Duquet’s abduction of Père Naufragé is a turning point in Duquet’s preparation for a commercial future: unable to read or write, he takes a missionary captive and makes literacy the condition of his release. The episode turns education into a transaction imposed by force, even as the captive priest’s religious practices and the mission’s colonial setting complicate the distinction between learning, conversion, and power.

Causes and Preparation

Duquet is considering a shift from the lucrative fur trade toward timber, but first wants to make as much money as possible from furs and prepare for the change. He sketches that plan to Toussaint Trépagny and Fernand Trépagny, inviting them to remain partners when he moves into timber; neither brother commits enthusiastically. He then identifies a more immediate obstacle: he cannot read or write and fears being cheated by merchants. The episode thus makes literacy a practical instrument in Duquet’s ambitions, rather than an abstract accomplishment.

Toussaint proposes that they take a Jesuit who can teach Duquet while continuing missionary work. The plan collapses the priest’s two roles into one: a religious emissary to Indigenous communities and a private instructor serving the traders’ business interests. The brothers watch a small party of missionaries and their Huron guides for several days before acting. Duquet chooses the priest who appears most capable and efficient, observing how he handles the group’s tasks and spends comparatively little time in prayer.

The Abduction and Terms of Captivity

The kidnapping takes place when the selected missionary steps away from the group. Toussaint gags him, Fernand binds his hands, and Duquet leads him into the forest to their camp. When the gag is removed, Père Naufragé realizes that his captors are French, not Indigenous, and asks why he has been taken from his companions while traveling to the Hurons. Duquet answers that the mission journey can wait: the priest must remain with them until Duquet learns to read and write. He promises that Père Naufragé will be treated well and warns him against escaping, invoking the danger of capture by the Iroquois.

Père Naufragé resists the arrangement and says he is eager for martyrdom rather than teaching illiterates. Fernand produces a worn copy of Les Quatrains de Pibrac, a book given to him by his mother and kept among his possessions, as the text for instruction. The priest accepts the captivity with conditions of his own: daily devotions, weekly Mass, and time for theological disputation on a subject he will choose. Duquet’s coercive purpose therefore does not erase the captive’s ability to maintain some religious routine and claim a measure of authority over their shared days.

Lessons and Unequal Uses of Knowledge

Duquet learns quickly. He practices letters and numbers on hundreds of pieces of birch bark, and arithmetic joins reading and writing in the curriculum. His hands, trained by years of paddling, struggle with the finer movements required for handwriting; the result is rough but legible. Père Naufragé gradually becomes part of the small group, while overlooking its whiskey trading and Duquet’s evident greed. He is impressed by Duquet’s capacity to retain information, including words and fragments in several languages and the prayers he hears.

The book that Fernand provides does not become Duquet’s guide to life. By the end of the first year it has become worn and returns to Fernand’s bag, while Duquet has memorized its contents. Yet he prefers to despise Pibrac rather than make its moral instruction his own. The contrast clarifies what Duquet takes from the encounter: he acquires usable knowledge and the ability to remember, but the episode does not show him adopting the ethical or religious purpose associated with the text.

Release and Wider Significance

In early spring, two years after the abduction, Père Naufragé leaves unwillingly, now dressed as a woodsman because his cassock has been worn away in the brush. Duquet tells him that it is time to go and says they will take him to the Hurons, since Duquet himself must travel to France on business. The priest remarks that another year might have given Duquet considerable Latin, which he calls the most important language for the sort of business Duquet intends to pursue. Duquet gives little outward response, and the narration indicates that his thoughts lie elsewhere.

The return journey takes six days and passes burning fields and woods. Fernand observes that the Huron country seems to be on fire whenever he visits. At the edge of the forest near the Huron mission, Duquet stands aside as the Trépagny brothers embrace Père Naufragé and wish him well; the priest then walks toward the clearing and disappears into the smoke. His release restores him to his intended journey, but the scene does not suggest that the episode resolves the conditions surrounding missionary travel or the expanding colonial conflict.

Elsewhere, the novel’s treatment of missionary attitudes makes the episode’s setting more legible. Père Crème describes Indigenous people as regarding trees, plants, fish, moose, and bears as equals, and records his failure to persuade them that trees exist for human use or that they should replace seasonal practices with gardens and settled farming. He also objects to the Sel family’s French literacy and resistance to farming, framing Indigenous land use through a colonial doctrine that equates clearing and improvement with ownership. These other missionary perspectives are not Père Naufragé’s stated views, but they show how literacy and religious instruction sit within a broader struggle over knowledge, land, and cultural authority.

The abduction’s central irony is that Duquet resists being cheated by people who can read by forcing a literate man into his service. The priest’s instruction equips Duquet for commerce, while Duquet’s treatment of him exposes the coercion behind that self-advancement. By giving the captive religious practices a place in the camp and later depicting his return to the mission, the episode also keeps the missionary’s vocation distinct from the commercial lesson Duquet extracts from it.