In May, 1757, The Population Of Quebec Was Reduced To Subsist On Four
Ounces Of Bread Per Diem, One Lb.
Of beef, HORSE-FLESH or CODFISH; and in
April of the following year, the miserable allowance was reduced to one
half.
"At this time," remarks our historian, Garneau, "famished men were
seen sinking to the earth in the street from exhaustion."
Such were the times during which Louis XV.'s minion would retire to his
Sardanapalian retreat, to gorge himself at leisure on the life blood of
the Canadian people, whose welfare he had sworn to watch over! Such, the
doings in the colony in the days of La Pompadour. The results of this
misrule were soon apparent: the British lion placed his paw on the
coveted morsel. The loss of Canada was viewed, if not by the nation,
at least by the French Court, with indifference, to use the terms of one
of Her Britannic Majesty's ministers, when its fate and possible loss were
canvassed one century later in the British Parliament, "without
apprehension or regret." Voltaire gave his friends a banquet at Ferney, in
commemoration of the event; the court favourite congratulated His Majesty,
that since he had got rid of these "fifteen hundred leagues of frozen
country," he had now a chance of sleeping in peace; the minister Choiseul
urged Louis XV. to sign the final treaty of 1763, saying that Canada would
be un embarras to the English, and that if they were wise they
would have nothing to do with it. In the meantime the red cross of St.
George was waving over the battlements on which the lily-spangled banner
of the Bourbons had proudly sat with but one interruption for one hundred
and fifty years, the infamous Bigot was provisionally consigned to a
dungeon in the Bastille - subsequently tried and exiled to Bordeaux; his
property was confiscated, whilst his confederates and abettors, such as
Varin, Breard, Maurin, Corpron, Martel, Estebe and others, were also tried
and punished by fine, imprisonment and confiscation: one Penisseault, a
government clerk (a butcher's son by birth), who had married in the
colony, but whose pretty wife accompanied the Chevalier de Levis on his
return to France, seems to have fared better than the rest.
But to revert to the chateau walls as I saw them on the 4th of June, 1863.
During a ramble with an English friend through the woods, which gave us an
opportunity of providing ourselves with wild flowers to strew over the
tomb of its fair "Rosamond," [323] such as the marsh marigold, clintonia,
uvularia, the star flower, veronica, kalmia, trillium, and Canadian
violets, we unexpectedly struck on the old ruin. One of the first things
that attracted our notice was the singularly corroding effect the easterly
wind has on stone and mortar in Canada; the east gable being indented and
much more eaten away than that exposed to the western blast. Of the
original structure nothing is left now standing but the two gables and the
division walls; they are all three of great thickness; certainly no modern
house is built in the manner this seems to have been. It had two stories,
with rooms in the attic, and deep cellars; a communication existed from
one cellar to the other through the division wall. There is also visible a
very small door cut through the cellar wall of the west gable; it leads to
a vaulted apartment of some eight feet square; the small mound of masonry
which covered it might originally have been effectually hidden from view
by a plantation of trees over it. What could this have been built for,
asked my romantic friend? Was it intended to secure some of the
Intendant's plate or other portion of his ill-gotten treasure? Or else as
the Abbe Ferland suggests: [324] "Was it to store the fruity old Port and
sparkling Moselle of the club of the Barons, who held their jovial
meetings there about the beginning of this century?" Was it his
mistresses' secret boudoir when the Intendant's lady visited the
chateau, like the Woodstock tower to which Royal Henry picked his way
through "Love's Ladder?" Quien sabe? Who can unravel the mystery?
It may have served for the foundation of the tower which existed when Mr.
Papineau visited and described the place fifty years ago. The heavy cedar
rafters, more than one hundred years old, are to this day sound: one has
been broken by the fall, probably of some heavy stones. There are several
indentures in the walls for fire-places, which are built of cut masonry;
from the angle of one a song sparrow flew out uttering an anxious note. We
searched and discovered the bird's nest, with five spotted, dusky eggs in
it. How strange! in the midst of ruin and decay, the sweet tokens of hope,
love and harmony! What cared the child of song if her innocent offspring
were reared amidst these mouldering relics of the past, mayhap a guilty
past? Could she not teach them to warble sweetly, even from the roof which
echoed the dying sighs of the Algonquin maid? Red alder trees grew rank
and vigorous amongst the disjointed masonry, which had crumbled from the
walls into the cellar; no trace existed of the wooden staircase mentioned
by Mr. Papineau; the timber of the roof had rotted away or been used for
camp fires by those who frequent and fish the elfish stream which winds
its way over a pebbly ledge towards Beauport. It is well stocked with
small trout, which seem to breed in great numbers in the dam near the
Chateau - a stream, did we say?
"A hidden brook,
In the leafy mouth of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune"
"Enough! enough! cried my poetic companion. The fate of the fair maid, the
song of birds, the rustling of groves, the murmur of yonder brook, - does
not all this remind you of the accents of our laurel-crowned poet, he who
sang of Claribel?"
Those who wish to visit the Hermitage, are strongly advised to take the
cart-road which leads easterly from the Charlesbourg church, turning up.
Pedestrians prefer the route through the fields; they may, in this case,
leave their vehicle at Gaspard Huot's boarding-house - a little higher than
the church at Charlesbourg, - and then walk through the fields, skirting,
during the greater part of the road, the trout stream I have previously
mentioned; but by all means let them take a guide with them.
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