I leaped into the elegant carriage, drawn by two fine horses, and in a few minutes I was in the presence of the most distressing spectacle I ever saw. The young lady, tearing her robes into fragments, tearing her hair with her hands and cutting her face with the nails of her fingers, was crying, “Oh! for God’s sake, give me a knife that I may cut my throat? I have killed my child! My darling is dead! I am the murderess of my own dear Lucy! My hands are reddened with her blood. Oh! may I die with her!”
I was thunderstruck, and at first remained mute and motionless. The young husband, with two other gentlemen, Dr. Blanchet and Coroner Panet, were trying to hold the hands of his unfortunate wife. He did not dare to speak. At last the young wife, casting her eyes upon me, said: “Oh, dear Father Chiniquy, for God’s sake give me a knife that I may cut my throat! When drunk, I took my precious darling in my arms to kiss her; but I fell—her head struck the sharp corner of the stove. Her brain and blood are there spread on the floor! My child! my own child is dead! I have killed her! Cursed liquor! Cursed wine! My child is dead! I am damned! Cursed drink!”
I could not speak, but I could weep and cry. I wept, and mingled my tears with those of that unfortunate mother. Then, with an expression of desolation which pierced my soul as with a sword, she said: “Go and see.” I went to the next room, and there I saw that once beautiful child, dead, her face covered with her blood and brains! There was a large gap made in the right temple. The drunken mother, by falling with her child in her arms, had caused the head to strike with such a terrible force on the stove that it upset on the floor. The burning coals were spread on every side, and the house had been very nearly on fire. But that very blow, with the awful death of her child, had suddenly brought her to her senses, and put an end to her intoxication. At a glance she saw the whole extent of her misfortune. Her first thought had been to run to the sideboard, seize a large, sharp knife, and cut her own throat. Providentially, her husband was on the spot. With great difficulty, and after a terrible struggle, he took the knife out of her hands and threw it into the street through the window. It was then about five o’clock in the afternoon. After an hour passed in indescribable agony of mind and heart, I attempted to leave and go back to the parsonage. But my unfortunate young friend requested me, in the name of God, to spend the night with him. “You are the only one,” he said, “who can help us in this awful night. My misfortune is great enough, without destroying our good name by spreading it in public. I want to keep it as secret as possible. With our physician and coroner, you are the only man on earth whom I trust to help me. Please pass the night with us.”
I remained, but tried in vain to calm the unfortunate mother. She was constantly breaking our hearts with her lamentations—her convulsive efforts to take her own life. Every minute she was crying, “My child! my darling Lucy! Just when thy little arms were so gently caressing me, and thy angelic kisses were so sweet on my lips, I have slaughtered thee! When thou wert pressing me on thy loving heart and kissing me, I, thy drunken mother, gave thee the death blow! My hands are reddened with thy blood! My breast is covered with thy brains! Oh! for God’s sake, my dear husband, take my life. I cannot consent to live a day longer! My dear Father Chiniquy, give me a knife, that I may mingle my blood with the blood of my child! O that I could be buried in the same grave with her!”
In vain I tried to speak to her of the mercies of God towards sinners; she would not listen to anything I could say; she was absolutely deaf to my voice. At about ten o’clock, she had a most terrible fit of anguish and terror. Though we were four men to keep her quiet, she was stronger than we all. She was stronger than a giant. She slipped from our hands and ran to the room where the dead child was lying in her cradle. Grasping the cold body in her hands, she tore the bands of white linen which had been put round the head to cover the horrible wound, and with cries of desolation she pressed her lips, her cheeks, her very eyes, on the horrible gap from which the brain and blood were oozing, as if wanting to heal it and recall the poor dear one to life.
“My darling, my beloved, my own dear Lucy,” she cried, “open thy eyes—look again at thy mother! Give me a kiss! Press me again to thy bosom! But thine eyes are shut! Thy lips are cold! Thou dost not smile on me any longer! Thou art dead, and I, thy mother, have slaughtered thee! Canst thou forgive me thy death? Canst thou ask Jesus Christ, our Saviour, to forgive me? Canst thou ask the blessed Virgin Mary to pray for me? Will I never see thee again? Ah, no! I am lost—I am damned! I am a drunken mother who has murdered her own darling Lucy! There is no mercy for the drunken mother, the murderess of her own child.”
And when speaking thus to her child, she was sometimes kneeling down, then running around the room as if flying before a phantom.
But even then, she was constantly pressing the motionless body to her bosom, or convulsively passing her lips and cheeks over the horrible wound, so that her lips, her whole face, her breast and hands, were literally besmeared with the blood flowing from the wound. I will not say that we were all weeping and crying, for the words “weeping and crying” cannot express the desolation—the horror we felt. At about eleven o’clock, when on her knees, clasping her child to her bosom, she lifted her eyes towards me, and said:
“Dear Father Chiniquy, why is it that I have not followed your charitable advice when, still more with your tears than with words, you tried so often to persuade me to give up the use of those cursed intoxicating wines? How many times you have given me the very words which come from heaven: ‘Wine is a mocker; it bites as a serpent, and stings as an adder!’ How many times, in the name of my dear child, in the name of my dear husband, in the name of God, you have asked me to give up the use of those cursed drinks! But listen now to my prayer. Go all over Canada; tell all the fathers never to put any intoxicating drink before the eyes of their children. It was at my father’s table that I first learned to drink that wine which I will curse during all eternity! Tell all the mothers never to taste these abominable drinks. It was my mother who first taught me to drink that wine which I will curse as long as God is!
“Take the blood of my child, and go redden with it the top of the doors of every house in Canada, and say to all those who dwell in those houses that that blood was shed by the hand of a murderess mother when drunk. With that blood write on the walls of every house in Canada that ‘wine is a mocker.’ Tell the French Canadians how, on the dead body of my child, I have cursed that wine which has made me so wretchedly miserable and guilty.”