Leaving the pigs and papooses, we will go to—which of the nunneries? The Gray? Yes. But when you come home, everybody will tell you that you ought to have visited the Black Nunnery. The Gray is not to be mentioned in the same year. Do not, however, flatter yourself that in choosing the Black you will be any more enviable; there will not be wanting myriads who will assure you, that, not having seen the Gray, you might as well have seen nothing at all. To the Gray Nunnery went we, and saw pictures and altars and saints and candlesticks, and little dove-cot floors of galleries jutting out, where a few women crossed, genuflected, and mumbled, and an old woman came out of a door above one of them, and asked the people below not to talk so loud, because they disturbed the worshippers; but the people kept talking, and presently she came out again, and repeated her request, with a little of the Inquisition in her tones and gestures,—no more than was justifiable under the circumstances: but she looked straight at me; and O old woman! it was not I that talked, nor my party. We were noiseless as mice. It was that woman over there in a Gothic bonnet, with a bunch of roses under the roof as big as a cabbage. Presently the great doors opened, and a procession of nuns marched in chanting their gibberish. Of course they wore the disguise of those abominable caps, with gray, uncouth dresses, the skirts taken up in front and pinned behind, after the manner of washerwomen. Yet there were faces among them on which the eye loved to linger,—some not too young for their years, some furtive glances, some demure looks from the yet undeadened youth under those ugly robes,—some faces of struggle and some of victory. O Mother Church, here I do not believe in you! These natures are gnarled, not nurtured. These elaborately reposeful faces are not natural. These downcast eyes and droning voices are not natural. Not one thing here is natural. Whisk off these clinging gray washing-gowns, put these girls into crinoline and Gothic bonnets, and the innocent finery that belongs to them, and send them out into the wholesome daylight to talk and laugh and make merry,—the birthright of their young years. A religion that deprives young girls or old girls of this boon is not the religion of Jesus Christ. Don't tell me!
The nuns pass out, and we wander through the silent yard, cut off by all the gloom of the medieval times from the din, activity, and good cheer of the street beyond, and are conducted into the Old Men's Department. The floors and furniture are faultlessly and fragrantly clean. The kitchen is neat and susceptible of warmth and comfort, even when the sun's short wooing is over. The beds are ranged along the walls plump and nice; yet I hope that, when I am an old man, I shall not have to sleep on blue calico pillow-cases. Here and there, within and without, old men are basking in the rare sweet warmth of summer, and with their canes and their sunshine seem very well bestowed. Now I like you, Mother Church. You do better by your old men than you do by your young women,—simply because you know more about them. How can you, Papa and Messrs. Cardinals, be expected to understand what is good for a girl? If only you would confine yourself to what you do comprehend,—if only you would apply your admirable organizations to legitimate purposes, and not run mad on machinery, you would do angels' work.
From the old men's quarters we go upstairs where sewing and knitting and all manner of fancy-work, especially in beads, are taught to long and lank little girls by longer and lanker large girls, companioned by a few old women, with commonplace knitting-work. Everything everywhere is thoroughly neat and comfortable; but I have a desperate pang of home-sickness; for if there is one condition of life more intolerable than any other, it is a state of unvarying, hopeless comfort.
From the Gray Nunnery to the English Church, which I like much better than the French Cathedral. There is a general tone of oakiness, solid, substantial, sincere, like the England of tradition,—set off by a brilliant memorial window and a memorial altar, and other memorial things which I have forgotten, but which I make no doubt the people who put them there have not forgotten. Here also we find, as all along in Canada, vestiges of his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. We are shown the Bible which he presented to the Church, and we gaze with becoming reverence upon the august handwriting,—the pew in which he worshipped; and the loyal beadle sees nothing but reverence in our momentary occupation of that consecrated seat. Evidently there is but a very faint line of demarcation in the old man's mind between his heavenly and earthly king; but an old man may have a worse weakness than this,—an unreasoning, blind, faithful fondness and reverence for a blameless prince. God bless the young man, in that he is the son of his father and mother. God help him, in that he is to be King of England.
Chancel and window, altar, and arches and aisles and treasures,—is there anything else? Yes, the apple that Eve ate, transfixed to oak,—hard to understood, but seeing is believing. And then past Nelson's monument, somewhat battered, like the hero whom it commemorates; past the Champ de Mars, a fine parade-ground, hard and smooth as a floor; past the barracks and the reservoir, to the new Court-House, massive and plain. Then home to dinner and lounging; then travelling-dresses, and the steamer, and a most lovely sunset on the river; and then a night of tranquillity running to fog, and a morning approach to the unique city of North America,—the first and the only walled city I ever saw, or you either, I dare say, if you would only be willing to confess it. The aspect of the city, as one first approaches it, is utterly strange and foreign,—a high promontory jutting into the river, with a shelf of squalid, crowded, tall and shaky, or low and squatty tenements at its base, almost standing on the water and rising behind them, for the back of the shelf, a rough, steep precipice abutted with the solid masonry of wall and citadel. A board fastened somehow about half-way up the rocky cliff, inscribed with the name of Montgomery, marks the spot where a hero, a patriot, a gentleman, met his death. Disembarking, we wind along a stair of a road, up steep ascents, and enter in through the gates into the city,—the walled, upper city,—walls thick, impregnable, gates ponderous, inert, burly. You did well enough in your day, old foes; but with Armstrongs and iron-clads, and Ericsson still living, where would you be?—answer me that. Quaint, odd, alien old city,—a faint phantasmagoria of past conflicts and forgotten plans, a dingy fragment of la belle France, a clinging reminiscence of England, a dim, stone dream of Edinburgh, a little flutter of modern fashion, planted upon a sturdy rampart of antiquity, a little cobweb of commerce and enterprise, netting over a great deal of church and priest and king with an immovable basis of stolid existence,—that is the Quebec I inferred from the Quebec I saw. Nothing in it was so interesting to me as itself. But passing by itself for the nonce, we prudently took advantage of the fine morning, and drove out to the Falls of Montmorency with staring eyes that wanted to take in all views, before, behind, on this side and that, at once; and because we could not, the joints of my neck at least became so dry with incessant action that they almost creaked. Low stone cottages lined the road-sides, with windows that opened like doors, with an inevitable big black stove whenever your eye got far enough in, with a pleasant stoop in front, with women perpetually washing the floors and the windows, with beautiful and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every window, and often trailing and climbing about its whole area. Here, I take it, is the home of a real peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they embrace. There are little trellises and cornices and fanciful adornments. The solid homeliness is fringed with elegance. The people and the houses do not own each other, but they are married. There is love between them, and pride, and a hearty understanding. I can think of a country where you see little brown or red clapboarded houses that are neither solid nor elegant, that are both slight and awkward,—angular and shingly and dismal. The roofs are intended just to cover the houses, and are scanty at that. The sides are straight, the windows inexorable; and for flowers you have a hollyhock or two, and perhaps an uncomfortably tall sunflower, sovereign for hens. There is no home-look and no home-atmosphere. I love that country better than I like this; but, if you kill me for it, this drive is picturesque. These dumpy little smooth, white, flounced and flowered cottages look like wicker-gates to a happy valley,—born, not built. The cottages of the country, in my thoughts, yes, and in my heart, are neither born nor built, but "put up,"—just for convenience, just to lodge in while waiting for something better, or till the corn is grown. Coming man, benefactor of our race, you who shall show us how to be contented without being sluggish,—how to be restful, and yet aspiring,—how to take the goods the gods provide us, without losing out of manly hearts the sweet sense of providing,—how to plant happy feet firmly on the present, and not miss from eager eyes the inspiriting outlook of the future,—how to make a wife of today, and not a mistress of tomorrow,—come quickly to a world that sorely needs you, and bring a fresh evangel.
The current of our thoughts is broken in upon by a new and peculiar institution. Every single child, and every group of children on the road, leaves its play as we pass by, and all dart upon us on both sides of the carriage, almost under the wheels, almost under the horses' feet, with out-stretched blackened hands, and intense bright black eyes, running, panting, shouting, "Un sou! un sou! un sou!" I do not think I am quite in love with this as an institution, but it is very lively as a spectacle; and the little fleet-footed, long-winded beggars show a touching confidence in human nature. There is no servility in their beggary; and when it is glossed over with a thin mercantile veneering, by the brown little paws holding out to you a gorgeous bouquet of one clover-blossom, two dandelions, and a quartette of sorrel-leaves, why, it ceases to be beggarly, and becomes traffic overlaid with grace, the acanthus capital surmounting the fluted shaft. We meet also continual dog-carts, something like the nondescript which "blind Carwell" used to drag. Did you never see it? Well, then, like the cart in which the ark went up to Kirjath-jearim. Now you must know. Stubborn two-wheeled vehicles, with the whole farm loaded into the body, and the whole family on the seat. Here comes one drawn by a cow, not unnatural. Unnatural! It is the key-note of the tune. Everything is cow-y,—slow and sure, firm, but not fast, kindly, sunny, ruminant, heavy, lumbering, basking, content. Calashes also we meet,—a cumbrous, old-fashioned "one-hoss shay," with a yellow body, a suspicion of springlessness, wheels with huge spokes and broad rims, and the driver sitting on the dash-board. Now we are at the Falls of Montmorency. If you would know how they look, go and see them. If you have seen them, you don't need a description; and if you have not seen them, a description would do no good. From the Falls, if you are unsophisticated, you will resume your carriage and return to the city; but if you are au fait, you will cross the high-road, cross the pastures, and wind down a damp, mossy wood-path to the steps of Montmorency,—a natural phenomenon, quite as interesting as, and more remarkable than, the Falls,—especially if you go away without seeing it. Any river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, there is nothing for it to do but fall; but it is not every river that can carve out in its rage such wonderful stairways as this,—seething and foaming and roaring and leaping through its narrow and narrowing channel, with all the turbulence of its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of Time is on its throat, silent, mighty, irresistible.
Montmorency,—Montmorenci,—sweet and storied name! You, too, have received the awful baptism. Blood has mingled with your sacrifices. The song of your wild waves has been lost in the louder thunders of artillery, and the breezes sweeping through these green woods have soothed the agonies of dying men. Into one heart this ancient name, heavy with a weight of disaster and fancied disgrace, sank down like lead,—a burden which only death could cast off, only victory destroy; and death came hand in hand with victory.
Driving home, we take more special note of what interested us aggressively before,—Lord Elgin's residence,—the house occupied by the Duke of Kent when a young man in the army here, long I suppose before the throne of England placed itself at the end of his vista. Did the Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, sending away his retinue, walk slowly alone under the shadows of these sombre trees, striving to bring back that far-off past, and some vague outline of the thoughts, the feelings, the fears and fancies of his grandfather, then, like himself, a young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, poor and an exile, with no foresight probably of the exaltation that awaited his line,—his only child to be not only the lady of his land, but our lady of the world,—a warm-hearted woman worthily seated on the proud throne of Britain,—a noble and great-souled woman, in whose sorrow nations mourn, for whose happiness nations pray,—whose name is never spoken in this far-off Western world but with a silent blessing. Another low-roofed, many-roomed, rambling old house I stand up in the carriage to gaze at lingeringly with longing, misty eyes,—the sometime home of Field Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm. Writing now of this in the felt darkness that pours up from abandoned Fredericksburg, fearing not what the South may do in its exultation, but what the North may do in its despondency, I understand, as I understood not then, nor ever before, what comfort came to the dying hero in the certain thought, "I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."
Now again we draw near the city whose thousands of silver (or perhaps tin) roofs dazzle our eyes with their resplendence, and I have an indistinct impression of having been several times packed out and in to see sundry churches, of which I remember nothing except that I looked in vain to see the trophies of captured colors that once hung there, commemorating the exploits of the ancients,—and on the whole, I don't think I care much about churches except on Sundays. Somewhere in Canada—perhaps near Lorette—is some kind of a church, perhaps the oldest, or the first Indian church in Canada,—or may be it was interesting because it was burnt down just before we got there. That is the only definite reminiscence I have of any church in Quebec and its suburbs, and that is not so definite as it might be. I am sure I inspected the church of St. Roque and the church of St. John, because I have entered it in my "Diary"; but if they were all set down on the table before me at this moment, I am sure I could not tell which was which, or that they had not been transported each and all from Boston.
But we ascend the cliff, we enter the citadel, we walk upon the Plains of Abraham, and they overpower you with the intensity of life. The heart beats in labored and painful pulsations with the pressure of the crowding past. Yonder shines the lovely isle of vines that gladdened the eyes of treacherous Cartier, the evil requiter of hospitality. Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash with murderous rifles. Valor is no substitute for vigilance. Short and sharp the grapple, and victor and vanquished alike lie down in the arms of all-conquering death. Where this little tree ventures forth its tender leaves, Wolfe felt the bullet speeding to his heart. Where this monument stands, his soldier-soul fled, all anguish soothed away by the exultant shout of victory,—fled from passion and pain, from strife and madness, into the eternal calm.