his trade.
But we have not starved here; those for whom the street was named have looked out for us, maybe. When we first came to this
country, I was especially struck by the veneration in which the Holy Family was held in Kebec, and I found it was so all out
through the distant parishes. I never knew its like at home. Monseigneur Laval himself has told me that there is no other
place in the world where the people are so devoted to the Holy Family as here in our own Canada. It is something very
special to us.”
Cécile liked to think they had things of their own in Canada. The martyrdoms of the early Church which she read about in
her Lives of the Saints never seemed to her half so wonderful or so terrible as the martyrdoms of Father Brébeuf, Father
Lalemant, Father Jogues, and their intrepid companions. To be thrown into the Rhone or the Moselle, to be decapitated at
Lyon, — what was that to the tortures the Jesuit missionaries endured at the hands of the Iroquois, in those savage,
interminable forests? And could the devotion of Sainte Geneviève or Sainte Philomène be compared to that of Mother Catherine
de Saint–Augustin or Mother Marie de l’Incarnation?
“My child, I believe you are sleepy,” said Madame Pommier presently, when both her visitors had been silent a long while.
She liked her friends to be entertaining.
Cécile started out of her reverie. “No, madame, but I was thinking of a surprise I have at home, and perhaps I had better
tell you about it now. You remember my Aunt Clothilde? I am sure my mother often talked to you of her. Last summer she sent
me a box on La Licorne: a large wooden box, with a letter telling me not to open it. We must not open it until the day
before Christmas, because it is a crèche; so, you see, we shall have a Holy Family, too. And we have been hoping that on
Christmas Eve, before the midnight mass, Monsieur Noël will bring you to see it. You have not been in our house, you know,
since my mother died.”
“Noel, my son, what do you say to that?”
The cobbler had come in from the shop to light his candle at the fire.
“The invitation is for you too, Monsieur Noël, from my father.”
The cobbler smiled and stood with the stump of candle in his hand before bending down to the blaze.
“That can be managed, and my thanks to monsieur your father. If there is snow, I will push my mother down in her sledge,
and if the ground is naked, I will carry her on my back. She is no great weight.”
“I shall like to see the inside of your house again, Cécile. I miss it. I have not been there since that time when your
mother was ill, and Madame de Champigny sent her carriage to convey me.”
Cécile remembered the time very well. It was after old Madame Pommier was crippled; Madame Auclair had long been too ill
to leave the house. There was then only one closed carriage in Quebec, and that belonged to Madame de Champigny, wife of the
Intendant. In some way she heard that the apothecary’s sick wife longed to see her old friend, and she sent her carrosse to
take Madame Pommier to the Auclairs’. It was a mark of the respect in which the cobbler and his mother were held in the
community.
When Jacques and Cécile ran out into the cold again, from the houses along the tilted street the evening candlelight was
already shining softly. Up at the top of the hill, behind the Cathedral, that second afterglow, which often happens in
Quebec, had come on more glorious than the first. All the western sky, which had been hard and clear when the sun sank, was
now throbbing with fiery vapours, like rapids of clouds; and between, the sky shone with a blue to ravish the heart, — that
limpid, celestial, holy blue that is only seen when the light is golden.
“Are you tired, Jacques?”
“A little, my legs are,” he admitted.
“Get on the sled and I will pull you up. See, there’s the evening star — how near it looks! Jacques, don’t you love
winter?” She put the sled-rope under
But we have not starved here; those for whom the street was named have looked out for us, maybe. When we first came to this
country, I was especially struck by the veneration in which the Holy Family was held in Kebec, and I found it was so all out
through the distant parishes. I never knew its like at home. Monseigneur Laval himself has told me that there is no other
place in the world where the people are so devoted to the Holy Family as here in our own Canada. It is something very
special to us.”
Cécile liked to think they had things of their own in Canada. The martyrdoms of the early Church which she read about in
her Lives of the Saints never seemed to her half so wonderful or so terrible as the martyrdoms of Father Brébeuf, Father
Lalemant, Father Jogues, and their intrepid companions. To be thrown into the Rhone or the Moselle, to be decapitated at
Lyon, — what was that to the tortures the Jesuit missionaries endured at the hands of the Iroquois, in those savage,
interminable forests? And could the devotion of Sainte Geneviève or Sainte Philomène be compared to that of Mother Catherine
de Saint–Augustin or Mother Marie de l’Incarnation?
“My child, I believe you are sleepy,” said Madame Pommier presently, when both her visitors had been silent a long while.
She liked her friends to be entertaining.
Cécile started out of her reverie. “No, madame, but I was thinking of a surprise I have at home, and perhaps I had better
tell you about it now. You remember my Aunt Clothilde? I am sure my mother often talked to you of her. Last summer she sent
me a box on La Licorne: a large wooden box, with a letter telling me not to open it. We must not open it until the day
before Christmas, because it is a crèche; so, you see, we shall have a Holy Family, too. And we have been hoping that on
Christmas Eve, before the midnight mass, Monsieur Noël will bring you to see it. You have not been in our house, you know,
since my mother died.”
“Noel, my son, what do you say to that?”
The cobbler had come in from the shop to light his candle at the fire.
“The invitation is for you too, Monsieur Noël, from my father.”
The cobbler smiled and stood with the stump of candle in his hand before bending down to the blaze.
“That can be managed, and my thanks to monsieur your father. If there is snow, I will push my mother down in her sledge,
and if the ground is naked, I will carry her on my back. She is no great weight.”
“I shall like to see the inside of your house again, Cécile. I miss it. I have not been there since that time when your
mother was ill, and Madame de Champigny sent her carriage to convey me.”
Cécile remembered the time very well. It was after old Madame Pommier was crippled; Madame Auclair had long been too ill
to leave the house. There was then only one closed carriage in Quebec, and that belonged to Madame de Champigny, wife of the
Intendant. In some way she heard that the apothecary’s sick wife longed to see her old friend, and she sent her carrosse to
take Madame Pommier to the Auclairs’. It was a mark of the respect in which the cobbler and his mother were held in the
community.
When Jacques and Cécile ran out into the cold again, from the houses along the tilted street the evening candlelight was
already shining softly. Up at the top of the hill, behind the Cathedral, that second afterglow, which often happens in
Quebec, had come on more glorious than the first. All the western sky, which had been hard and clear when the sun sank, was
now throbbing with fiery vapours, like rapids of clouds; and between, the sky shone with a blue to ravish the heart, — that
limpid, celestial, holy blue that is only seen when the light is golden.
“Are you tired, Jacques?”
“A little, my legs are,” he admitted.
“Get on the sled and I will pull you up. See, there’s the evening star — how near it looks! Jacques, don’t you love
winter?” She put the sled-rope under
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