The Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit bore the heat and burden of the day, and reaped the most bountiful harvest in that part of North America now known as the State of Maine; and the first mission in that neighborhood was planted at Mt. Desert, and called St. Sauveur. A hotel at Bar Harbor is so named, but not one in a hundred of the numerous guests who cross its threshold knows the reason of the French name of their temporary abiding-place.
This reason, and the facts connected therewith, we shall now proceed to give to our readers. In 1610 Marie de Médicis was Regent of France. The king had been assassinated in the streets of Paris in the previous month of May. Sully was dismissed from court. All was confusion and dissension. Twelve years of peace and the judicious rule of the king had paid the national debt and filled the treasury.
The famous Father Cotton, confessor of the late king, was still powerful at court. He laid before the queen the facts that Henri IV. had been deeply interested in the establishment of the Jesuit order in Acadia, and had evinced a tangible proof of that interest in the bestowal of a grant of two thousand livres per annum.
The ambitious queen listened indulgently, with a heart softened, possibly, by recent sorrows, and consented to receive the son of the Baron Poutrincourt, who had just returned from the New World, where he had left his father with Champlain. Father Cotton ushered the handsome stripling into the presence of the stately queen and her attendant ladies. Young Biencourt at first stood silent and abashed, but, as the ladies gathered about him and plied him with questions, soon forgot himself and told wondrous tales of the dusky savages—of their strange customs and of their eagerness for instruction in the true faith. He displayed the baptismal register of the converts of Father Fléche, and implored the sympathy and aid of these glittering dames, and not in vain; for, fired with pious emulation, they tore the flashing jewels from their ears and throats. Among these ladies was one whose history and influence were so remarkable that we must translate for our readers some account of her from the Abbé de Choisy.
Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville had been famed throughout France, not only for her grace and beauty, but for qualities more rare at the court where her youth had been passed.
When Antoinette was La Duchesse de Rochefoucauld, the king begged her to accept a position near the queen. “Madame,” he said, as he presented her to Marie de Médicis, “I give you a Lady of Honor who is a lady of honor indeed.”
Twenty years had come and gone. The youthful beauty of the marquise had faded, but she was fair and stately still, and one of the most brilliant ornaments of the brilliant court; and yet she was not altogether worldly. Again a widow and without children, she had become sincerely religious, and threw herself heart and soul into the American missions, and was restrained only by the positive commands of her mistress the queen from herself seeking the New World.
Day and night she thought of these perishing souls. On her knees in her oratory she prayed for the Indians, and contented herself not with this alone. From the queen and from the ladies of the court she obtained money, and jewels that could be converted into money. Charlevoix tells us that the only difficulty was to restrain her ardor within reasonable bounds.
Two French priests, Paul Biard and Enémond Massé, were sent to Dieppe, there to take passage for the colonies. The vessel was engaged by Poutrincourt and his associates, and was partially owned by two Huguenot merchants, who persistently and with indignation refused to permit the embarkation of the priests. No entreaties or representations availed, and finally La Marquise bought out the interest of the two merchants in the vessel and cargo, and transferred it to the priests as a fund for their support.
At last the fathers set sail, on the 26th of January, 1611. Their troubles, however, were by no means over; for Biencourt, a mere lad, clothed in a little brief authority—manly, it is true, beyond his years—hampered them at every turn. They arrived at Port Royal in June, after a hazardous and tempestuous voyage, having seen, as Father Biard writes, icebergs taller and larger than the Church of Notre Dame. The fathers became discouraged by the constant interference of young Biencourt, and determined to return to Europe, unless they could, with Mme. de Guercheville’s aid, found a mission colony in some other spot.