324 AN INTERLUDE. [1693, 1694. 



The winter that followed the arrival of the furs 

 from the upper lakes was a season of gayety with- 

 out precedent since the war began. All was har- 

 mony at Quebec till the carnival approached, when 

 Frontenac, whose youthful instincts survived his 

 seventy-four }^ears, introduced a startling novelty 

 which proved the signal of discord. One of his 

 military circle, the sharp-witted La Motte-Caclillac, 

 thus relates this untoward event in a letter to a 

 friend : " The winter passed very pleasantly, es- 

 pecially to the officers, who lived together like 

 comrades ; and, to contribute to their honest en- 

 joyment, the count caused two plays to be acted, 

 ' Nicomede ' and c Mi thri elate.' ' It was an amateur 

 performance, in which the officers took part along 

 with some of the ladies of Quebec. The success was 

 prodigious, and so was the storm that followed. 

 Half a century before, the Jesuits had grieved over 

 the first ball in Canada. Private theatricals were 

 still more baneful. " The clergy," continues La 

 Motte, " beat their alarm drums, armed cap-a-pie, 

 and snatched their bows and arrow r s. The Sieur 

 Glandelet was first to begin, and preached two 

 sermons, in which he tried to prove that nobody 

 could go to a play without mortal sin. The bishop 

 issued a mandate, and had it read from the pulpits, 

 in which he speaks of certain impious, impure, and 

 noxious comedies, insinuating that those which had 

 been acted were such. The credulous and infat- 

 uated people, seduced by the sermons and the 

 mandate, began already to regard the count as a 

 corrupter of morals and a destroyer of religion. 



