A Little Girl in Old Quebec

by Amanda M. Douglas

Ralph and Rose Destournier had a happy life. Children grew up around them. A large, new house received them presently, but they kept a fond remembrance for the old one that seemed somehow to belong exclusively to Miladi and a dreamy sort of old life.

A mixed population it was, shaped by the sincerity of their religion. There were priests in their gray and black cassocks, officers in brave trappings, traders, Indians, farmers, stout and strong, and the picturesque coureurs de bois, that came to be a great feature, and added not a little to the romance of the place. They were not all mere adventurers, but they loved a roving life. Settlements were made here and there, an important one at Three Rivers, where the Récollets established a mission. The summers were given over to work and business, thronged with traders and trappers, but they found time in the winters for much social life.

If the Sieur missed his old friend Hébert, there were others to take an active interest in horticulture. Pontgrave was no more, but his grandson kept up the name. A few years later the earnest young René de Robault gave his fortune for the building of a college, and this kept the young men from returning to old France for an education. Convent schools were established, and Indian girls were trained in the amenities and industries of social life. Montreal spread out her borders as well, the Beauport road came to be a place of fine estates. All the way to the mouth of the great river there were trading stations. The fur company's business was good, there were new explorations to Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, Lake Michigan, up to the Fox river.

Of the sons and daughters growing up in the Destournier household, Hélène, who should have been a devotee, was a merry madcap, who exceeded her mother in daring feats, a dark-eyed, laughing maid the Indian girls adored. She could manage a canoe, she could fly, they said, she took such wonderful leaps. Rose could sing like a bird and had a fondness for all animals. Little Barbe was a dainty, loving being, always clinging to her mother, and three sons were devoted to their father whose snowy white hair was like a crown of silver. They loved to hear the old tales, and fired with resentment when the lilies of France had to give way to the flag of England.

"But they will never do it again," Robert Destournier would exclaim, with flashing eyes.

But they did almost a century later. Robert was not there to strike a useless blow for his beloved land. That belongs to the story of a newer Quebec, and now all the romances are gathered up into history.

In the autumn of 1635 the brave, beloved Champlain passed away in the heart of the city that had been his love, his ambition, his life-dream. The explorer, the crusader, the sharer of toils and battles, his story is one of the knightly romances of that period, and his name is enshrined with that of old Quebec. Other heroes were to come, other battles to be fought, much work for priest and civilian, but this is the simplest, the bravest of them all, for its mighty work was done at great odds.

To-day you find the Citadel, the old French fort, but the wharves and docks run out in the river, and there are steamboats, instead of canoes. There is the Market Place and the City Hall, the Grande Allée St. Louis Place and Gate, the crowded business-point, with its ferries, the great Louise basin and embankment. The city runs out to St. Charles river, and stretches on and on until you reach the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There are still the upper and the lower town, and the steep ways, the heights that Wolfe climbed, the world-famed Plains of Abraham.

Everywhere is historic ground, monuments of courage, zeal, and religion. The streets have old names. Here on a height so steep you wonder how they are content to climb it, juts out a little stone eyrie, just as it stood a hundred years ago. Three or four generations have lived within its walls, and they are as French to-day as they were then. They want nothing of the modern gauds of the present. Grandmothers used the clumsy furniture, and it is almost worth a king's ransom, it has so many legends woven around it.

There is the Château Frontenac, that recalls romance and bravery. There are churches, with their stories. There are the old Jesuit barracks, out of which went many a heroic soul to face martyrdom, there is the Chien d'Or, with its stone dog gnawing a bone, and the romance of Nicolas Jaquin Philibert, the brave Huguenot.