[ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 114, 116 (Cramoisy). ]

The terms were too hard. They would fain bargain to be let off with
building the chapel alone; but Brebeuf would bate them nothing, and the
council broke up in despair.

At Ossossane, a few miles distant, the people, in a frenzy of terror,
accepted the conditions, and promised to renounce their superstitions and
reform their manners. It was a labor of Hercules, a cleansing of Augean
stables; but the scared savages were ready to make any promise that might
stay the pestilence. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a
loud voice through the streets of the town, that the God of the French
was their master, and that thenceforth all must live according to His
will. "What consolation," exclaims Le Mercier, "to see God glorified by
the lips of an imp of Satan!" [ Le Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637,
127, 128 (Cramoisy). ]

Their joy was short. The proclamation was on the twelfth of December.
On the twenty-first, a noted sorcerer came to Ossossane. He was of a
dwarfish, hump-backed figure,--most rare among this symmetrical
people,--with a vicious face, and a dress consisting of a torn and shabby
robe of beaver-skin. Scarcely had he arrived, when, with ten or twelve
other savages, he ensconced himself in a kennel of bark made for the
occasion. In the midst were placed several stones, heated red-hot.
On these the sorcerer threw tobacco, producing a stifling fumigation; in
the midst of which, for a full half-hour, he sang, at the top of his
throat, those boastful, yet meaningless, rhapsodies of which Indian
magical songs are composed. Then came a grand "medicine-feast"; and the
disappointed Jesuits saw plainly that the objects of their spiritual care,
unwilling to throw away any chance of cure, were bent on invoking aid