CHAPTER XV.
M. JOBIN.
OW constantly experience reminds us that in the overwhelming presence of outstanding natural scenery, world events and great men, we are apt to completely lose sight of equally beautiful, though perhaps less magnificent scenery, events only a little less momentous and of many men, who except for the tedious bugbear of comparison, would be great in our sight, being truly great in themselves.
Personally our eyes were thus opened only a few summers ago at Saint Anne de Beaupré. For weeks our attention had been completely absorbed by the beautiful Basilica, its surrounding grounds, monasteries and convents. We desired above all to see a miracle, and to this end haunted the quaint church, stepping in to the beautiful garden whenever inclination suggested. Again and again we strolled along the hill-climbing woodsy road of “The Stations of the Cross”, the spreading maple trees overhead, the river in a flowing vista before.
Most of all we were interested in the pilgrims, individually no less than in the pilgrimages as a whole. At Saint Anne’s it is the pilgrim who furnishes a fascinating round of human interest, against a background of the church aglow with festive lighting from hundreds of electric bulbs, and the glowing, beckoning, flickering flame of thousands of red and green votive candles.
Then, one morning, something prompted us to turn our wandering footsteps toward the opposite end of the town away from the church. And there, in a plain old workshop, we experienced our awakening, the miracle we had been waiting to see—a miracle in Art rather than in healing. And yet, are not the two one?
As we climbed the road up the hill past Madame Giguere’s Pension, we were at once surprised and attracted by a life-sized figure of Napoleon Bonaparte occupying one of the roofs ahead.
Napoleon Bonaparte in Saint Anne de Beaupré? Can greater contrast be imagined than the realism of Napoleon and the realm of the spiritual out of which we had just emerged? Yet it was no mirage. There he stood, life-sized. After a moment of doubt we knew it must be some woodcarver’s “Sign”. For we recognized at sight that this “Napoleon” was some old “Figurehead” from a ship, “stranded here” as it were in this Old-World village of French Canada.
We could scarcely wait to meet the old Carver. Already we imagined him old. And—charming.