o see him; and when the
persecuted slave of the Mohawks was conducted into her presence, she
kissed his mutilated hands, while the ladies of the court thronged
around to do him homage. We are told, and no doubt with truth, that
these honors were unwelcome to the modest and single-hearted
missionary, who thought only of returning to his work of converting
the Indians. A priest with any deformity of body is debarred from
saying mass. The teeth and knives of the Iroquois had inflicted an
injury worse than the tortures imagined, for they had robbed Jogues of
the privilege which was the chief consolation of his life; but the
Pope, by a special dispensation, restored it to him, and with the
opening spring he sailed again for Canada....

In the evening--it was the eighteenth of October--Jogues, smarting
with his wounds and bruises, was sitting in one of the lodges, when an
Indian entered, and asked him to a feast. To refuse would have been an
offense. He arose and followed the savage, who led him to the lodge of
the Bear chief. Jogues bent his head to enter, when another Indian,
standing concealed within, at the side of the doorway, struck at him
with a hatchet. An Iroquois, called by the French Le Berger, who seems
to have followed in order to defend him, bravely held out his arm to
ward off the blow; but the hatchet cut through it, and sank into the
missionary's brain. He fell at the feet of his murderer, who at once
finished the work by hacking off his head. Lalande was left in
suspense all night, and in the morning was killed in a similar manner.
The bodies of the two Frenchmen were then thrown into the Mohawk, and
their heads displayed on the points of the palisade which enclosed the
town.

Thus died Isaac Jogues, one of the purest examples of Roman Catholic
virtue which this western continent has seen.

V

WHY NEW FRANCE FAILED[53]

New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean
body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself
with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes of
savage retainers. Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was
strengthening and widening, with slow but stedfast growth, full of
blood and muscle--a body without a head. Each had its strength, each
its weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life: but the one was
fruitful, the other barren; the one instinct with hope, the other
darkening with shadows of despair.

[F