Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century by Francis Parkman
page 203 of 486 (41%)
days' devotion. By whatever cause produced, the lapse of a week wrought
a hopeful improvement in their prospects; and when they went out of doors
in the morning, it was no longer with the expectation of having a hatchet
struck into their brains as they crossed the threshold.

[ "Tant y a que depuis le 6. de Nouembre que nous acheuasmes nos Messes
votiues son honneur, nous auons iouy d'vn repos incroyable, nons nous en
emerueillons nous-mesmes de iour en iour, quand nous considerons en quel
estat estoient nos affaires il n'y a que huict iours."--Le Mercier,
Relation des Hurons, 1638, 44. ]

The persecution of the Jesuits as sorcerers continued, in an intermittent
form, for years; and several of them escaped very narrowly. In a house
at Ossossane, a young Indian rushed suddenly upon Francois Du Peron,
and lifted his tomahawk to brain him, when a squaw caught his hand.
Paul Ragueneau wore a crucifix, from which hung the image of a skull.
An Indian, thinking it a charm, snatched it from him. The priest tried
to recover it, when the savage, his eyes glittering with murder,
brandished his hatchet to strike. Ragueneau stood motionless, waiting
the blow. His assailant forbore, and withdrew, muttering. Pierre
Chaumonot was emerging from a house at the Huron town called by the
Jesuits St. Michel, where he had just baptized a dying girl, when her
brother, standing hidden in the doorway, struck him on the head with a
stone. Chaumonot, severely wounded, staggered without falling, when the
Indian sprang upon him with his tomahawk. The bystanders arrested the
blow. Francois Le Mercier, in the midst of a crowd of Indians in a house
at the town called St. Louis, was assailed by a noted chief, who rushed
in, raving like a madman, and, in a torrent of words, charged upon him
all the miseries of the nation. Then, snatching a brand from the fire,
he shook it in the Jesuit's face, and told him that he should be burned
DigitalOcean Referral Badge