Huron."--Chaumonot, Vie, 61. ]

The efforts of the missionaries for the conversion of the savages were
powerfully seconded from the other world, and the refractory subject who
was deaf to human persuasions softened before the superhuman agencies
which the priest invoked to his aid.

[ As these may be supposed to be exploded ideas of the past, the writer
may recall an incident of his youth, while spending a few days in the
convent of the Passionists, near the Coliseum at Rome. These worthy
monks, after using a variety of arguments for his conversion, expressed
the hope that a miraculous interposition would be vouchsafed to that end,
and that the Virgin would manifest herself to him in a nocturnal vision.
To this end they gave him a small brass medal, stamped with her image,
to be worn at his neck, while they were to repeat a certain number of
Aves and Paters, in which he was urgently invited to join; as the result
of which, it was hoped the Virgin would appear on the same night.
No vision, however, occurred. ]

It is scarcely necessary to add, that signs and voices from another world,
visitations from Hell and visions from Heaven, were incidents of no rare
occurrence in the lives of these ardent apostles. To Brebeuf, whose deep
nature, like a furnace white hot, glowed with the still intensity of his
enthusiasm, they were especially frequent. Demons in troops appeared
before him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves,
or wildcats. He called on God, and the apparitions vanished. Death,
like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him, and once, as he faced it with an
unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the form of a
woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among
the rocks of Subiaco; but Brebeuf signed the cross, and the infernal