When La Salle was seignior of Lachine, before the king and Frontenac helped his ambition to its present foothold, he had been in the habit of stopping at Jacques le Ber’s house when he came to Montreal.

The first day of the beaver fair greatly tasked Madame le Ber. She sat drowsily beside the eldest child of her large absent flock, and was not displeased to have her husband’s distinguished enemy approach Jeanne.

The wife of Le Ber had been called madame since her husband bought his patent of nobility; but she held no strict right to the title, even wives of the lesser nobles being then addressed as demoiselles. In that simple colonial life Jacques le Ber, or his wife in his absence, served goods to customers over his own counter. Madame le Ber was an excellent woman, who said her prayers and approached the sacraments at proper seasons. She had abundant flesh covered with dark red skin, and she often pondered why a spirit of a daughter with passionate longings after heaven had been sent to her. If Sieur de la Salle could draw the child’s mind from extreme devotion, her husband must feel indebted to him.

La Salle’s face relaxed and softened as he sat down beside this sixteen-year-old maid in her colonial gown. She held her crucifix in her hands, and waited for him to talk. Jeanne made melody of his silences. As a child she had never rubbed against him for caresses, but looked into his eyes with sincere meditation. Having no idea of the explorer’s aim, Jeanne le Ber was yet in harmony with him across their separating years. She also could stake her life on one supreme idea. La Salle was formed to subdue the wilderness; she was dimly and ignorantly, but with her childish might, undertaking that stranger region, the human soul. She looked younger than other girls of her age; yet La Salle was moved to say, using the name he had given her,—

“You have changed much since last year, Sainte Jeanne.”

“Am I worse, Sieur de la Salle?” she anxiously inquired.

“No. Better. Except I fear you have prayed yourself to a greater distance from me.”

“I name you in my prayers, Sieur de la Salle. Ever since my father ceased to be your friend I have asked to have your haughty spirit humbled.”

La Salle laughed.

“If you name me at all, Sainte Jeanne, pray rather for the humbling of my enemies.”

“No, Sieur de la Salle. You need your enemies. I could ill do without mine.”

“Who could be an enemy to thee?”

“There are many enemies of my soul. One is my great, my very great love.”

La Salle’s face whitened and flushed. He cast a quick glance upon the dozing matron, the backs of people whose conversation buzzed about his ears, and returned to Jeanne’s childlike white eyelids and crucifix-folding hands.

“Whom do you love, Sainte Jeanne?”

“I love my father so much, and my mother; and the children are too dear to me. Sometimes when I rise in the night to pray, and think of living apart from my dear father, the cold sweat stands on my forehead. Too many dear people throng between the soul and heaven. Even you, Sieur de la Salle,—I have to pray against thoughts of you.”

“Do not pray against me, Sainte Jeanne,” said the explorer, with a wistful tremor of the lower lip. “Consider how few there be that love me well.”

Her eyes rested on him with divining gaze. Jeanne le Ber’s eyes had the singular function of sending innumerable points of light swimming through the iris, as if the soul were in motion and shaking off sparkles.

“If you lack love and suffer thereby,” she instructed him, “it will profit your soul.”

La Salle interlaced his fingers, resting his hands upon his knees, and gave her a look which was both amused and tender.

“And what other enemies has Sainte Jeanne?”

“Sieur de la Salle, have I not often told you what a sinner I am? It ridicules me to call me saint.”

“Since you have grown to be a young demoiselle I ought to call you Mademoiselle le Ber.”

“Call me Sainte Jeanne rather than that. I do not want to be a young demoiselle, or in this glittering company. It is my father who insists.”

“Nor do I want to be in this glittering company, Sainte Jeanne.”

“The worst of all the other enemies, Sieur de la Salle, are vanity and a dread of enduring pain. I am very fond of dress.” The young creature drew a deep regretful breath.

“But you mortify this fondness?” said La Salle, accompanying with whimsical sympathy every confession of Jeanne le Ber’s.

“Indeed I have to humiliate myself often—often. When this evil desire takes strong hold, I put on the meanest rag I can find. But my father and mother will never let me go thus humbled to Mass.”

“Therein do I commend your father and mother,” said La Salle; “though the outside we bear toward men is of little account. But tell me how do you school yourself to pain, Sainte Jeanne? I have not learned to bear pain well in all my years.”

Jeanne again met his face with swarming lights in her eyes. Seeing that no one observed them she bent her head toward La Salle and parted the hair over her crown. The straight fine growth was very thick and of a brown color. It reminded him of midwinter swamp grasses springing out of a bed of snow. A mat of burrs was pressed to this white scalp. Some of the hair roots showed red stains.

“These hurt me all the time,” said Jeanne. “And it is excellent torture to comb them out.”

She covered the burrs with a swift pressure, tightly closing her mouth and eyes with the spasm of pain this caused, and once more took and folded the crucifix within her hands.

The explorer made no remonstrance against such self-torture, though his practical gaze remained on her youthful brier-crowned head. He heard a girl in front of him laugh to a courtier who was flattering her.

“HÉ, monsieur, I have myself seen Quebec women who dressed with odious taste.”

But Jeanne, wrapped in her own relation, continued with a tone which slighted mere physical pain,—

“There is a better way to suffer, Sieur de la Salle, and that is from ill-treatment. Such anguish can be dealt out by the hands we love; but I have no friend willing to discipline me thus. My father’s servant Jolycoeur is the only person who makes me as wretched as I ought to be.”

“Discipline through Jolycoeur,” said La Salle, laughing, “is what my proud stomach could never endure.”

“Perhaps you have not such need, Sieur de la Salle. My father has many times turned him off, but I plead until he is brought back. He hath this whole year been a means of grace to me by his great impudence. If I say to him, ‘Jolycoeur, do this or that,’ he never fails to reply, ‘Do it yourself, Mademoiselle Jeanne,’ and adds profanity to make Heaven blush. Whenever he can approach near enough, he whispers contemptuous names at me, so that I cannot keep back the tears. Yet how little I endure, when Saint Lawrence perished on a gridiron, and all the other holy martyrs shame me!”

“Your father does not suffer these things to be done to you?”

“No, Sieur de la Salle. My father knows naught of it except my pity. He did once kick Jolycoeur, who left our house three days, so that I was in danger of sinking in slothful comfort. But I got him brought back, and he lay drunk in our garden with his mouth open, so that my soul shuddered to look at him. It was excellent discipline,”[5] said Jeanne, with a long breath.

“Jolycoeur will better adorn the woods and risk his worthless neck on water for my uses, than longer chafe your tender nature,” said La Salle. “He has been in my service before, and craved to-day that I would enlist him again.”

“Had my father turned him off?” asked Jeanne, with consternation.

“He said Jacques le Ber had lifted a hand against him for innocently neglecting to carry bales of merchandise to a booth.”

“I did miss the smell of rum downstairs before we came away,” said the girl, sadly. “And will you take my scourge from me, Sieur de la Salle?”

“I will give him a turn at suffering himself,” answered La Salle. “The fellow shall be whipped on some pretext when I get him within Fort Frontenac, for every pang he hath laid upon you. He is no stupid. He knew what he was doing.”

“Oh, Sieur de la Salle, Jolycoeur was only the instrument of Heaven. He is not to blame.”

“If I punish him not, it will be on your promise to seek no more torments, Sainte Jeanne.”

“There are no more for me to seek; for who in our house will now be unkind to me? But, Sieur de la Salle, I feel sure that during my lifetime I shall be permitted to suffer as much as Heaven could require.”

Man and child, each surrounded by his peculiar world, sat awhile longer together in silence, and then La Salle joined the governor.