. The months that were dull for the merchants were the busiest for him. He and his daughter seldom went abroad together now, but their weekly visit to the Hôtel Dieu they still managed to make. One evening at dinner, after one of these visits, Cécile spoke of an incident that Mother Juschereau had related to her in the morning.

  “Father, did you ever hear that once long ago, when an English sailor lay sick at the Hôtel Dieu, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin ground up a tiny morsel of bone from Father Brébeuf’s skull and mixed it in his gruel, and it made him a Christian?”

  Her father looked at her across the table and gave a perplexing chuckle.

  “But it is true, certainly? Mother Juschereau told me only today.”

  “Mother Juschereau and I do not always agree in the matter of remedies, you know. I consider human bones a very poor medicine for any purpose.”

  “But he was converted, the sailor. He became a Christian.”

  “Probably Mother de Saint-Augustin’s own saintly character, and her kindness to him, had more to do with the Englishman’s conversion than anything she gave him in his food.”

  “Why, Father, Mother Juschereau would be horrified to hear you! There are so many sacred relics, and they are always working cures.”

  “The sacred relics are all very well, my dear, and I do not deny that they work miracles, — but not through the digestive tract. Mother de Saint-Augustin meant well, but she made a mistake. If she had given her heretic a little more ground bone, she might have killed him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think it probable. It is true that in England, in every apothecary shop, there is a jar full of pulverized human skulls, and that terrible powder is sometimes dispensed in small doses for certain diseases. Even in France it is still to be found in many pharmacies; but it was never sold in our shop, not even in my grandfather’s time. He had seen a proof made of that remedy. A long while ago, when Henry of Navarre was besieging Paris, the people held out against him until they starved by hundreds. I have heard my grandfather tell of things too horrible to repeat to you. The famine grew until there was no food at all; people killed each other for a morsel. The bakers shut their shops; there was not a handful of flour left, they had used all the forage meant for beasts; they had made bread of hay and straw, and now that was all gone. Then some of the starving went to the cemetery of the Innocents, where there was a great wall of dry bones, and they ground those bones to powder and made a paste of it and baked it in ovens; and as many as ate of that bread died in agony, as if they had swallowed poison. Indeed, they had swallowed poison.”

  “But those were ordinary bones, maybe bones of wicked people. That would be different.”

  “No bones are good to be taken into the stomach, Cécile. God did not intend it. The relics of the saints may work cures at the touch, they may be a protection worn about the neck; those things are outside of my knowledge. But I am the guardian of the stomach, and I would not permit a patient to swallow a morsel of any human remains, not those of Saint Peter himself. There are enough beautiful stories about Mother de Saint-Augustin, but this one is not to my liking.”

  Cécile could only hope it would never happen that her father and Mother Juschereau would enter into any discussion of miraculous cures. Her father must be right; but she felt in her heart that what Mother Juschereau told her had certainly occurred, and the English sailor had been converted by Father Brebeuf’s bone.

  III

  “MA’M’SELLE, HAVE YOU heard the news from Montreal?”

  Blinker had just come in for his soup, and Cécile saw that he was greatly excited.

  No, she had heard nothing; what did he mean?

  “Ma’m’selle, there has been a miracle at Montreal. The recluse has had a visit from the angels, — the night after Epiphany, when there was the big snow-storm. That day she broke her spinning-wheel, and in the night two angels came to her cell and mended it for her. She saw them.”

  “How did you hear this, Blinker?”

  “Some men got in from Montreal this morning, in dog-sledges, and they brought the word. They brought letters, too, for the Reverend Mother at the Ursulines’. If you go there, you will likely hear all about it.”

  “You are sure she saw the angels?”

  He nodded. “Yes, when she got up to pray, at midnight. They say her wheel was mended better than a carpenter could do it.”

  “The men didn’t say which angels, Blinker?”

  He shook his head. He was just beginning his soup. Cécile dropped into one of the chairs by the table. “Why, one of them might have been Saint Joseph himself; he was a carpenter. But how was it she saw them? You know she keeps her spinning-wheel up in her work-room, over the cell where she sleeps.”

  “Just so, ma’m’selle, it is just so the men said. She goes into the church to pray every night at midnight, and when she got up on Epiphany night, she saw a light shining from the room overhead, and she went up her little stair to see what was the matter, and there she found the angels.”

  “Did they speak to her?”

  “The men did not say. Maybe the Reverend Mother will know.”

  “I will go there tomorrow, and I will tell you everything I hear. It’s a wonderful thing to happen, so near us — and in that great snow-storm! Don’t you like to know that the angels are just as near to us here as they are in France?”

  Blinker turned his head, glancing all about the kitchen as if someone might be hiding there, leaned across the table, and said to her in such a mournful way: