Jacques and Louise remained in possession of St. Bernard, and on that island their stout-legged children played, or learned contented thrift, or followed their father in his sowing; their delight being the real priest who came with his glowing altar to teach them religion, and their terror the pretended priest in the top apartment of their house. For Mademoiselle de Granville lived many years, so indulged in her humors that the story went among neighboring seigniories that she had an insane brother whom she imprisoned on St. Bernard out of tenderness towards him, instead of sending him to some asylum in France.[13]
Rather because her memory was a spot of tenderness within themselves always on the point of bleeding, than because of their ignorant dread of law’s intermeddling, Jacques and Louise never told about Dollard’s bride. The marriage had taken place in Quebec. Dollier de Casson, who celebrated it, made no record of the fact in connection with his account of Dollard’s exploit. The jealousies and bickerings then rising high between Quebec and Montreal clouded or misrepresented or suppressed many a transaction. And honest Dollier de Casson, who no doubt learned by priestly methods the fate of the bride, may have seen fit to withhold the luster of her devotion from the name of Laval, since the bishop pressed no inquiries after his impulsive young relative. News stretched slowly to and from France then. Her name dropped out of all records, except the notarial one of her marriage, and a faint old clew which an obscure scribe has left embodying a scarcely credited tale told by the Huron deserters. Without monument, what was once her beautiful body has become grass, flowers, clear air, beside the hoarse rapids. She died, as many a woman has died, silently crowning the deed done by a man, and in her finer immortality can perhaps smile at being forgotten, since it is not by him.
But Dollard has been the darling of his people for more than two and a quarter centuries.
On every midsummer-day, when the festival of St. John the Baptist is kept with pageant, music, banners, and long processions; when thousands choke the streets, and triumphal arch after triumphal arch lifts masses of flowers to the June sun; when invention has taxed itself to carry beautiful living pictures before the multitude—then there is always a tableau to commemorate the heroes of the Long Saut. If young children or if strangers ask, “Who was Dollard?” any Frenchman is ready to answer:
“He was a man of courageous heart;[14] he saved Canada from the Iroquois.”
The dullest soul is stirred to passionate acclamation as the chevalier and his sixteen men go by.
And when we tell our stories, shall we tell them only of the commonplace, the gay, the debonair life of this world? Shall the heroes be forgotten?
THE END.