Legare, For The Owners, Two Octogenarian Inmates - His Friends,
Messrs.
Michel and Charles Jourdain, architects and builders.
They were
charged some seventy years ago with the construction of the District Court
House (burnt in 1872) and City Jail (now the Morrin College.) Messrs.
Jourdain had emigrated to Canada after the French Revolution of 1789. They
had a holy horror of the guillotine, though, like others of the
literati of Quebec in former days, they were well acquainted with
the doctrines and works of Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. One of the
Jourdains, judging from his portrait, must have been a shrewd, observant
man. Later on, the old tenement had sheltered the librarian of the
Legislative Council, Monsieur Jourdain - a son - quite a savant in
his way, and whose remains were escorted to their last resting place by
the elite of the Canadian population. It is a mistake to think that
culture and education were unknown in those early times; in some instances
the love of books prevailed to that degree that, in several French-
Canadian families, manuscript copies then made at Quebec exist to this
day, of the Latin and French classics from the difficulty of procuring
books; there being little intercourse then with Paris book-stores, in
fact, no importations of books. Among many quaint relics of the distant
days of the Messrs. Jourdain and of their successor, Monsieur Audiverti
dit Romain, we saw a most curiously inlaid Marqueterie table, dating,
we might be tempted to assert, from the prehistoric era!
Innumerable are the quaint, pious or historical souvenirs, mantling like
green and graceful ivy, the lofty, fortified area, which comprises the
Upper Town of this "walled city of the North". An incident of our early
times - the outraged Crucifix of the Hotel Dieu Convent, [77] and the
Military Warrant, appropriating to urgent military wants, the revered seat
of learning, the Jesuits' College, naturally claim a place in these pages.
The Morning Chronicle will furnish us condensed accounts, which we
will try and complete: -
LE CRUCIFIX OUTRAGE.
"An interesting episode in the history of Canada during the last
century attaches to a relic in the possession of the Reverend Ladies
of the Hotel Dieu, or, more properly, "the Hospital of the Most
Precious Blood of Jesus Christ," of which the following is a synopsis
taken from l'Abbe H. G. Casgrain's history of the institution: -
"On the 5th October, 1742, it was made known that a soldier in the
garrison in Montreal, named Havard de Beaufort, professed to be a
sorcerer, and, in furtherance of his wicked pretensions, had profaned
sacred objects. He had taken a crucifix, and having besmeared it with
some inflammable substance - traces of which are still to be seen upon
it - had exposed it to the flames, whilst he at the same time recited
certain passages of the Holy Scripture. The sacrilege had taken place
in the house of one Charles Robidoux, at Montreal. Public indignation
at this profanation of the sacred symbol and of the Scripture was
intense; the culprit was arrested, tried and convicted, and sentenced
to make a public reparation, after which he was to serve three years
in the galleys.
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