Here they alighted and entered a quaint old gateway, flanked on each side by pyramids of ancient cannon and cannon balls. The door, with its curious knocker, stood open, and, entering, they found themselves in a low ceiled hall.
The history of this building is contemporary with that of the city for the last two centuries and so identified with past historical events that it has been preserved from vandalism of modern improvement and is a genuine relic of the old Régime in New France. Though only a story and a half high, the Norman turrets on either corner of the building add to its dignity, and the plaster walls (plastered over thick stone walls) have a rich yellow color, reminding one of an ancient vellum missal mellowed for centuries in a monkish cell.
In an old document still to be found in the archives of the St. Sulpician Order, it is recorded that the land on which this château stands was ceded to the Governor of Montreal in the year 1660, about eighteen years after Maisonneuve planted the silken Fleur-de-Lys of France on these shores. Somewhere about 1700 a part of this land was acquired by Claude de Ramezay, when he came from France as a captain in the army with the Viceroy de Tracy, and was for many years Governor of Montreal and held official court in the Council Chamber to the right of the entrance hall.
It was into this room that Miss Anstruther first ushered her party, another long low room now used as a museum of rare and very valuable relics of Canada's past. Everything is labeled by the Antiquarian Society which has this building in its keeping. There were buckles once the property of some gay French chevalier—there were bones of a young Indian maiden discovered when builders on the mountainside were excavating for a modern dwelling early in this century, even her wampum belt was there, and from it those versed in Indian lore were able to tell her age, her tribe and the fact that she had become Christianized.
Miss Anstruther instructed Queenie to read in French all the labels aloud and let Oisette translate for them; in this way they got on famously. On the left of the entrance is a salon where there is an old harpsichord, some very interesting old oil portraits of early French governors, and some curious candelabras and other furnishings of an early period. This salon was where Madame de Ramezay entertained her friends from France. How strange must these gayeties have seemed to the dweller of the wigwam as the lights from the château shone out into the night! Once, long, long ago, there was a garden in the rear of the château which reached to the very water's edge; so the sound of the dancing and the laughter must have carried out on the stream. Nowadays this land behind the château is filled with warehouses, and the view of the river gone for all time.
What a contrast to the burden-bearing squaws must have been the gay French women in their powder and patches and hair dressed a la Pompadour as they danced a minuet in their stiff brocades and sparkling jewels, to the sound of a harpsichord.
"Oh, fair young land of La Nouvelle France,
With the halo of olden time romance,
Back like a half forgotten dream
Comes the bygone days of the Old Régime."
Some visitor wrote those words in the visitors' book where every one is asked to inscribe his name.
After the children had absorbed the most important contents of these two rooms they were ushered down a long flight of stairs, ladder-like in their steepness, into the vaults of the château.
These vaults were once the kitchens and laundry of the great château, the fireplaces were so huge the children walked right into them.