Now here is what I can write about it, with the same sincerity with which I would some day render an account to God of all my actions. Peltry is not only the best thing and the easiest to make use of in this country, but it is also the coin of the greatest value. And the best of it is that, after it has been used as a covering, it is found to be ready-made gold and silver. You know in France how much consideration is given the style of a gown. Here all there is to do is to cut it out of a Beaver skin, and the Savage woman straightway sews it to her little child with a Moose tendon, with admirable promptness. Whoever wishes to pay in this coin for the goods he buys here, saves thereby the twenty-five per cent that the market price gives them over that in France for the risk they run upon the sea. The day-laborers also would rather receive the wages for their work in this money than in any other. And certainly it seems that commutative justice allows [page 173] that, if what comes [176] to us from France is dearer for having floated over the sea, what we have here is worth something for having been chased in the woods and over the snow, and for being the wealth of the Country; especially as those who are paid with this coin always find therein their reckoning and something more. It is for this reason that the Gentlemen of the Company permit to a -reasonable extent this practice to every one, and do not care whether these skins are used for trade or for protection from the cold,—provided that, in the end, they come back to their storehouse, and do not cross the seas except in their own Ships. In consequence of this, if occasionally one of them gets into our hands, we do not scruple to use it in the way of a purchase, any more than we would as a covering for the little Savages who cause us expense,—or to make for ourselves shoes from the skins of Moose, that we may walk upon our snowshoes, for which the common ones are of no use whatever, because they are so hard. Such is here the custom of both the French and the Barbarians. We send also some old Elk skins to our Fathers who are among the Hurons, and some Porcelain, [177] when we have any; it is the best part of their money, and with it they pay for their frugal provisions of Indian corn and smoked fish, as also for the materials and making of their bark Palaces. This, in truth, is all the profit we derive here from Peltries and other rare things of the Country,—all the use that we make of them. If it is dispassionately believed that there is some kind of traffic, or even if Your Reverence deems it best to drop all this, in order not to offend any one, we are all ready to give it up entirely. I say all, meaning as many of [page 175] us as are here,—and, if I dare to build hopes upon the goodness of our Lord, those who come after us will keep the same rule. What blindness would it be for us to come here to disobey our Superiors, or to scandalize those for whom we would willingly have sacrificed our lives! But if, on the contrary, you write us that all this is according to God, without semblance of traffic,—although a few slanderers, about whom we should not trouble ourselves, may stir up their passions at it, and turn it into poison,—we shall not fail to go on, after [178] having entreated these same lugubrious and irritable natures to believe that, if it pleases them to make us give up this innocent practice, they must open their own coffers to assist us in these distant Countries, after they have, through caprice, cut off a part of what was necessary to us. However carefully we have been able to manage things up to the present time, the last letters from that one of our Fathers who handles our income or our charitable gifts over there, and who sends us our supplies, indicate that without a little miracle he experienced lately in the assistance of saint Joseph, he would not have been able to furnish us anything this year. Now how would it be if we had to buy the remainder here, and send to him its items increased by a third or a fourth? Besides, if there is any charity in the world, no one should envy our little Seminary children because we cover them with stuffs which originate among them, and which last longer, especially upon their rather uneasy shoulders, and which protect them better from the cold than anything else. Nor should we be blamed for using [179] the money of the Country to save something for the benefit of these poor abandoned creatures; to [page 177] give them covering and food while they are willing to be instructed and desirous of becoming Christians, if they are not so already; and to have something with which to bury them, when they come to die. If France were reduced to such a condition that money was not in circulation, one would be obliged in commerce to use the articles and commodities themselves, trading one for the other; or even if there were any profit in doing this beyond the mere necessity, and if such were the custom, could any one find it wrong that, no matter what profession we make of poverty, we should follow the way of others, and when some objects of value should become ours, whether by purchase or donation,—either in exchange, or as a pure gift,—we should make use of them according to circumstances? We have no greater attractions for these poor people than their hope of getting from us some material assistance, and they never cease asking us for it. To refuse them is to estrange them. If we always give to them without taking anything in return, we [180] shall soon be at the end of our string; and yet, if we take away from them the liberty of asking, they will never become civilized. What remains then? To tell them to apply to those who have more to give than we? That will hardly help us, or render them more familiar with us. Shall we receive in order to give to those who would furnish us with something to satisfy them? This would be making us their Agents. But who has ever imagined that it is trafficking to give and take according to the necessity of the ordinary occurrences of human life? inasmuch as what you get in one place will exceed the value [page 179] of what you have given for it in another place. This is what I had to say on this point, yielding after all, as I have already declared, to what obedience shall deem proper or what shall be considered most edifying. For to consent to answer those who slander us, as if we were secretly making some other use of these skins and sending them to France, this would be making ourselves ridiculous. It is just as well to leave them something to say; and if they find ears ready to listen to these absurdities, I would be culpable [181] in expecting to find them open to the truth. What then? Shall men who have given up greater worldly blessings than they could hope for in the imaginations of these slanderers, finally decide to exchange France for Canada, to go there for the sake of two or three Beaver skins, and to trade them off unknown to their Superiors,—that is to say, at the expense of their consciences and of the loyalty they owe to him, to imitate whom they have so subjugated themselves that they cannot freely dispose of even a pin?
