| [1] | Candwish—An Indian word signifying comrade. |
| [2] | Onontio—Frontenac. |
CHAPTER V.
A CANADIAN HOME.
THE house occupied by Jacques Le Ber in Ville Marie stood at the corner of St. Paul and St. Joseph streets. The front windows commanded a view of the St. Lawrence, while those at the back overlooked undulating meadows and woodlands, crowned by Mount Royal, on whose summit, amidst the thick foliage, gleamed the tall cross which in fulfilment of his vow Maisonneuve had himself borne up the steep mountain track. The house was a substantial building, long and low, with high peaked roof and overhanging eaves. The rooms were large, with low ceilings and immense chimneys taking up half one side of the wall. The furnishings bore evidence of wealth and comfort, displayed in old chairs and tabourets, their covers worked in satin stitch, the buffet and tables of cherry-wood all in plain solid bourgeois style. On either side of the street door were placed wooden benches, where the family and visitors gathered for recreation in the summer evenings. In a wing or annex adjoining was the shop, the foundation of the successful trader’s wealth, in which were stored quantities of beaver-skins awaiting shipment to France, as well as various commodities required by the settlers, and such provisions as were considered necessary in fitting out the voyageurs for their long expeditions to the West and for purposes of trade with the Indian tribes. At the back of the house the garden bloomed with fragrant, old-fashioned flowers; there, too, carefully cultivated pear and plum trees revived a memory of Old France.
Though Le Ber’s own family consisted of but a daughter and three sons, the household was a large one. His home was a capacious abode, extending a kindly welcome to all who might care to seek its shelter. And it was always full to overflowing; friends, relatives, guests, servants and retainers thronged the roomy chambers. As at the settlement, its occupants were divided into two clearly defined parties who were always at daggers drawn—the worldly and the devout. In its earliest days Ville Marie had been regulated like a religious community. The mental atmosphere was saturated with hare-brained enthusiasm; it was an age of miracles—the very existence of the little colony was a marvel. But the severity of the ecclesiastical rule and the unrelenting vigilance of the Jesuits were resented by many of the more worldly spirits. In the midst of pressing dangers and heroic struggles there was a natural reaction in favor of the frivolous gaiety so characteristic of the volatile French temperament. The presence of a number of officers from France, too, whose piety was less conspicuous than their love of pleasure, served to keep this spirit of resistance alive.
The wealthy burgher’s home had, owing to his daughter’s renunciation of the world and its pleasures, acquired a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of his co-religionists. She, the richest heiress of New France, had in the bloom of her youth taken a vow of perpetual seclusion, poverty and chastity, in order to devote herself to a life of contemplation. The god-child of Chomody de Maisonneuve and Marguerite Bourgeois, brought up in an atmosphere of visions and miracles, the halo of saintship glittered before her young eyes like a diamond crown, and she entertained a firm determination to scale the steepest heights of virtue and self-sacrifice. Looking down with spiritual pride upon the common herd of Christians, busied with the ordinary duties of life, she eschewed the visible and present, aspiring only to live for the heaven beyond. Lost in the vagaries of an absorbing mysticism, Jeanne Le Ber was unrelenting in the practice of humiliation and self-abnegation. Wonderful stories of her superior sanctity were whispered abroad. She wore a horse-hair skirt and belt, allowed herself scarcely any sleep, and confined her diet to the coarsest and meanest of food. She held no communication with those nearest to her by ties of blood. Two years after her retirement from the world her mother was attacked by fatal illness, and though the sound of the poor woman’s groans penetrated to her daughter’s chamber, the would-be saint denied herself the privilege of attending her parent’s death-bed. Though Jeanne Le Ber’s face was never seen except by the one person who waited upon her, nor her voice ever heard by those most closely connected with her, yet from the secluded chamber which for several years she had never quitted, that voiceless presence exercised a potent ascendency.
This influence had operated most powerfully upon her brother Pierre, a youth of mystical tendencies. Sensitive, full of refinement, quick and impatient as a thoroughbred, he had been one of Charon’s early associates—the only one who remained faithful to the end. Possessing keen artistic perceptions, he yet lacked power of execution. Few in the colony had either leisure or inclination for the cultivation of the fine arts, and Pierre Le Ber’s paintings were received by his contemporaries with an admiration untinged by criticism. His early training had predisposed him to aceticism, but his natural temperament, against which he battled with ceaseless resistance, inclined him to a sensuous delight in beauty, harmony, and brightness. His religion was that of the affections and sentiments; his imagination, warmed by the ardor of his faith, shaped the ideal forms of his worship into visible realities. He displayed a curious ingenuity in inventing torments for himself, wearing a belt covered with sharp points, whipping himself with a scourge of small cords until his shoulders were one great wound, playing at beggar, eating mouldy food, and performing the most repulsive and disagreeable offices in hospitals. More than once the rich merchant’s eldest son had been seen staggering through St. Paul Street with a lame beggar, whom he was bearing through the mud, seated on his back. As Jacques Le Ber de Senneville, the second son, was a man of the world of fashion and of courts, and Jean Le Ber du Chesne a man of action and energy, so Pierre was a dreamer of dreams, a beholder of visions.
The relations between Le Ber and the Marquise de Monesthrol had at one time furnished gossip to the small community at Ville Marie, which, during the long winter months cut off from the world, had little but scandal to serve as a diversion. On his return from a voyage to France the merchant was accompanied by the Marquise (a perfect type of the grande dame of the period), a child two years old, and a young attendant. Even to his closest friends Le Ber had never offered further explanation than to say that in his youth he had been under obligations to Madame de Monesthrol’s family, and that on his return to France, finding her widowed and in trouble, he had been proud to offer her a home for herself and her orphan niece in the New World. The lady on her part always warmly acknowledged her indebtedness to the Canadian merchant. People coming out from France brought rumors of great pecuniary trouble which had fallen upon Madame’s branch of the family, and of a terrible tragedy which had deprived her of her husband; but the most rampant curiosity sank abashed before the lady’s dignified grace, while the maid Nanon’s sharp tongue and ready wit were capable of repulsing all intrusive questions. Though Diane persisted in calling Le Ber her uncle, and in claiming his sons as cousins, it was plain that no tie of blood existed between them. The line of demarcation between patrician and plebeian was very clearly defined in those days; no one could doubt the claim of the de Monesthrols to noble birth—indeed the family was one of the most noble and powerful of the kingdom of France—while Le Ber boasted of no pretension higher than the respectable bourgeoisie.