When Aaron spoke of his golden calf to the people, he said: “These are thy gods, O, Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” So, likewise, Mr. Bedard and Mr. Perras, showing the wafer to the deluded people, said: “Ecce agnus Die qui tollit peccata mundi!” (“Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world!”)
These two sincere and honest priests placed the utmost confidence also in relics and scapularies. I have heard both say that no fatal accident could happen to one who had a scapulary on his breast—no sudden death would overtake a man who was faithful about keeping those blessed scapularies about his person. Both of them, nevertheless, died suddenly, and that too of the saddest of deaths. Mr. Bedard dropped dead on the 19th of May, 1837, at a great dinner given to his friends. He was in the act of swallowing a glass of that drink of which God says: “Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.”
The Rev. Mr. Perras, sad to say, became a lunatic in 1845, and died the 29th of July, 1847, in a fit of delirium.
Chapter XXIII.
THE CHOLERA MORBUS OF 1834—ADMIRABLE COURAGE AND SELF-DENIAL OF THE PRIESTS OF ROME DURING THAT EPIDEMIC.
I had not been more than three weeks the administrator of the parish of Charlesbourgh, when the terrible words, “The cholera morbus is in Quebec!” sent a thrill of terror from one end to the other of Canada.
The cities of Quebec and Montreal, with many surrounding country places, had been decimated in 1832 by the same terrible scourge. Thousands upon thousands had fallen its victims; families in every rank of society had disappeared; for the most skillful physicians of both Europe and America had been unable to stop its march and ravages. But the year 1833 had passed without hearing almost of a single case of that fatal disease: we had all the hope that the justice of God was satisfied, and that He would no more visit us with that horrible plague. In this, however, we were to be sadly disappointed.
Charlesbourgh is a kind of suburb of Quebec, the greatest part of its inhabitants had to go within its walls to sell their goods several times every week. It was evident that we were to be among the first visited by that messenger of a just, but angry God. I will never forget the hour after I had heard: “The cholera is in Quebec!” It was, indeed, a most solemn hour to me. At a glance, I measured the bottomless abyss which was dug under my feet. We had no physicians, and there was no possibility of having any one—for they were to have more work than they could do in Quebec. I saw that I would have to be both the body and the soul-physician of the numberless victims of this terrible disease.
The tortures of the dying, the cries of the widows and of the orphans, the almost unbearable stench of the houses attacked by the scourge, the desolation and the paralyzing fears of the whole people, the fatherless and motherless orphans by whom I was to be surrounded, the starving poor for whom I would have to provide food and clothing when every kind or work and industry was stopped; but above all, the crowds of penitents whom the terrors of an impending death would drag to my feet to make their confessions, that I might forgive their sins, passed through my mind as so many spectres. I fell on my knees, with a heart beating with emotions that no pen can describe, and prostrating myself before my too justly angry God, I cried for mercy; with torrents of tears I asked Him to take away my life as a sacrifice for my people, but to spare them: raising my eyes towards a beautiful statue of Mary, whom I believed to be then the Mother of God, I supplicated her to appease the wrath of her Son.
I was still on my knees, when several knocks at the door told me that some one wanted to speak to me—a young woman was there, bathed in tears and pale as death, who said to me: “My father has just returned from Quebec, and is dying from the cholera—please come quick to hear his confession before he expires!”