Our Little Quebec CousinSaxe, Mary S. (Mary Sollace)
General
Our Little Quebec Cousin
Saxe, Mary S. (Mary Sollace)
Children -- Québec (Province) -- Juvenile literature
"I am the dog that gnaws his bone
I crouch and gnaw it all alone,
A time will come, which is not yet,
When I'll bite him by whom I'm bit."
There is a tablet in gold on a plain bare frontage. A dog gnawing a
bone, the dog is couchant (lying down), the bone is that of a man's
thigh-bone! Madame Tremblent had told Oisette the interesting legend
of Le Chien D'or. It had its origin in the mercenary practices of the
last Intendant of Quebec under the French régime--Intendant means a
"City Manager" of modern times. This wicked one's name was Bigot. At a
time when food was very scarce indeed, and ships from France bringing
provisions to her colony were delayed by wind and weather, Bigot
gathered from poor farmers all the grain and food stuffs he could lay
hands on and stored them in a building close to his palace, and when
the time was ripe and a famine at hand he planned to sell back all this
food to the poor farmers who had raised it, and to charge them a very
big price. The building where he stored all his goods became known as
La Frippone--"The cheat."
Now, among the merchants of Quebec at that time was a man named
Nicholas Jaquin, he was rich and yet he was generous. He had also a
great warehouse on top of Mountain hill, where the Quebec post office
now stands. He decided also to gather grain and foodstuffs and to sell
them at the lowest possible price to the poor. Naturally, when the
Intendant found he was being undersold he was very angry, he tried in
every way to punish his enemy, who over his door put this sign of the
Golden Dog, and the people all understood, but were afraid to show too
much sympathy, as Bigot had been appointed by the King of France.
Finally, the Intendant caused his enemy to be slain in the streets of
Quebec--the actual assassin escaped for a time, but the murdered man's
son tracked him to far off Pondicherry and struck his father's slayer
down--the story ends there.
They also visited the Ursuline Convent, which has associations artistic
and martial as well as religious.
There is a votive lamp, lighted one hundred and seventy years ago by
two French officers, who came to attend the ceremony of their two
sisters taking the veil, which means that these young ladies became
nuns and never lived outside the convent walls again.
That lamp was to be kept burning forever--it was out for a short time
during the siege of 1759; then it was relighted, and for well over one
hundred years was never dimmed.
This chapel also contained paintings sent over from France for safe
keeping at the time of the French Revolution; and generally supposed to
be by great artists, such as Vandyke and Campana; but even though they
may be but copies they are very well worth seeing.
The great General Montcalm was taken to this convent to die, and was
buried within the precincts in a grave dug for him by a bursting shell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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