Jean Baptiste: A Story of French Canada

by James Edward Le Rossignol

"Quite otherwise, I assure you," said the sorcerer, with a ferocious smile. "Listen! she saved the life of that precious brother, Ovide, and my ear--sacré tonnerre!--she bit it off!"

CHAPTER V

CASTLES IN SPAIN

It was the morning of the twenty-fourth of June, and Jean Baptiste, having attended Mass in honour of his patron saint, was spending the rest of the day by the river. The sun was high, and in all open places the heat was intense, but where Jean lay at ease near the edge of a cliff there was cool and pleasant shade. At his feet the river roared through a deep gorge; on the farther side there was a wall of rock with a fringe of trees; while beyond rose a long range of mountains, forest-clad to the very top. Above, in the blue, floated light, silvery clouds, lazily passing from tree-top to tree-top, slowly changing their form, until they disappeared behind the mountains or melted away in the depths of the sky.

On this day Jean was celebrating his twenty-third birthday, and the completion of his college course. His college had been the forest, and his book the book of Nature. He had read other books as well; all that the seminarists had studied, and many more of which they had never heard; but the knowledge that he valued most was obtained from the trees, the rocks, the soil, the river, the birds, the beasts, the fishes, the cycle of the seasons, the changes of the weather, and all the panorama and procession of Nature that mean so much to the man with the seeing eye and the understanding heart. The book was always open; and in the light of Science, with Philosophy his interpreter and Religion his inspiration, he read many difficult pages and discovered many secrets.

To Jean Baptiste the study of the world in which he lived afforded not merely satisfaction to the natural curiosity of youth, which makes knowledge desirable for itself alone; but it gave him an insight into the nature of things, and a power of control which he planned to use, some day, for a higher end. The savages, by their knowledge of the wilderness, had made their living there; the habitants, knowing more, had secured many of the comforts of civilised life; and it was reasonable to think that a fuller knowledge would yield results undreamed of by those who never went below the surface of things to the centre and source of power.

Since the time when he decided that he would not be a priest, a religious leader of the conventional type, Jean had become possessed with the thought that there was another work to which he was called, a work more material in its character, but none the less for the good of the parish, the honour of his patron saint and the glory of God. Of that he had been thinking for many years; for that he had been preparing; and now the day was at hand and the work about to begin.

Jean had many plans for the improvement of his little world, not the least of which was the using of the river itself, an enormous source of power going to waste in its mad rush through the gorge at his feet. Looking up stream he could see, not a hundred yards distant, the deep, still pool where the cataract began; and beyond, on both sides of the river, a broad expanse of low-lying ground, stretching to the first rise of hills and forming a perfect site for a dam and an immense lake which should afford water-power equal to the strength of ten thousand horses.

With such energy at his command, what could he not do? Carry on lumbering on a large scale, work the great deposits of iron sand along the river, manufacture pottery out of the banks of fine clay, run a tramway to Quebec, light and heat all the houses in the parish with electricity, supply the people with motive power for machinery of every kind--all this and more was possible. As he thought of the wonderful possibilities it seemed to Jean Baptiste that he was a prophet, the fore-runner of a mighty revolution in this remote valley, where for a hundred years the habitants had desired nothing else than to walk in peace and security in the ways of their fathers.

But it was not possible to leave them in peace. No, the new age was come. Quebec and Montreal, Lorette and Chaudière were advancing by leaps and bounds, and the habitants of St. Placide must arise and join the procession. Consider that fine river, the St. Ange, rising in a hundred lakes on the height of land and descending in a thousand cataracts to its final plunge into the St. Lawrence. Why had the good God given this gift if not for use, that the people might be more industrious, more prosperous and more happy in their little corner of the great and beautiful world?