4 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

clear in his memory.* He even vividly remembers that,
among the skeletons thus unearthed, one was found
standing up, instead of reclining, against the founda-
tions of the church, a particularity which created quite
a stir among the peaceful population of the village.

“Who can that be?” they asked one another.
“Might that not be the bones of a Louiset, or member
of the Lesser Church?’’® ‘‘These people will never
do like others, even after death.’”

Another thing that Father Morice fully remembers
is that, from his very tenderest years, he constantly
aspired to the privilege of entering the priesthood.
As a preparation to this coveted estate, he was wont
gravely to ring a bell, call in his little companions, and
address to them a few childish remarks, which he
seriously called a sermon.

At seven years old he was admitted to the local
school of the Holy Cross Brothers, whose founder, the
Abbé Moreau, he remembers.* There he was a good

5 For the benefit of such as might still be disposed to doubt, Father
Morice says that he is ready to swear that he fails to remember having
ever been told that the present central square of Oisseau was formerly
the site of the parish graveyard.

Since the foregoing was written, documents have come from that
place, among which is the following note or memo copied from the town
hall register of the same: ‘‘8 November, 1863.—Work to be done about
the church and construction of stairs”’ [leading thereto]. Now our friend
seems still to see, for a long time after the carts had finished work on the
new square, a sort of hill connecting the latter with the main entrance of
the church, which was made of soil spared by the excavators, after which
was commenced the flight of stone stairs mentioned in the official memo.
And it could not be said that this may have been undertaken long after:
other extracts from the same register show that what had been decided
on was immediately executed.

6 Made up of those who adhered to the Bishops who refused to
acquiesce in the Pope’s destitution en bloc of all the Bishops of France
preparatory to the forming of a new, and more limited, hierarchy, accord-
ing to the Concordate negotiated with Napoleon.

7 Cf. Morice, Voyages et Aventures de Lebret a la Haye, Lisieux,
Lourdes et Verdun, pp. 247-48; Saint-Boniface, 1925.

8 At any rate, he now imagines he must have been the priest who was
once received with such deference by the brothers, and inspected their
school with some show of authority.