HEROISM OF THE JESUITS 113 



these missionaries of the Cross with their faces set 

 ill the hopeless task of reclaiming these children of 

 the forest. Joques, with his mutilated hands 

 extended in benediction over the heads of the men 

 that tortured him. We know how he went back 

 to Rome so battered and broken as to be unrecog- 

 nizable, but the Indians' needs haunted him, and 

 he returned to his mission, to be tomahawked in 

 the end. Breboeuf and Lalemant, they, too, appear 

 on the scene, lacerated, tortured, the formula that 

 they had so often used applied to themselves in 

 cruel derision by their executors. " We baptize 

 you," they said, pouring boiling water on their heads, 

 " that you may be happy in Heaven." Breboeuf 

 never flinched, although they cut strips of flesh from 

 his limbs and devoured them before his eyes. " You 

 told us that the more one suffered on earth, the 

 happier he is in Heaven. We wish to make you 

 happy because we love you, and you ought to thank 

 us for it." 



Then they scalped him, and paid the last 

 testimony to his bravery, as emphatic as their 

 tortures, by drinking his blood that his patience 

 and courage might be theirs. 



So ended the life of Jean de Breboeuf. France 

 gives him a first place amongst her saints and 

 martyrs. The roots of his race extend to British 

 soil, for in his veins flowed the blue blood of the 

 Earls of Arundel. 

 I 



