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Acadiennes, pardonnez, mais souvenez-vous! … Ne baissez pas votre
tête brune, ni vos beaux yeux purs, devant les touristes anglo-saxons
qui, parfois, promènent leur ennui sur vos îles, non, jamais! Ils tiennent
en ce moment de l'histoire la terre et la mer. Oui! … Ils ont presque
toute la puissance et presque tout l'argent. Oui encore! … Mais aussi
vrai qu'il y a un Dieu au ciel, ils ont du sang sur les mains, et vous avez
une palme dans les vôtres … De sorte qu'en véritable et minime justice,
étant, eux, les fils de bourreaux, et vous, les filles de martyrs, c'est à eux,
sans doute, de courber la tête!' (173; Yes, Acadian women, forgive but
remember! Don't lower your brunette heads, or your beautiful, pure
eyes, before the Anglo-Saxon tourists who, sometimes, parade their
boredom around your islands, no, never! At this moment in history
they hold the land and the sea. Yes! … They have almost all the power
and almost all the money. Yes again! But as sure as there is a God in
heaven, they have blood on their hands, and you have a palm in yours
… So that in true and minimal justice, they being the sons of execution-
ers and you the daughters of martyrs, it is they, no doubt, who should
bow their heads!) With its accusations of 'Ils ont presque toute la puis-
sance et presque tout l'argent' and its call to 'souvenez-vous' the pas-
sage marks a strikingly direct parallel with the famous episode of the
'voices' in Maria Chapdelaine (chapter six) and a prefiguration of
Quebec's current motto ('je me souviens'). If the Quebecois have fared
better than the Acadians, it is, according to Marie-Victorin, because
they have kept their land and developed a national literature and a
national painting: 'nous autres, Canadiens français - protégés cepen-
dant par des traités et des capitulations généreuses - , avons assuré
notre pain sans le mendier à la porte du vainqueur, défendu la langue
des ancêtres dans la chaumière et dans l'école, préservé notre âme fran-
çaise et catholique, bâti de nos mains notre système d'enseignement,
développé une littérature et un art nationaux.' (148; we others, French
Canadians - protected just the same by generous treaties and terms -
have earned our bread without begging at the victor's door, have de-
fended the language of our ancestors at home and in school, have
preserved our French, catholic soul, built our educational system with
our own hands, developed a national literature and art.)
The sketches of Frère Marie-Victorin themselves take their place
within the nation's literature and art by depicting nature from the
perspective of Impressionism, using effects of light, colour, and atmo-
sphere, as well as culture from the perspectives of history and sci-
ence, in order to foreground aspects of Quebec's identity. They are a
unique combination of fluidity and solidity, reception and projection,
 
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