Shadows on the Rock (8 page)

On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December Cécile lay snug in her trundle-bed, while her father lit the fires and
prepared the chocolate. Although the heavy red curtains had not yet been drawn back, she knew that it was snowing; she had
heard the crunch of fresh snow under the Pigeon boy’s feet when he brought the morning loaf to the kitchen door. Even before
that, when the bell rang for five o’clock mass, she knew by its heavy, muffled tone that the air was thick with snow and
that it was not very cold. Whenever she heard the early bell, it was as if she could see the old Bishop with his lantern at
the end of the bell-rope, and the cold of the church up there made her own bed seem the warmer and softer. In winter the old
man usually carried a little basin as well as his lantern. It was his custom to take the bowl of holy water from the font in
the evening, carry it into his kitchen, and put it on the back of the stove, where enough warmth would linger through the
night to keep it from freezing. Then, in the morning, those who came to early mass would not have a mere lump of ice to peck
at. Monseigneur de Laval was very particular about the consecrated oils and the holy water; it was not enough for him that
people should merely go through the forms. Cécile did not always waken at the first bell, which rang in the coldest hour of
the night, but when she did, she felt a peculiar sense of security, as if there must be powerful protection for Kebec in
such steadfastness, and the new day, which was yet darkness, was beginning as it should. The punctual bell and the stern old
Bishop who rang it began an orderly procession of activities and held life together on the rock, though the winds lashed it
and the billows of snow drove over it.

With the sound of the crackling fire a cool, mysterious fragrance of the forest, very exciting because it was under a
roof, came in from the kitchen, — the breath of all the fir boughs and green moss that Cécile and Blinker had brought in
yesterday from the Jesuits’ wood. Today they would unpack the crèche from France, — the box that had come on La Licorne in
midsummer and had lain upstairs unopened for all these months.

Auclair brought the chocolate and placed it on a little table beside his daughter’s bed. They always breakfasted like
this in winter, while the house was getting warm. This morning they had finally to decide where they would set out the
crèche. Weeks ago they had agreed to arrange it in the deep window behind the sofa, — but then the sofa would have to be put
on the other side of the room! This morning they found the thought of moving the sofa, where Madame Auclair used so often to
recline, unendurable. It would quite destroy the harmony of their salon. The room, the house indeed, seemed to cling about
that sofa as a centre.

There was another window in the room, — seldom uncurtained, because it opened directly upon the side wall of the baker’s
house, and the outlook was uninteresting. It was narrow, but Auclair said he could remedy that. As soon as his shop was put
in order, he would construct a shelf in front of the window-sill, but a little lower; then the scene could be arranged in
two terraces, as was customary at home.

Cécile spent the morning covering the window and the new shelf with moss and fir branches until it looked like a corner
in the forest, and at noon she waylaid Blinker, just getting up from his bed behind the baker’s ovens, and sent him to go
and hunt for Jacques.

When Blinker returned with the boy, he himself looked in through the door so wistfully that Cécile asked him to come and
open the box for her in the kitchen. There were a great number of little figures in the crate, each wrapped in a sheath of
straw. As Blinker took them one at a time out of the straw and handed them to Cécile, he kept exclaiming: “Regardez,
ma’m’selle, un beau petit âne!” . . . “Voilà, le beau mouton!” Cécile had never seen him come so far out of his shell; she
had supposed that his shrinking sullenness was a part of him, like his crooked eyes or his red hair. When all the figures
were unwrapped and placed on the dining-table in the salon, Blinker gathered up the straw and carried it with the crate into
the cellar. She had thought that would be the last of him, but when he came back and stood again in the doorway, she hadn’t
the heart to send him away. She asked him to come in and sit down by the fire. Her mother had never done that, but today
there seemed no way out of it. The fête which she meant so especially for Jacques, turned out to be even more for
Blinker.

Jacques, indeed, was so bewildered as to seem apathetic, and was afraid to touch anything. Only when Cécile directed him
would he take up one of the figures from the table and carry it carefully to the window where she was making the scene. The
Holy Family must be placed first, under a little booth of fir branches. The Infant was not in His Mother’s arms, of course,
but lay rosy and naked in a little straw-lined manger, in which he had crossed the ocean. The Blessed Virgin wore no halo,
but a white scarf over her head. She looked like a country girl, very naïve, seated on a stool, with her knees well apart
under her full skirt, and very large feet. Saint Joseph, a grave old man in brown, with a bald head and wrinkled brow, was
placed opposite her, and the ox and the ass before the manger.

“Those are all that go inside the stable,” Cécile explained, “except the two angels. We must put them behind the manger;
they are still watching over Him.”

“Is that the stable, Cécile? I think it’s too pretty for a stable,” Jacques observed.

“It’s a little cabine of branches, like those the first missionaries built down by Notre Dame des Anges, when they landed
here long ago. They used to say the mass in a little shelter like that, made of green fir boughs.”

Jacques touched one of the unassorted figures on the table with the tip of his finger. “Cécile, what are those
animals?”

“Why, those are the camels, Jacques. Did you never see pictures of them? The three Kings came on camels, because they can
go a long time without water and carry heavy loads. They carried the gold and frankincense and myrrh.”

“I don’t think I know about the Kings and the Shepherds very well,” Jacques sighed. “I wish you would tell me.”

While she placed the figures, Cécile began the story, and Jacques listened as if he had never heard it before. There was
another listener, by the fireplace behind her, and she had entirely forgotten him until, with a sniffling sound, Blinker
suddenly got up and went out through the kitchen, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Then Jacques noticed how dusky it had grown
in the room; the window behind the sofa was a square of dull grey, like a hole in the wall of the house. He caught up his
cap and ran out through the shop, calling back: “Oh, I am late!”

Jacques had been gone only a few minutes when Giorgio, the drummer boy from the Château, came in to see the crèche, and
to bid Cécile good-bye for three days, as the Count had let him off to go home to his family on the Île d’Orléans. He had
left his drum in the guard-house, and already he felt free. He would walk the seven miles up to Montmorency (perhaps he
would be lucky enough to catch a ride in some farmer’s sledge for part of the way), then cross the river on the ice. The
north channel had been frozen hard for several weeks now. He would have a long walk after he got over to the island, too;
but even if the night were dark, he knew the way, and he would get there in time to hear mass at his own paroisse. After
mass his family would make réveillon, — music and dancing, and a supper with blood sausages and pickled pigs’ feet and
dainties of that sort.

“And before daybreak, mademoiselle, my grandfather will play the Alpine horn. He always does that on Christmas morning.
If you were awake, you would hear it even over here. Such a beautiful sound it has, and the old man plays so true!”

Georges bought some cloves and bay-leaves for his mother (he had just been paid, and rattled the coins in his pocket),
then started up the hill with such a happy face that Cécile wished she were going with him, over those seven snowy miles to
Montmorency.

“He will almost certainly catch a ride,” her father told her. “Even on the river there will be sledges coming and going
tonight.”

That evening, soon after the dinner-table was cleared, the Auclairs heard a rapping at the shop door and went out to
receive Madame Pommier in her chair on runners, very like the sledges in which great ladies used to travel at home. Her son
lifted her out in all her wrappings and carried her into the salon, where the apothecary’s armchair was set for her. But
before she would accept this seat of honour, she must hobble all over the house to satisfy herself that things were kept
just as they used to be in Madame Auclair’s time. She found everything the same, she said, even to Blinker, having his sip
of brandy in the kitchen.

After they had settled down before the fire to wait for the Pigeons, who were always late, Jacques Gaux came hurrying in
through the shop, looking determined and excited. He forgot to speak to the visitors and went straight up to Cécile, holding
out something wrapped in a twist of paper, such as the merchants used for small purchases.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “It is for the crèche, for the little Jesus.”

When she took off the paper, she held in her hand Jacques’s well-known beaver.

“Oh, Jacques, how nice of you! I don’t believe there was ever a beaver in a crèche before.” She was a little perplexed;
the animal was so untraditional — what was she to do with him?

“He isn’t new,” Jacques went on anxiously. “He’s just my little old beaver the sailor made me, but he could keep the baby
warm. I take him to bed with me when I’m cold sometimes, and he keeps me warm.”

Madame Pommier’s sharp ears had overheard this conversation, and she touched Cécile with the end of her crutch.
“Certainly, my dear, put it there with the lambs, before the manger. Our Lord died for Canada as well as for the world over
there, and the beaver is our very special animal.”

Immediately Madame Pigeon and her six children arrived. Auclair brought out his best liqueurs, and the Pommiers and
Pigeons, being from the same parish in Rouen, began recalling old friends at home. Cécile was kept busy filling little
glasses, but she noticed that Jacques was content, standing beside the crèche like a sentinel, paying no heed to the Pigeon
children or anyone else, quite lost in the satisfaction of seeing his beaver placed in a scene so radiant. Before the
evening was half over, he started up suddenly and began looking for his coat and cap. Cécile followed him into the shop.

“Don’t you want your beaver, Jacques? Or will you leave him until Epiphany?”

He looked up at her, astonished, a little hurt, and quickly thrust his hands behind him. “Non, c’est pour toujours,” he
said decisively, and went out of the door.

“See, madame,” Madame Pommier was whispering to Madame Pigeon, “we have a bad woman amongst us, and one of her clients
makes a toy for her son, and he gives it to the Holy Child for a birthday present. That is very nice.”

“C’est ça, madame, c’est ça,” said matter-of-fact Madame Pigeon, quite liking the idea, now that her attention was called
to it.

By eleven o’clock the company had become a little heavy from the heat of the fire and the good wine from the Count’s
cellar, and everyone felt a need of the crisp out-of-doors air. The weather had changed at noon, and now the stars were
flashing in a clear sky, — a sky almost over-jewelled on that glorious night. The three families agreed that it would be
well to start for the church very early and get good places. The Cathedral would be full to the doors tonight. Monseigneur
de Saint–Vallier was to say the mass, and the old Bishop would be present, with a great number of clergy, and the
Seminarians were to sing the music. Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier would doubtless wear the aube of rich lace given him by
Madame de Maintenon for his consecration at Saint–Sulpice, in Paris, ten years ago. In one matter he and the old Bishop
always agreed; that the services of the Church should be performed in Quebec as elaborately, as splendidly, as anywhere else
in the world. For many years Bishop Laval had kept himself miserably poor to make the altar and the sacristy rich.

After everyone had had a last glass of liqueur, Madame Pommier was carried out to her sledge and tucked under her
bearskin. The company proceeded slowly; pushing the chair up the steep curves of Mountain Hill and around the Récollet
chapel, over fresh snow that had not packed, was a little difficult. When they reached the top of the rock, many houses were
alight. Across the white ledges that sloped like a vast natural stairway down to the Cathedral, black groups were moving,
families and friends in little flocks, all going toward the same goal, — the doors of the church, wide open and showing a
ruddy vault in the blue darkness.

One morning between Christmas and New Year’s Day a man still young, of a handsome but unstable countenance, clad in a
black cassock with violet piping, and a rich fur mantle, entered the apothecary shop, greeted the proprietor politely, and
asked for four boxes of sugared lemon peel.

It was not the young Bishop’s custom to do his shopping himself; he sent his valet. This was the first time he had ever
come inside the pharmacy. Auclair took off his apron as a mark of respect to a distinguished visitor, but replied firmly
that, much to his regret, he had only three boxes left, and one of them he meant to send as a New Year’s greeting to Mother
Juschereau, at the Hôtel Dieu. He would be happy to supply Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier with the other two; and he had
several boxes of apricots put down in sugar, if they would be of any use to him. Monseigneur declared they would do very
well, paid for them, and said he would carry them away himself. Auclair protested that he or his little daughter could leave
them at the Palace. But no, the Bishop insisted upon carrying his parcel. As he did not leave the shop at once, Auclair
begged him to be seated.

Saint–Vallier sat down and threw back his fur mantle. “Have you by any chance seen Monseigneur de Laval of late?” he
inquired. “I am deeply concerned about his health.”

“No, Monseigneur, I have not seen him since the mass on Christmas Eve. But the bell has been ringing every morning as
usual.”

Saint–Vallier’s arched eyebrows rose still higher, and he made a graceful, conciliatory gesture with his hand. “Ah, his
habits, you know; one cannot interfere with them! But his valet told mine that the ulcer on his master’s leg had broken out
again, and that seems to me dangerous.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Auclair. “It is hardly dangerous, but painful and distressing.”

“Especially so, since he will not remain in bed, and conceals the extent of his suffering even from his own Seminarians.”
The Bishop paused a moment, then continued in a tone so confidential as to be flattering. “I have been wondering, Monsieur
Auclair, whether, provided we could obtain his consent, you would be willing to try a cauterization of the arm, to draw the
inflammation away from the affected part. This was done with great success for Père La Chaise, the King’s confessor, who had
an ulcer between the toes while I was in office at Versailles.”

“That was probably a form of gout,” Auclair observed. “Monseigneur de Laval’s affliction is quite different. He suffers
from enlarged and congested veins in the leg. Such ulcers are hard to heal, but they are seldom fatal.”

“But why not at least try the simple remedy which was so beneficial in the case of Père La Chaise?” urged the Bishop.
There was a shallow brilliance in his large fine eyes which made Auclair antagonistic.

“Because, Monseigneur,” he said firmly, “I do not believe in it; and because it has been tried already. Two years ago,
when you were in France, Doctor Beaudoin made a cauterization upon Monseigneur de Laval, and he has since told me that he
believes it was useless.”

The Bishop looked thoughtfully about at the white jars on the shelves. “You are very advanced in your theories of
medicine, are you not, Monsieur Auclair?”

“On the contrary, I am very old-fashioned. I think the methods of the last century better than those of the present
time.”

“Then you do not believe in progress?”

“Change is not always progress, Monseigneur.” Auclair spoke quietly, but there was meaning in his tone. Saint–Vallier
made some polite inquiry about the condition of old Doctor Beaudoin, and took his leave. His call, Auclair suspected, was
one of the overtures he occasionally made to people who were known partisans of old Bishop Laval.

During the stay in France from which he had lately returned, Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier had induced the King to reverse
entirely Laval’s system for the training and government of the Canadian clergy, thus defeating the dearest wishes of the old
man’s heart and undoing the devoted labour of twenty years. Everything that made Laval’s Seminary unique and specially
fitted to the needs of the colony had been wiped out. His system of a movable clergy, sent hither and thither out among the
parishes at the Bishop’s discretion and always returning to the Seminary as their head and centre, had been changed by royal
edict to the plan of appointing curés to permanent livings, as in France, — a method ill fitted to a new, wild country where
within a year the population of any parish might be reduced by half. The Seminary, which Laval had made a thing of power and
the centre of ecclesiastical authority, a chapter, almost an independent order, was now reduced to the state of a small
school for training young men for the priesthood.

These were some of the griefs that made the old Bishop bear so mournful a countenance. The wilfulness of his successor
(chosen by himself, he must always bitterly remember!) went even further; Saint–Vallier had taken away books and vases and
furniture from the Seminary to enrich his new Palace. It was whispered that he had made his Palace so large because he
intended to take away the old Bishop’s Seminarians and transfer them to the episcopal residence, to have them under his own
eye. If this were done, Bishop Laval would be left living in the Priests’ House, guarding a lofty building of long, echoing
corridors and empty dormitories, round a deserted courtyard where the grass would soon be growing between the stones.
Monseigneur Laval’s friends could but hope that de Saint–Vallier would be off for France again before he carried out this
threat.

Saint–Vallier was a man of contradictions, and they were stamped upon his face. One saw there something slightly
hysterical, and something uncertain, — though his manner was imperious, and his administration had been arrogant and
despotic. Auclair had once remarked to the Count that the new Bishop looked less like a churchman than like a courtier. “Or
an actor,” the Count replied with a shrug. Large almond-shaped eyes under low-growing brown hair and delicate eyebrows, a
long, sharp nose — and then the lower part of his face diminished, like the neck of a pear. His mouth was large and well
shaped, but seldom in repose; his chin narrow, receding, with a dimple at the end. He had a dark skin and flashing white
teeth like an Italian, — indeed, his face recalled the portraits of eccentric Florentine nobles. He was still only
forty-four; he had been Bishop of Quebec now twelve years, — and seven of them had been spent in France!

Auclair had never liked de Saint–Vallier. He did not doubt the young Bishop’s piety, but he very much doubted his
judgment. He was rash and precipitate, he was volatile. He acted too often without counting the cost, from some dazzling
conception, — one could not say from impulse, for impulses are from the heart. He liked to reorganize and change things for
the sake of change, to make a fine gesture. He destroyed the old before he had clearly thought out the new. When he first
came to Canada, he won all hearts by his splendid charities; but he went back to France leaving the Seminary many thousand
francs in debt as the result of his generous disbursements, and the old Bishop had to pay this debt out of the Seminary
revenues. For years now, he had seemed feverishly determined to undo whatever he could of the old Bishop’s work. This was
the more galling to the old man because he himself had gone to France and chosen de Saint–Vallier and recommended him to
Rome. Saint–Vallier had at first exhibited the most delicate consideration for his aged predecessor, but this attitude
lasted only a short while. He was as changeable and fickle as a woman. Indeed, he had received a large part of his training
under a woman, though by no means a fickle or capricious one.

When Jean Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint–Vallier came to Court in the capacity of the King’s almoner, Madame
de Maintenon was past the age of youthful folly, — if indeed she had ever known such an age. (A poor girl from the West
Indies, landing penniless in France with all her possessions in a band-box, she had had little time for follies, except such
as helped her to get on in the world.) The young priest who was one day to be the second Bishop of Quebec knew her only
after she had become the grave and far-seeing woman who so greatly influenced the King for the last thirty years of his
reign.

Saint–Vallier was the seventh child of a noble family of Dauphiné. His eldest brother, Comte de Saint–Vallier, was
Captain of the King’s Guard, and secured for the young priest the appointment of Aumônier ordinaire to the King when he was
but twenty-three years of age. He retained that office for nearly ten years, and was constantly in accord with Madame de
Maintenon in emptying the King’s purse for worthy charities. Saint–Vallier was by no means without enemies at Court. The
clergy and even the Archbishop of Paris disliked him. They considered that he made his piety too conspicuous and was lacking
in good taste. His oval face, with the bloom of youth upon it, his beautiful eyes, full of humility and scorn at the same
time, were seen too much and too often. He had a hundred ways of making himself stand out from the throng, and his
exceptional piety was like a reproach to those of the clergy who were more conventional and perhaps more worldly. He
obtained from the King special permission to wear at Court the long black gown, which at that time was not worn by the
priests at Versailles. So attired, he was more conspicuous than courtiers the most richly apparelled. His fellow abbés found
de Saint–Vallier’s acts of humility undignified, and his brother, the Captain of the Guard, found them ridiculous. One day
the Captain met the Abbé following the Sacrament through the street, ringing a little hand-bell. The Captain awaited his
brother’s return to the Palace and told him angrily that his conduct was unworthy of his family, and that he had better
retire to La Trappe, where his piety would be without an audience. But to be without an audience was the last thing the
young Abbé desired.

Nevertheless, in his own way he was a sincere man. He refused the rich and honourable bishopric of Tours, repeatedly
offered him by the King, and accepted the bishopric of Quebec, — the poorest and most comfortless honour the Crown had to
offer.

By the time de Saint–Vallier made his third trip back to France, the King knew very well that he was not much wanted in
Canada; every boat brought complaints of his arrogance and his rash impracticality. The King could not unmake a bishop, once
he was consecrated, but he could detain him in France, — and that he did, for three years. During de Saint–Vallier’s long
absences in Europe his duties devolved upon Monseigneur de Laval. There was no one else in Canada who could ordain priests,
administer the sacrament of confirmation, consecrate the holy oils. Though in the performance of these duties the old Bishop
had to make long journeys in canoes and sledges, very fatiguing at his age, he undertook them without a murmur. He was glad
to take up again the burdens he had once so gladly laid down.

After Epiphany, Auclair was away from home a great deal. The old chirurgien Gervaise Beaudoin was ill, and the apothecary
went to see him every afternoon, leaving Cécile to tend the shop. When he was at home, he was much occupied in making
cough-syrups from pine tops, and from horehound and honey with a little laudanum; or he was compounding tonics, and
liniments for rheumatism. The months that were dull for the merchants were the busiest for him. He and his daughter seldom
went abroad together now, but their weekly visit to the Hôtel Dieu they still managed to make. One evening at dinner, after
one of these visits, Cécile spoke of an incident that Mother Juschereau had related to her in the morning.

“Father, did you ever hear that once long ago, when an English sailor lay sick at the Hôtel Dieu, Mother Catherine de
Saint–Augustin ground up a tiny morsel of bone from Father Brébeuf’s skull and mixed it in his gruel, and it made him a
Christian?”

Her father looked at her across the table and gave a perplexing chuckle.

“But it is true, certainly? Mother Juschereau told me only today.”

“Mother Juschereau and I do not always agree in the matter of remedies, you know. I consider human bones a very poor
medicine for any purpose.”

“But he was converted, the sailor. He became a Christian.”

“Probably Mother de Saint–Augustin’s own saintly character, and her kindness to him, had more to do with the Englishman’s
conversion than anything she gave him in his food.”

“Why, Father, Mother Juschereau would be horrified to hear you! There are so many sacred relics, and they are always
working cures.”

“The sacred relics are all very well, my dear, and I do not deny that they work miracles, — but not through the digestive
tract. Mother de Saint–Augustin meant well, but she made a mistake. If she had given her heretic a little more ground bone,
she might have killed him.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think it probable. It is true that in England, in every apothecary shop, there is a jar full of pulverized human
skulls, and that terrible powder is sometimes dispensed in small doses for certain diseases. Even in France it is still to
be found in many pharmacies; but it was never sold in our shop, not even in my grandfather’s time. He had seen a proof made
of that remedy. A long while ago, when Henry of Navarre was besieging Paris, the people held out against him until they
starved by hundreds. I have heard my grandfather tell of things too horrible to repeat to you. The famine grew until there
was no food at all; people killed each other for a morsel. The bakers shut their shops; there was not a handful of flour
left, they had used all the forage meant for beasts; they had made bread of hay and straw, and now that was all gone. Then
some of the starving went to the cemetery of the Innocents, where there was a great wall of dry bones, and they ground those
bones to powder and made a paste of it and baked it in ovens; and as many as ate of that bread died in agony, as if they had
swallowed poison. Indeed, they had swallowed poison.”

“But those were ordinary bones, maybe bones of wicked people. That would be different.”

“No bones are good to be taken into the stomach, Cécile. God did not intend it. The relics of the saints may work cures
at the touch, they may be a protection worn about the neck; those things are outside of my knowledge. But I am the guardian
of the stomach, and I would not permit a patient to swallow a morsel of any human remains, not those of Saint Peter himself.
There are enough beautiful stories about Mother de Saint–Augustin, but this one is not to my liking.”

Cécile could only hope it would never happen that her father and Mother Juschereau would enter into any discussion of
miraculous cures. Her father must be right; but she felt in her heart that what Mother Juschereau told her had certainly
occurred, and the English sailor had been converted by Father Brebeuf’s bone.