Our Little Quebec Cousin

by Mary S. Saxe

The great General Montcalm was taken to this convent to die, and was buried within the precincts in a grave dug for him by a bursting shell.

They also went to the Champlain market and to the Convent of the Good Shepherd, where the nuns dress always in white, and never cease their prayers day nor night; every six hours they change vigils, but always, always, there are some of them there before the altar, and one each side of the steps of the high altar.

Grandmother Tremblent took a great interest in this friendship, though she did not always appear in person she directed many of the excursions and answered all of Oisette's questions.

The very first day Oisette arrived she had asked about Richelieu, and almost every day thereafter she had learned some new fact; she had a good memory, and when she got back home she would remember to tell her mother about the great boat by which she had traveled, and the picture, life-sized, of the Cardinal in his red robes, who had been Minister of State during the reign of King Louis XIV of France; in fact Grandma had said he was the true founder of the city of Quebec, for in 1627 he had revoked the Charter of De Caen, a Huguenot merchant, and had organized a company of one hundred associates, himself the head. The colonists were to be given lands and were to send all their furs to France and France was to send food to them, so that they would not have to do much farm work, but made fur peltries their sole industry. It was a niece of the great Cardinal Richelieu who by her charity and her gifts founded some of the early societies that existed in the city of Quebec.

On the last day of Oisette's stay with her grandmother, Helen Sage came for tea in this quaint old house and admired Napoleon, the canary and the fancy work. She was pleased, too, with the quaint old furniture; a prie-dieu chair in Oisette's bedroom particularly took her fancy, the seat of this chair was very low, not more than a foot from the ground, and when lifted up revealed a little shelf for devotional books, and a devout person could kneel on this seat, facing the back of the chair, and the top of the chair back was made flat and wide to hold the open book.

In the dining-room was a beautiful mahogany sideboard. "Oh, please, has it a history?" asked Helen. "It is very ancient, my child," Madame answered. "In fact it was for years stored in my grandfather's barn under some hay, left there by an English officer who was recalled home. He told my people that some day he would come for it, but he never did, and at last the old barn was to be torn down, so my father gave the furniture to me."

There was also a glass cupboard, and desk, but all that Madame was inclined to say about them was that they were ancient—very ancient.

Some years ago, collectors of the antique went thoroughly over the Province of Quebec, and, where it was possible, purchased the best examples of furniture and china and ornaments, which had been brought from France by the old Régime. The furniture of that day was the most magnificent of all the French period. A few examples of the work of Andrew Boule found their way to the New World. He was the King's Cabinet Maker and was a great ebonist (a worker in ebony) inlaying his work, gilding it, bronzing it—anything to make it very splendid.

When tea was over, Grandmother Tremblent told them the story of Madeleine Verchères. Most of the historians and the novelists and the poets of Canada have told and retold this true tale of a little French Canadian girl of fourteen, who was left one summer day with her two brothers in the care of two soldiers and one old man, while her father, the Seigneur of Verchères, journeyed to Quebec.

Madeleine was out on a hillside gathering wild strawberries when she heard a shot ring out far down the valley and going to the top of the hill her young eyes could see a band of Iroquois riding swiftly over the plain toward her father's fort. So she sent the two soldiers to the block house to guard the women and children of the estate, then she and her brothers under cover of the dusk prepared dummies and placed them behind the walls; then, to further deceive the savages, she and her brothers patroled the fort through the night and called out "C'est bien," (All is well) so that the Iroquois supposed the fort to be fully garrisoned, and though they lingered about for a time they did not dare attack.