That night was a night of jubilation and thanksgiving in the college of Rennes. [27]
[27] For Jogues's arrival in Brittany, see Lettre de Jogues à Lalemant, Rennes, Jan. 6, 1644; Lettre de Jogues à———, Rennes, Jan. 5, 1644, (in Relation, 1643,) and the long account in the Relation of 1647.
Jogues became a centre of curiosity and reverence. He was summoned to Paris. The Queen, Anne of Austria, wished to see him; and when the persecuted slave of the Mohawks was conducted into her presence, she kissed his mutilated hands, while the ladies of the Court thronged around to do him homage. We are told, and no doubt with truth, that these honors were unwelcome to the modest and single-hearted missionary, who thought only of returning to his work of converting the Indians. A priest with any deformity of body is debarred from saying mass. The teeth and knives of the Iroquois had inflicted an injury worse than the torturers imagined, for they had robbed Jogues of the privilege which was the chief consolation of his life; but the Pope, by a special dispensation, restored it to him, and with the opening spring he sailed again for Canada.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
1641-1646.
THE IROQUOIS—BRESSANI—DE NOUË.
War • Distress and Terror • Richelieu • Battle • Ruin of Indian Tribes • Mutual Destruction • Iroquois and Algonquin • Atrocities • Frightful Position of the French • Joseph Bressani • His Capture • His Treatment • His Escape • Anne de Nouë • His Nocturnal Journey • His Death
Two forces were battling for the mastery of Canada: on the one side, Christ, the Virgin, and the Angels, with their agents, the priests; on the other, the Devil, and his tools, the Iroquois. Such at least was the view of the case held in full faith, not by the Jesuit Fathers alone, but by most of the colonists. Never before had the fiend put forth such rage, and in the Iroquois he found instruments of a nature not uncongenial with his own.
At Quebec, Three Rivers, Montreal, and the little fort of Richelieu, that is to say, in all Canada, no man could hunt, fish, till the fields, or cut a tree in the forest, without peril to his scalp. The Iroquois were everywhere, and nowhere. A yell, a volley of bullets, a rush of screeching savages, and all was over. The soldiers hastened to the spot to find silence, solitude, and a mangled corpse.