Basilica.
In that hour his life must have seemed a very tragedy of failure—himself a prisoner, Quebec in the hands of the enemy, his life-work crumbling to ruins! But in Champlain’s vocabulary there was no such word as despair. Immediately he set himself to obtain the restoration of Quebec, and his enthusiasm prevailed over all obstacles. By the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye Quebec was given back to France, and in 1633, after nearly four years’ absence, Champlain returned to his adopted country.
Wooden
Candlestick.
He received a joyous welcome from the few French families who had remained in the colony. The Indians, who came down the river by hundreds in their canoes, gave him a still more enthusiastic greeting. Never before had there been at Quebec such feasting, such speech-making, such a smoking of peace-pipes; and Champlain, knowing that the very life of the colony was bound up with the fur-trade, cherished high hopes for the prosperity of Quebec.
What matter that the original settlement below the cliff lay in ruins? The Governor immediately set about its rebuilding, and on the Rock he erected the first parish church of Quebec, “Notre Dame de Recouvrance.” Authorities differ as to whether it stood on the site of the Basilica, or on that of the English Cathedral, for on a windy day in June, 1640, it was burnt to the ground, with all it contained. Before that catastrophe occurred the heroic founder of Quebec had gone to his rest.
Tadousac.
During his last busy years Champlain found much time for devotional exercises, and already in his life-time Quebec had taken on that markedly religious character which it bears to-day. Then, as now, black-gowned priests pervaded the streets, and the clear sound of the church-bells broke in at oft-recurring intervals on the harsher clangor of secular life. “Fort St. Louis,” wrote the Governor’s Jesuit confessor, “seemed like a well-managed school; in the morning at table M. de Champlain heard read aloud some good history, and at night the lives of the saints; in the evening there was private meditation, and then prayers were said kneeling.”
