* “—Qui dict quun Evesque peult ce qu’il veult et ne
menace que dexcommunication.” Lettre d’Argenson a son
Frère, 1659.
** Lettre d’Argenson à son Frère, 21 Oct., 1659.
*** Ibid., 7 July, 1660.
compel the infant colony to enter “the good path;” meaning, of course, the straitest path of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. We may hereafter see more of this stringent system of colonial education, its success, and the results that followed.
CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.
Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois d’Avaugour.—The Brandt Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The Earthquake.
When Argenson arrived to assume the government, a curious greeting had awaited him. The Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their school—disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes—made him speeches by turn, in prose and verse. First, Pierre du Quet, who played the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor, in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean François Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron. The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret. Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their chief. *
Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered at Quebec to greet the new “Ononthio.” On the next day—at his own cost, as he writes to a friend—he gave them a feast, consisting of “seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons, eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after their fashion.” **
These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois; *** and he begs the proprietary company which he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers or laborers, according to the occasion.