Black Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled at
Champlain's table. There was little conversation, but, in its place,
histories and the lives of saints were read aloud, as in a monastic
refectory. Prayers, masses, and confessions followed one another with an
edifying regularity, and the bell of the adjacent chapel, built by
Champlain, rang morning, noon, and night. Godless soldiers caught the
infection, and whipped themselves in penance for their sins. Debauched
artisans outdid each other in the fury of their contrition. Quebec was
become a mission. Indians gathered thither as of old, not from the
baneful lure of brandy, for the traffic in it was no longer tolerated,
but from the less pernicious attractions of gifts, kind words, and
politic blandishments. To the vital principle of propagandism both the
commercial and the military character were subordinated; or, to speak
more justly, trade, policy, and military power leaned on the missions as
their main support, the grand instrument of their extension. The
missions were to explore the interior; the missions were to win over the
savage hordes at once to Heaven and to France. Peaceful, benign,
beneficent, were the weapons of this conquest. France aimed to subdue,
not by the sword, but by the cross; not to overwhelm and crush the
nations she invaded, but to convert, civilize, and embrace them among
her children.
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