From "Brebeuf and his Brethren"
     by E. J. Pratt
[The Martyrdom of Brebeuf and Lalemant, 16 March 1649]

XII

No doubt in the mind of Brebeuf that this was the last 
Journey-three miles ove the snow.  He knew
That the margins as thin as they were by which he escaped 
From death through the eighteen years of his mission toil
Did not belong to this chapter: not by his pen
Would this be told. He knew his place in the line,
For the blaze of the trail that was cut on the bark by Jogues
Shone still.  He had heard the story as told by writ
And word of survivors--of how a captive slave
Of the hunters, the skin of his thighs cracked with the frost,
He would steal from the tents to the birches, make a rough cross
From two branches, set it in snow and on the peel
Inscribe his vows and dedicate to the Name
In 'litanies of love' what fragments were left 
From the wrack of his flesh; of his escape from the tribes;
Of his journey to France where he knocked at the door of the College
Of Rennes, was gathered in as a mendicant friar,
Namesless, unknown, till he gave for proof to the priest
His scarred credentials of faith, the nail-less hands
And withered arms--the signs of the Mohawk fury.
Nor yet was the story finished--he had come again
Back to his mission to get the second death.
And the comrades of Jogues--Goupil, Eustache and Couture,
Had been stripped and made to run the double files
And take the blows--one hundred clubs to each line--
And this as the prelude to torture, leisured, minute,
Where thorns on the quick, scallop shells to the joints of the thumbs,
Provided the sport for children and squaws till the end.
And adding salt to the blood of Brebeuf was the thought
Of Daniel--was it months or a week ago?
So far, so near, it seemed in time, so close
In leagues--just over there to the south it was
He faced the arrows and died in front of his church.

But winding into the greater artery
Of thought that bore upon the coming passion
Were little tributaries of wayward wishes
And reminiscence.  Paris with its vespers
Was folded in th mind of Lalemant,
And the soft Gothic lights and traceries
Were shading down the ridges of his vows.
But two years past at Bourges he had walked the cloisters,
Companioned by Saint Augustine and Francis,
And wrapped in quiet holy mists.  Brebuef,
His mind a moment throwing back the curtain
Of eighteen years, could see the orchard lands,
The cidreries, the peasants at the Fairs,
The undulating miles of wheat and barley,
Gardens and pastures rolling a sea
From Lisiuex to Le Havre.  Just now the surf
Was pounding on the limestone Norman beaches
And on the reefs of Calvados.  Had dawn
This very day not flung he surplices
Around the headlands and with golden fire
Consumed the silken argosies that make 
For Rouen from the estuary of the Seine?
A moment only for that veil to lift--
A moment only for those bells to die
That rang their matins at Conde-sur-Vire.
By noon St. Ignace!  The arrival there
The signal for the battle-cries of triumph,
The gauntlet of the clubs.  The stakes were set
And the ordeal of Jogues was re-enacted
Upon the priests--even with wilder fury,
For here at last was trapped their greatest victim,
Echon.  The Iroquois had waited long
For this event.  Their hatred for the Hurons 
Fused with their hatred for the French and priests
Was to be vented on this sacrifice,
And to that camp had come apostate Hurons,
United with their foes in common hate 
To settle up their reckoning with Echon.

Now three o'clock, and capping the height of the passion,
Confusing the sacraments under the pines of the forest,
Under the incense of Balsam, Under the smoke 
Of the pitch, was offered the rite of the font.  On the head,
The breast, the loins and the legs, the boiling water!
While the mocking paraphrase of the symbols was hurled
At their faces like shards of flint from the arrow heads--
'We baptize thee with water...
                             that thou mayest be led
To Heaven...
                      To that end we do anoint thee.
We treat thee as a friend: we are the cause
Of thy happiness; we are thy priests; the more
Thou sufferest, the more thy God will reward thee,
So give us thanks for our kind offices.'

The fury of taunt was followed by fury of blow.
Why did not the flesh of Brebeuf cringe to the scourge,
Respond to the heat, for rarely the Iroquis found
A victim that would not cry out in such pain--yet here
The fire was on the wrong fuel.  Whenever he spoke,
It was to rally the soul of his friend whose turn
Was to come through the night while the eyes were uplifted
 in prayer,
Inploring the Lady of Sorrows, the mother of Christ,
As pain brimmed over the cup and the will was called
To stand the test of the coals.  And sometimes the speech 
Of Brebeuf struck out, thundering reproof to his foes,
Half-rebuke, half-defiance, giving them roar for roar.
Was it because the chancel became the arena,
Brebeuf a lion at bay, not a lamb on the altar,
As if the might of a Roman were joined to the cause
Of Judaea? Speech they could stop for they girdled his lips,
But never a moan could they get.  Where was the source
Of his strenght, the home of his courage that topped the best
Of their braves and even out-fabled the lore of their legends?
In the bunch of his shoulders which often had carried a load 
Extorting the envy of guides at an Ottawa portage?
The heat of the hatchets was finding a path to that source.
In the thews of his thighs which had mastered the trails of the Neutrals?
They would gash and beribbon those muscles.  Was it the blood?
They would draw it fresh from its fountain.  Was it the heart?
They dug for it, fought for the scraps in the way of the wolves
But not in these was the valour or stamina lodged:
Nor in the symbol of Richelieu's robes or the seals
Of Mazarin's charters, nor in the stir of the lilies
Upon the Imperial folds; not yet in the words
Loyola wrote on a table of lava-stone
In the cave of Manresa--not in these the source--
but in the sound of invisible trumpets blowing
Around two slabs of board, right-angled, hammered
By Roman nails and hung on a Jewish hill.

The wheel had come full circle with the visions
In France of Brebeuf poured through the mould of St. Ignace.
Lalemant died in the morning at nine, in the flame
Of the pitch belts.  flushed with the sight of the bodies, the foes
Gathered their clans and moved back to the north and west
To join in the fight against the tribes of the Petuns.
There was nothing now that could stem the Iroquois blast.
However undaunted the souls of the priests who were left,
However fierce the sporadic counter attacks
Of the Hurons striking in roving bands from the ambush,
Or smashing out at their foes in garrison raids,
the villages fell before a blizzard of axes
And arrows and spears, and then were put to the torch.

The days were dark at the fort and heavier grew
The burdens on Ragueneau's shoulders.  Decision was his.
No word from the east could arrive in time to shape
The step he must take.  To and fro--from altar to hill,
From hill to altar, he walked and prayed and watched.
As governing priest of the Mission he felt the pride
Of his Order whipping his pulse, for was not St. Ignace
The highest test of the Faith? And all the torture
And death could do to the body was done.  the Will 
And the Cause in their triumph survived.
     Loyola's mountains,
Sublime at their summits, were scaled to the uttermost peak.
Ragueneau, the Shepherd, now looked on a battered fold.
In a whirlwind of fire St. Jean, like St. Joseph, crashed
Under the Iroquois impact.  Firm at his post,
Garnier suffered the fate of Daniel.  And now
Chabanel, last in the roll of the martyrs, entrapped
On his knees in the woods met death at apostate hands.

The drama was drawing close to its end.  It fell
To Ragueneau's lot to perform a final rite--
To offer the fort in sacrificial fire!
He applied the torch himself.  "Inside an hour,'
He Wrote,'we saw the fruit of ten years' labour
Ascend in smoke,--then looked our last at the fields,
Put altar-vessels and food on a raft of logs,
And made our way to the island of St. Joseph.'
But even from there was the old tale retold--
Of hunger and the search for roots and acorns;
Of cold and persecution unto death
By the Iroquois; of Jesuit will and courage
As the shepherd-priest with Chaumonot led back
The remnant of a nation to Quebec.