It is a lamentable fact, that M. de Berniers never paid this wager. He even contemplated sending M. de Montalvan, instead of the ten louis, an invitation to mortal combat; but the friends whom he consulted convinced him that he had no just cause of complaint against the captain. The only person by whom he had really been aggrieved was Mlle. de Terville; M. de Montalvan could not in decency be held responsible for the non-success of a conspiracy of which he was to have been the victim. So M. de Berniers had to accept all the ridicule of the position, without the consolation of directing his vengeance against anybody. He did not pay the ten louis, but it was never said that M. de Montalvan felt dissatisfied with the result of his third wager.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of the illustrious impostor.
THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.[103]
Mr. Francis Parkman has been fortunate in finding unappropriated, untried even, a dramatic subject of well-defined and completed historical interest, for the treatment of which his taste and talents give him an extraordinary adaptation. He has rightfully asserted his claims to be regarded as occupying the whole of a field whose scope and contents he has so ably mastered, and portions of which he has wrought to such good purpose. He has for many years had in view a series of historical narratives,—each complete and independent in itself, though having an organic relation to the others,—which should present the whole story of early French and English enterprise and rivalry in North America. Under the title of "Pioneers of France in the New World," published two years ago, and noticed at the time in these pages, we had a volume which initiated the full development of the results of his labors as far as they dealt with the earliest events and actors connected with French enterprise on this continent. In his "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," published sixteen years ago, Mr. Parkman had already given us the last act in a drama of intense interest.
"The Jesuits in North America" is the title of a new volume, and of a well-rounded and nobly-wrought theme. The English reader had nothing within his reach before from which he could learn what is offered to him here. Rich as the subject actually is in documentary and printed materials of prime authenticity, and in the infinite minuteness of detail in their contents, these materials were widely scattered and not readily accessible. Mr. Parkman has either copied or procured the copying of many thousand pages of manuscripts illustrating his theme. He has gathered all the pamphlets, volumes, and maps which have any relation to it. He has put himself in communication with officials, custodians, and antiquarian students, who could help him in his researches, and, by visits of exploration and inquiry to the localities which form the scene of his narratives, he has faithfully met all the conditions external to his own more special qualifications for the exacting work which he has undertaken, and, so far, so successfully accomplished.
We have intimated that Mr. Parkman has special qualifications, taste, and talents for the line of historical studies to which he has devoted his life, and in which—in spite of most discouraging and embarrassing impediments of ill-health and physical suffering in eye and limb, and the sympathetic demands of the brain for rest and inaction except at long intervals and for short efforts—he has already done enough to give him place in our foremost literary ranks. We might emphasize our assertion of these special aptitudes and talents of his even up to a point which to those who are not familiar with his pages would seem enthusiastic or exaggerated. The curiosity, or sympathy, or reference to his own historical purposes,—call it and regard it which of these motive influences we will,—which has led Mr. Parkman to seek the closest contact with many of the Indian tribes in our domains,—to share their life, to be domiciled in their dirty lodges, to partake of their unappetizing feasts, to listen to their traditionary and tribal lore, and to endeavor to put himself into communication with the inner workings of their thought and being,—has accrued most helpfully to the benefit of his readers. We feel that he is for us a faithful and competent interpreter and commentator of Indian life, manners, superstitions, and fortunes. He has a marvellous skill in observing and describing the phenomena of nature,—the features and scenes of the wilderness amid which they roved. Those gentle or strong touches for shading and blending, for bringing into bold relief, or for suggesting what is alone for the thought and not for the sight, which the skilful painter uses in his service, are paralleled by Mr. Parkman in the felicity of his verbal delineations. We know of no writer whose pages are so real and vivid in qualities harmonizing with his theme as are his. The abundant material to which we have referred required just that elucidation and illustration which he has given to it by familiarity with the scenes and subjects embraced in it. In some very important points the author, by his thoroughness, candor, and judicial spirit, corrects some false impressions generally accepted, and substitutes fact for the fancies of romance.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam,—"For the greater glory of God,"—the noble motto of the Society of Jesus, had inspiration enough in its sublime simplicity and fulness of aim to consecrate any great enterprise into which piety and zeal and self-sacrificing toil could throw themselves, under whatever limitations of ignorance or superstition. All the perplexing questions, shifting and deepening from age to age, and finding more adequate answers as to what consists with the glory of God, may help to train a more intelligent and practical judgment in the estimate of means and ends. But no comparative allowance of this sort can reduce the tribute due to devotion and heroism in an untried service for a holy cause, however bewildered and futile the endeavor. Mr. Lecky confronts us with the perhaps undeniable, but still unwelcome fact, that ardor and zeal cool proportionately as intelligent and practical aims direct the humane or the religious activities of men. Enthusiasm has an affinity, if not with superstition, yet with exaggerated and ill-adjusted estimates of the relations between the body and the soul, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the missionary Jesuits, whose life was so sore a martyrdom that they must have found relief even in a cruel death inflicted by the Indians, did balance their view of what would consist with the glory of God by some equivalent benefit which they thought to secure for the barbarians. It has become very desirable, for various good reasons, to concentrate all the efforts of thorough research and of discriminating judgment upon the actual condition of the native tribes on the northern part of this continent when European enterprise or zeal introduced among them new and potent agencies for good or ill. Is their decay, their extermination, to be ascribed to the cupidity and heartlessness of the white man, with his skilled and calculating arts for overmastering the rude children of nature? Were they a happy, contented race, supported by the forest and the stream, and sharing among themselves such relations as served for their uses in the stead of the more elaborate and artificial institutions of civilization? Did their compensatory advantages balance to any extent the rude and stern conditions of their existence? Did the white man try, even with moderate humanity and sympathy, to lift them to an equality with himself, and to share peacefully and with mutual benefit their old domain? Was their destruction a foredoomed conclusion, a calculated purpose, an acknowledged necessity from the first? or was it slowly and reluctantly accepted as an inevitable destiny decided by conditions which overruled and thwarted every scheme and device of philanthropy? Were the Indians in the way of self-development, working upwards to intelligent improvement in their means and ways of life? Would they have retained their heritage here up to this day, had the white man never come among them? These and many similar questions may be asked, either by curiosity or in the interest of humanity, or in the service of ethnologic science. Mr. Parkman contributes more abundant and more instructive means for discussing and for deciding these questions in the light of authenticated facts, and of fair deductions from them, than do all who have preceded him on the subject.