* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. V.
** Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1662. The sentence of
excommunication is printed in the Appendix to the Esquisse
de la Vie de Laval. It bears date February 24. It was on
this very day that he was forced to revoke it.
France, to lay his complaints before the court, and urge the removal of Avaugour. He had, besides, two other important objects, as will appear hereafter. His absence brought no improvement. Summer and autumn passed, and the commotion did not abate. Winter was drawing to a close, when, at length, outraged Heaven interposed an awful warning to the guilty colony.
Scarcely had the bishop left his flock when the skies grew portentous with signs of the chastisement to come. “We beheld,” gravely writes Father Lalemant, “blazing serpents which flew through the air, borne on wings of fire. We beheld above Quebec a great globe of flame, which lighted up the night, and threw out sparks on all sides. This same meteor appeared above Montreal, where it seemed to issue from the bosom of the moon, with a noise as loud as cannon or thunder, and after sailing three leagues through the air it disappeared behind the mountain whereof this island bears the name.” *
Still greater marvels followed. First, a Christian Algonquin squaw, described as “innocent, simple, and sincere,” being seated erect in bed, wide awake, by the side of her husband, in the night between the fourth and fifth of February, distinctly heard a voice saying, “Strange things will happen to-day; the earth will quake!” In great alarm she whispered the prodigy to her husband, who told her that she lied. This silenced her for a time; but when, the next morning, she went into the forest
* Lalemant. Relation, 1663, 2.
with her hatchet to cut a faggot of wood, the same dread voice resounded through the solitude, and sent her back in terror to her hut. *
These things were as nothing compared with the marvel that befell a nun of the hospital, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin, who died five years later, in the odor of sanctity. On the night of the fourth of February, 1663, she beheld in the spirit four furious demons at the four corners of Quebec, shaking it with a violence which plainly showed their purpose of reducing it to ruins; “and this they would have done,” says the story, “if a personage of admirable beauty and ravishing majesty [Christ], whom she saw in the midst of them, and who, from time to time, gave rein to their fury, had not restrained them when they were on the point of accomplishing their wicked design.” She also heard the conversation of these demons, to the effect that people were now well frightened, and many would be converted; but this would not last long, and they, the demons, would have them in time, “Let us keep on shaking,” they cried, encouraging each other, “and do our best to upset every thing.” **
Now, to pass from visions to facts: “At half-past five o’clock on the morning of the fifth,” writes Father Lalemant, “a great roaring sound was heard at the same time through the whole extent
* Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 6.
** Ragueneau, Vie de Catherine de St. Augustin, Liv. IV.
chap. i. The same story is told by Juchereau, Lalemant, and
Marie de l'Incarnation, to whom Charlevoix erroneously
ascribes the vision, as does also the Abbe La Tour.
of Canada. This sound, which produced an effect as if the houses were on fire, brought everybody out of doors; but instead of seeing smoke and flame, they were amazed to behold the walls shaking, and all the stones moving as if they would drop from their places. The houses seemed to bend first to one side and then to the other. Bells sounded of themselves; beams, joists, and planks cracked; the ground heaved, making the pickets of the palisades dance in a way that would have seemed incredible had we not seen it in divers places.