"Je suis un chien qui ronge l'os
En le rongeant je prends mon repos,
Un jour viendra, qui n'est pas venu,
Que je mordrai qui m'aura mordu."
Translated this reads:
"I am the dog that gnaws his bone
I crouch and gnaw it all alone,
A time will come, which is not yet,
When I'll bite him by whom I'm bit."
There is a tablet in gold on a plain bare frontage. A dog gnawing a bone, the dog is couchant (lying down), the bone is that of a man's thigh-bone! Madame Tremblent had told Oisette the interesting legend of Le Chien D'or. It had its origin in the mercenary practices of the last Intendant of Quebec under the French régime—Intendant means a "City Manager" of modern times. This wicked one's name was Bigot. At a time when food was very scarce indeed, and ships from France bringing provisions to her colony were delayed by wind and weather, Bigot gathered from poor farmers all the grain and food stuffs he could lay hands on and stored them in a building close to his palace, and when the time was ripe and a famine at hand he planned to sell back all this food to the poor farmers who had raised it, and to charge them a very big price. The building where he stored all his goods became known as La Frippone—"The cheat."
Now, among the merchants of Quebec at that time was a man named Nicholas Jaquin, he was rich and yet he was generous. He had also a great warehouse on top of Mountain hill, where the Quebec post office now stands. He decided also to gather grain and foodstuffs and to sell them at the lowest possible price to the poor. Naturally, when the Intendant found he was being undersold he was very angry, he tried in every way to punish his enemy, who over his door put this sign of the Golden Dog, and the people all understood, but were afraid to show too much sympathy, as Bigot had been appointed by the King of France.
Finally, the Intendant caused his enemy to be slain in the streets of Quebec—the actual assassin escaped for a time, but the murdered man's son tracked him to far off Pondicherry and struck his father's slayer down—the story ends there.
They also visited the Ursuline Convent, which has associations artistic and martial as well as religious.
There is a votive lamp, lighted one hundred and seventy years ago by two French officers, who came to attend the ceremony of their two sisters taking the veil, which means that these young ladies became nuns and never lived outside the convent walls again.
That lamp was to be kept burning forever—it was out for a short time during the siege of 1759; then it was relighted, and for well over one hundred years was never dimmed.
This chapel also contained paintings sent over from France for safe keeping at the time of the French Revolution; and generally supposed to be by great artists, such as Vandyke and Campana; but even though they may be but copies they are very well worth seeing.