1637.] JOSEPH MARIE CHAUMONOT. 101 



eagerness, on a life which would have tried the 

 boldest; and, sustained by the spirit within him, 

 he was more than equal to it. His fellow-mission- 

 aries thought him a saint ; and had he lived a 

 century or two earlier, he would perhaps have 

 been canonized : yet, while all his life was a will- 

 ing martyrdom, one can discern, amid his admira- 

 ble virtues, some slight lingerings of mortal vanity. 

 Thus, in three several letters, he speaks of his great 

 success in baptizing, and plainly intimates that he 

 had sent more souls to Heaven than the other 

 Jesuits.^ 



Next appears a young man of about twenty- 

 seven years, Joseph Marie Chaumonot. Unlike 

 Brebeuf and Garnier, he was of humble origin, — 

 his father being a vine-dresser, and his mother the 

 daughter of a poor callage schoolmaster. At an 

 early age they sent him to Chatillon on the Seine, 

 where he lived with his uncle, a priest, who taught 

 him to speak Latin, and awakened his religious sus- 

 ceptibilities, which were naturally strong. This did 

 not prevent him from yielding to the persuasions 

 of one of his companions to run off to Beaune, a 

 town of Burgundy, where the fugitives proposed to 



1 The above sketch of Garnier is drawn from various sources. Obser- 

 vations du P. Henri de St. Joseph, Carme, sur son Frere le P. Charles Gar- 

 nier, MS. — Ahre'ge de la Vie du R. Pere Charles Garnier, MS. This 

 unpublished sketch bears the signature of the Jesuit Ragueneau, with 

 the date 1652. Eor the opportunity of consulting it I am indebted to 

 Bev. Felix Martin, S.J. — Lettres du P. Charles Garnier, MSS. These 

 embrace his correspondence from the Huron country, and are exceed- 

 ingly characteristic and striking. There is another letter in Carayon, 

 Premiere Mission. — Garnier's family was wealthy, as well as noble. Its 

 members seem to have been strongly attached to each other, and the 

 young priest's father M'as greatly distressed at his departure for Canada. 



9* 



