And who were the instruments and the promoters of this proselytism, at
once so devout and so politic? Who can answer? Who can trace out the
crossing and mingling currents of wisdom and folly, ignorance and
knowledge, truth and falsehood, weakness and force, the noble and the
base, can analyze a systematized contradiction, and follow through its
secret wheels, springs, and levers a phenomenon of moral mechanism? Who
can define the Jesuits? The story of their missions is marvellous as a
tale of chivalry, or legends of the lives of saints. For many years, it
was the history of New France and of the wild communities of her desert
empire.
Two years passed. The mission of the Hurons was established, and here
the indomitable Breheuf, with a band worthy of him, toiled amid miseries
and perils as fearful as ever shook the constancy of man; while
Champlain at Quebec, in a life uneventful, yet harassing and laborious,
was busied in the round of cares which his post involved.
Christmas day, 1635, was a dark day in the annals of New France. In a
chamber of the fort, breathless and cold, lay the hardy frame which war,
the wilderness, and the sea had buffeted so long in vain. After two
months and a half of illness, Champlain, stricken with paralysis, at the
age of sixty-eight, was dead.
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