334 AN INTERLUDE. [1694. 



cers, male and female, to go in full costume, with 

 violins, to play it in all the religious communities, 

 except the Recollets. He took them first to the 

 house of the Jesuits, where the crowd entered with 

 him ; then to the Hospital, to the hall of the pau- 

 pers, whither the nuns were ordered to repair ; then 

 he went to the Ursuline Convent, assembled the 

 sisterhood, and had the piece played before them. 

 To crown the insult, he wanted next to go to the 

 seminary, and repeat the spectacle there ; but, warn- 

 ing having been given, he was met on the way, and 

 begged to refrain. He dared not persist, and with- 

 drew in very ill-humor." 1 



Not one of numerous contemporary papers, both 

 official and private, and written in great part by 

 enemies of Frontenac, contains the slightest allu- 

 sion to any such story, and many of them are 

 wholly inconsistent with it. It may safely be set 

 down as a fabrication to blacken the memory of 

 the governor, and exhibit the bishop and his ad- 

 herents as victims of persecution. 2 



1 La Tour, Vie de Laval, liv. xii. 



2 Had an outrage, like that with which Frontenac is here charged, 

 actually taken place, the registers of the council, the letters of the in- 

 tendant and the attorney-general, and the records of the bishopric of 

 Quebec would not have failed to show it. They show nothing beyond 

 a report that " Tartuffe " was to be played, and a payment of money by the 

 bishop in order to prevent it. We are left to infer that it was prevented 

 accordingly. I have the best authority — that of the superior of the 

 convent (1871), herself a diligent investigator into the history of her com- 

 munity — for stating that neither record nor tradition of the occurrence 

 exists among the Ursulines of Quebec ; and I have been unable to learn 



^that any such exists among the nuns of the Hospital (Hotel-l)ieu). The 

 contemporary Recit d'une Religieuse Ursuline speaks of Frontenac with 

 gratitude, as a friend and benefactor, as does also Mother Juchereau, 

 superior of the Hotel-Dieu. 



