A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs Part 13

"I wish you good night, my dear friends, for the last time; for at midnight I shall be a dead man. At that hour you will hear the bell of my chapel ring. I beg you not to touch my body. To-morrow you will send for M. Compain at Isle aux Coudres. He will be waiting for you at the lower end of the island. Do not be afraid if a storm comes. I will answer for those whom you shall send."

At first the company thought the good father was joking. None the less did they become anxious to see what should happen. Watch in hand they waited for the hour named. Exactly at midnight the bell of the chapel rang three times. They ran to the chapel and there found Pere de La Brosse upon his _prie-dieu_ dead.

The next day, Sunday, a south-east wind blew with violence. Huge white-capped waves made the great river so dangerous that the employes of the post refused to undertake the journey to Isle aux Coudres of forty or fifty miles in a canoe over a raging sea. But the chief clerk at the post said to them: "You know well that the Father never deceived you. You ought to have confidence in his word. Is there no one among you who will carry out his last wish?"

Then three or four men agreed to go. When they put their canoe in the water, behold a wonder! To the great surprise of every one the sea subsided so that before them lay a pathway of calm water. To their further amazement, they made the journey to Isle aux Coudres with incredible rapidity. As they neared the sh.o.r.e they could see M. Compain walking up and down, a book in his hand. When they were within hearing distance he called out "Pere de La Brosse is dead. You come to get me to bury him. I have been waiting an hour for you." When the canoe touched the sh.o.r.e M. Compain embarked and they carried him to Tadousac. At Isle aux Coudres the bell of the chapel had distinctly sounded three times at midnight as at Tadousac. M. Compain knew what it meant for Pere de La Brosse had told him what he told his friends at Tadousac. Other church bells in the neighbourhood also rang miraculously on that night. Pere de La Brosse had said while cure at Isle Verte, "If I die elsewhere than here, you will have certain knowledge of the fact at the moment of my death."

The legend, the rather obscure motive of which is to emphasize the saintly virtues of Pere de La Brosse, is believed even to this day by many simple people, hundreds of whom know it by heart. But some are skeptical. "I should have been able to give more certainty to this tradition," says M. Mailloux, the historian of Isle aux Coudres and also its cure, "had I been able to make more extended investigation.

Meanwhile," he adds navely, "my investigations suffice to give a high idea of the virtues of this admirable missionary."

There is little to record of the careers of cures at Malbaie subsequent to M. Compain. Often the annals of the good are not exciting and this is eminently true of these virtuous teachers. M. Charles Duchouquet was cure of Isle aux Coudres and served Malbaie in 1790. In 1791 he was succeeded by M. Raphael Paquet who lived at Les Eboulements. The first cure resident at Malbaie was M. Keller who came in 1797. When he went away in 1799 M. J.-B.-A. Marcheteau who was cure of Les Eboulements and lived there, served Malbaie. In 1807 M. Marcheteau was succeeded by M.

Le Courtois, the second resident cure, a French emigre who remained at Malbaie until 1822 and was, as we have seen, an intimate friend of the Nairne family. For a long time M. Le Courtois carried on missionary work among the Indians. In 1822 M. Duguay became cure; he went to Malbaie after being cure at Isle aux Coudres. In 1832 he was succeeded by M.

Zepherin Leveque who, in 1840, was followed by M. Alexis Bourret. This cure was something of a scholar. He read the Greek fathers in the original which is, I fancy, very unusual among the priests of Canada. In 1847 M. Beaudry became cure and in 1862 he was followed by M. Narcisse Doucet. It was under M. Doucet that the great influx of summer visitors began. Naturally they desired to have their own Protestant service on Sunday and M. Doucet did all he could to prevent their getting a place of wors.h.i.+p. Protestantism having disappeared from Malbaie the cure was not anxious to see it revived. But the last Mrs. Nairne, a Protestant, then ruled at the Manor House, and she gave for the purpose of Protestant wors.h.i.+p the admirable site of the present Union Church. M.

Doucet was a man of considerable culture. The parish church, first built in 1806, was remodelled in his time as also was the _presbytere_; he built, too, the convent for girls. In 1891 M. B.-E. Leclercq became cure--a good man of the peasant type, who retired in 1906 and died at Malbaie in the following year. The present energetic cure is M. Hudon.

[For Pere de La Brosse, see Casgrain, Oeuvres, Vol. 1, "Une Excursion a L'Ile aux Coudres"; Mailloux, "Histoire de L'Isle aux Coudres"

(Montreal, 1879). M. Mailloux has particulars about some of the cures named above. The dates for the successive cures are found in the registers at Malbaie.]