1649.] RELIC OF BRl^BEUF. 391 



sufferings to Heaven as a sacrifice. His robust com- 

 panion had lived less than four hours under the 

 torture, while he survived it for nearly seventeen. 

 Perhaps the Titanic effort of will with which Bre- 

 beuf repressed all show, of suffering consphed with 

 the Iroquois knives and firebrands to exhaust his 

 vitality ; perhaps his tormentors, enraged at his for- 

 titude, forgot their subtlety, and struck too near the 

 life. 



The bodies of the two missionaries were carried 

 to Sainte Marie, and buiied in the cemetery there ; 

 but the skull of Brebeuf was preserved as a relic. 

 His family sent from France a silver bust of their 

 martyred kinsman, in the base of which was a re- 

 cess to contain the skull ; and, to this day, the bust 

 and the relic mthin are preserved with pious care 

 by the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu at Quebec.^ 



1 Photographs of the bust are before me. Various relics of the two 

 missionaries were preserved ; and some of them may still be seen in 

 Canadian monastic establishments. The following extract from a letter 

 of Marie de I'lncarnation to her son, written from Quebec in October of 

 this year, 1649, is curious. 



" Madame our foundress {Madame de la Peltrie) sends you rehcs of 

 our holy martyrs ; but she does it secretly, since the reverend Fathers 

 would not give us any, for fear that we should send them to France : but, 

 as she is not bound by vows, and as the very persons wlio went for the 

 bodies have given relics of them to her in secret, I begged her to send 

 you some of them, which she has done very gladly, from the respect she 

 has for you." She adds, in the same letter, " Our Lord having revealed 

 to him (Brebeuf) the time of his martyrdom three days before it happened, 

 he went, full of joy, to find the other Fathers ; who, seeing him in extraor- 

 dinary spirits, caused him, by an inspiration of God, to be bled; after 

 which the surgeon dried his blood, through a presentiment of what was 

 to take place, lest he should be treated like Father Daniel, who, eight 

 months before, had been so reduced to ashes that no remains of his body 

 could be found." 



Brebeuf had once been ordered by the Father Superior to write down 

 the visions, revelations, and inward experiences with which he was 



