第32章

The nuns pass out, and we wander through the silent yard, cut off by all the gloom of the medieval times from the din, activity, and good cheer of the street beyond, and are conducted into the Old Men's Department. The floors and furniture are faultlessly and fragrantly clean. The kitchen is neat and susceptible of warmth and comfort, even when the sun's short wooing is over. The beds are ranged along the walls plump and nice; yet I hope that, when I am an old man, I shall not have to sleep on blue calico pillow-cases. Here and there, within and without, old men are basking in the rare sweet warmth of summer, and with their canes and their sunshine seem very well bestowed. Now I like you, Mother Church. You do better by your old men than you do by your young women,--simply because you know more about them. How can you, Papa and Messrs. Cardinals, be expected to understand what is good for a girl? If only you would confine yourself to what you do comprehend,--if only you would apply your admirable organizations to legitimate purposes, and not run mad on machinery, you would do angels' work.

From the old men's quarters we go upstairs where sewing and knitting and all manner of fancy-work, especially in beads, are taught to long and lank little girls by longer and lanker large girls, companioned by a few old women, with commonplace knitting-work. Everything everywhere is thoroughly neat and comfortable; but I have a desperate pang of home-sickness; for if there is one condition of life more intolerable than any other, it is a state of unvarying, hopeless comfort.

From the Gray Nunnery to the English Church, which I like much better than the French Cathedral. There is a general tone of oakiness, solid, substantial, sincere, like the England of tradition,--set off by a brilliant memorial window and a memorial altar, and other memorial things which I have forgotten, but which I make no doubt the people who put them there have not forgotten. Here also we find, as all along in Canada, vestiges of his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.

We are shown the Bible which he presented to the Church, and we gaze with becoming reverence upon the august handwriting,--the pew in which he worshipped; and the loyal beadle sees nothing but reverence in our momentary occupation of that consecrated seat. Evidently there is but a very faint line of demarcation in the old man's mind between his heavenly and earthly king; but an old man may have a worse weakness than this,--an unreasoning, blind, faithful fondness and reverence for a blameless prince. God bless the young man, in that he is the son of his father and mother. God help him, in that he is to be King of England.

Chancel and window, altar, and arches and aisles and treasures,--is there anything else? Yes, the apple that Eve ate, transfixed to oak,--hard to understood, but seeing is believing. And then past Nelson's monument, somewhat battered, like the hero whom it commemorates; past the Champ de Mars, a fine parade-ground, hard and smooth as a floor; past the barracks and the reservoir, to the new Court-House, massive and plain. Then home to dinner and lounging; then travelling-dresses, and the steamer, and a most lovely sunset on the river; and then a night of tranquillity running to fog, and a morning approach to the unique city of North America,--the first and the only walled city _I_ ever saw, or you either, I dare say, if you would only be willing to confess it. The aspect of the city, as one first approaches it, is utterly strange and foreign,--a high promontory jutting into the river, with a shelf of squalid, crowded, tall and shaky, or low and squatty tenements at its base, almost standing on the water and rising behind them, for the back of the shelf, a rough, steep precipice abutted with the solid masonry of wall and citadel.

A board fastened somehow about half-way up the rocky cliff, inscribed with the name of Montgomery, marks the spot where a hero, a patriot, a gentleman, met his death. Disembarking, we wind along a stair of a road, up steep ascents, and enter in through the gates into the city,--the walled, upper city,--walls thick, impregnable, gates ponderous, inert, burly. You did well enough in your day, old foes; but with Armstrongs and iron-clads, and Ericsson still living, where would you be?--answer me that. Quaint, odd, alien old city,--a faint phantasmagoria of past conflicts and forgotten plans, a dingy fragment of la belle France, a clinging reminiscence of England, a dim, stone dream of Edinburgh, a little flutter of modern fashion, planted upon a sturdy rampart of antiquity, a little cobweb of commerce and enterprise, netting over a great deal of church and priest and king with an immovable basis of stolid existence,--that is the Quebec I inferred from the Quebec I saw. Nothing in it was so interesting to me as itself. But passing by itself for the nonce, we prudently took advantage of the fine morning, and drove out to the Falls of Montmorency with staring eyes that wanted to take in all views, before, behind, on this side and that, at once; and because we could not, the joints of my neck at least became so dry with incessant action that they almost creaked. Low stone cottages lined the road-sides, with windows that opened like doors, with an inevitable big black stove whenever your eye got far enough in, with a pleasant stoop in front, with women perpetually washing the floors and the windows, with beautiful and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every window, and often trailing and climbing about its whole area. Here, I take it, is the home of a real peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate.