100 CHARACTER OF THE CANADIAN JESUITS. [1687. 



the Indians, who thought him handsome.^ His 

 constitution, bodily or mental, was by no means 

 robust. From boyhood, he had shown a delicate 

 and sensitive nature, a tender conscience, and a 

 proneness to religious emotion. He had never 

 gone with his schoolmates to inns and other places 

 of amusement, but kept his pocket-money to give to 

 beggars. One of his brothers relates of him, that, 

 seeing an obscene book, he bought and destroyed 

 it, lest other boys should be injured by it. He had 

 always wished to be a Jesuit, and, after a novitiate 

 which is described as most edifying, he became a 

 professed member of the Order. The Church, in- 

 deed, absorbed the greater part, if not the whole, 

 of this pious family, — one brother being a Carmel- 

 ite, another a Capuchin, and a third a Jesuit, while 

 there seems also to have been a foui'th under vows. 

 Of Charles Garnier there remain twenty-four let- 

 ters, written at various times to his father and two 

 of his brothers, chiefly during his missionary life 

 among the Hurons. They breathe the deepest and 

 most intense Roman Catholic piety, and a spmt 

 enthusiastic, yet sad, as of one renouncing all 

 the hopes and prizes of the world, and living for 

 Heaven alone. The afl"ections of his sensitive na- 

 ture, severed from earthly objects, found relief in 

 an ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary. With 

 none of the bone and sinew of rugged manhood, 

 he entered, not only without hesitation, but with 



1 " C'est pourquoi j'ai bien gagne k quitter la France, ou tous me 

 fesiez la guerre de n'avoir point de barbe ; car c'est ce qui me fait estimer 

 beau des Sauvages." — Lettres de Gamier, MSS. 



