The things we do!

The little father, who has always seemed to me an old man, though he was
then only thirty-six, was carried back to England, suffering from nature
and pirates almost as much as from the Iroquois, and at last reached
Rennes, where, after his identity was disclosed, the night was given to
jubilation and thanksgiving, we are told. He was summoned to Paris, where
the queen "kissed his mutilated hands" and exclaimed: "People write
romances for us--but was there ever a romance like this, and it is all
true?" Others gladly did him honor. But all this gave no satisfaction to
his soul bent upon one task, and as soon as the Pope, at the request of
his friends, granted a special dispensation [Footnote: The answer of Pope
Urban VIII was: "Indignum esset martyrem Christi, Christi non bibere
sanguinem."] which permitted him, though deformed by the "teeth and knives
of the Iroquois," to say mass once more, he returned to the wilderness
where within a few months the martyrdom was complete and his head was
displayed from the palisades of a Mohawk town.


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