CHAPTER VIII. _VILLE MARIE_. BEAUTIFULLY situated as it was between Mount Royal and the St. Lawrence, at that early date Ville Marie could scarcely be termed imposing in appearance. It was busy and bustling, and had been described as “a place which makes so much noise, but is of so little account.” A frontier town at the head of the colony, it was the natural resort of desperadoes of every description, offering a singular contrast between the rigor of its clerical seigniors and the riotous license of the wild crews which invaded it. Its citizens were mostly disbanded soldiers, traders and coureurs de bois—a turbulent population, whose control taxed to the utmost the patience, tact and ingenuity of the priestly governors. While a portion of the residents were given up to practices of mystical piety, others gambled, drank and stole; if hard pressed by justice they had only to cross the river and place themselves beyond seigniorial jurisdiction. Limited as was the sphere of action, here existence offered many striking contrasts. In love with an exquisite ideal, men and women struggled to attain purity and unselfishness: they nursed the sick, fed the hungry, loved and forgave, lived in godly fear and died fortified by eternal hope; and this side by side with those who yielded themselves up with boundless license to the worse passions of the human heart. While scarcely more than a village in dimensions, the preponderance of large buildings, churches and convents imparted to the town a substantial appearance which the number of the population and its scanty resources scarcely warranted. Quaint steeples and turrets cut the misty pallor of the sky. Ville Marie wore an aspect half military, half monastic. At sunrise and sunset a squad of soldiers paraded in front of the citadel; at night patrols marched through the streets; church bells, deep and sweet mouthed, rang out the Angelus morning, noon and night. On the river-front were numerous taverns, in front of which boats and canoes were drawn up on the shore. Here voyageurs swaggered and swore, and Indians, whom what Charlevois quaintly terms “a light tinge of Christianity” had scarcely redeemed from savagery, squatted in sullen apathy or quarrelled with brutal ferocity. A row of small compact dwellings extended along a narrow street then, as now, called St. Paul. Some of the houses were of stone, but the majority were of wood with stone gables, as required by law, the roofs covered with shingles. All outlying houses were pierced with loopholes and fortified as well as the slender means of their owners would permit. Gardens were mostly fenced by pointed cedar stakes, with the poles firmly tied together. Fields studded with scarred and blackened stumps stretched away to the bordering forest, crowding gloomy and silent on the right side and on the left. The green shaggy back of the Mountain towered over all.