furnished by the Governor with a suit of
clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage to Europe.

At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reached
Paris, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings and
adventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about him
to do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands.

Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with its
deadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple nature
cared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among the
savages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldier
in that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member was
sworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement of
religion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for the
work among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs?

So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound for
Canada. Two years he passed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then his
supreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and the
Mohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the express
purpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for some
reason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was
{162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the first
mention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene of
so much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and he
quickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, which
to him was the will of God. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he
wrote to a friend.

He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended to
conciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was associated in
his mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and
through Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to the
Hudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped down
the river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends.
Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back among
the people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From Fort
Orange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With what
wonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had