They tied
him to a stake, hung a collar of "hatchets heated red-hot" about his neck,
baptized him with boiling water, cut strips of flesh from his limbs, drank
his blood as if to inherit of his valiance, and finally tore out and ate
his heart for supreme courage. Such cannibalism seems poetically
justifiable in tribute to such unflinching constancy of devotion.
His brother priest, Lalemant, who was tortured to death at the same time,
had thought it no good omen ten years before (1639) that no martyr's blood
had yet furnished seed for the church in that new soil, though consoling
himself with the thought that the daily life amid abuse and threats,
smoke, fleas, filth, and dogs might be "accepted as a living martyrdom."
There was ample seed by now, and still more was soon to be added, for very
soon, the same year, the gentle Garnier is to die the same death
ministering to these same Hurons, whose refugees, flying beyond two lakes
to escape from their murderous foes, are to lure the priests on still
farther westward till, even in their unmundane thoughts, the great,
mysterious river begins to flow toward a longed-for sea.
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