158 QUEBEC AND ITS TENANTS. [1640. 



convent, hospital, and seminary I shall soon have 

 occasion to speak. 



Quebec wore an aspect half military, half mo- 

 nastic. At sunrise and sunset, a squad of soldiers 

 in the pay of the Company paraded in the fort ; 

 and, as in Champlain's time, the bells of the church 

 rang morning, noon, and night. Confessions, mass- 

 es, and penances were punctiliously observed ; and, 

 from the governor to the meanest laborer, the 

 Jesuit watched and guided all. The social atmos- 

 phere of New England itself was not more suffo- 

 cating. By day and by night, at home, at church, 

 or at his daily work, the colonist lived under the 

 eyes of busy and over-zealous priests. At times, 

 the denizens of Quebec grew restless. In 1639, 

 deputies were covertly sent to beg relief in France, 

 and " to represent the hell in which the consciences 

 of the colony were kept by the union of the tem- 

 poral and spiritual authority in the same hands." ^ 

 In 1642, partial and ineffective measures were 

 taken, with the countenance of Eichelieu, for in- 

 troducing into New France an Order less greedy 

 of seigniories and endowments than the Jesuits, 



the Society. The Relations are full of appeals to the charity of devout 

 persons in behalf of the missioiis. 



" Of what use to the country at this period could have been two com- 

 munities of cloistered nuns 1 " asks the modern historian of the Ursu- 

 lines of Quebec. And he answers by citing the words of Pope Gregory 

 the Great, who, when Borne was ravaged by famine, pestilence, and the 

 barbarians, declared that his only hope was in the prayers of the three 

 thousand nuns then assembled in the holy city. — Les Ursulines de Quebec. 

 Introd., XI. 



1 " Pour leur representor la gehenne oil estoient les consciences de la 

 Colonic, de se voir gouverne par les mesmes personnes pour le spirituel 

 et pour le temporel." — Le Clerc, I. 478. 



