'ere Marie of the llrstilines Cbc Minivers libraries GIFT OF David (lideonse MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES BOOKS BY AGNE S REPPLIER A HAPPY HALF CENTURY AMERICANS AND OTHERS BOOKS AND MEN COMPROMISES COUNTER CURRENTS ESSAYS IN IDLENESS ESSAYS IN MINIATURE IN OUR CONVENT DAYS IN THE DOZY HOURS J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES PERE MARQUETTE PHILADELPHIA: THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE POINTS OF FRICTION POINTS OF VIEW PROMISE OF THE BELL THE CAT THE FIRESIDE SPHINX UNDER DISPUTE VARIA re* /fo/7* of the It rstt tines A J*urfy in Adventure AGNES REPPLIER,LtTT & TAe Literary Guild of America VorA BOOKS BY AGNES REPPLIER A HAPPY HALF CENTURY AMERICANS AND OTHERS BOOKS AND MEN COMPROMISES COUNTER CURRENTS ESSAYS IN IDLENESS ESSAYS IN MINIATURE IN OUR CONVENT DAYS IN THE DOZY HOURS J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES PERE MARQUETTE PHILADELPHIA: THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE POINTS OF FRICTION POINTS OF VIEW PROMISE OF THE BELL THE CAT THE FIRESIDE SPHINX UNDER DISPUTE VARIA Mere Ma fie of the Urstjlines A Study in Adventure AGNES REPPLJERjLITT U n Literary Guild of America VorA COPYRIGHT, 1931 BY AGNES REPPLIER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FIRST EDITION PRINTED AT THE Country Life Press, GARDEN CITY, N. Y., u. s. A. Sift 1120045 TO HELEN GODEY WILSON whose library enabled me to write this book, and whose interest upheld me in the work CONTENTS I SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES J II MARIE GUYARD l8 III THE CALL 55 IV CHAMPLAIN 50 V QUEBEC 69 VI IN DAYS OF PEACE 8$ VII IN DAYS OF WAR 106 VIII A NEW START 128 IX WHITE MEN AND RED X A PRELATE xi "DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" XII THE MARRIAGE MART 21$ XIII THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 227 XIV THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 243 XV THE CHANGING SCENE 2$? XVI MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 2?2 XVII THE HERITAGE 288 INDEX 505 CE TEBBAW BONKC FH NOUVELLE-F URSUUMS Inscription and Seals Engraved on the Wall of the Ursuline Convent in Quebec ( Translation) On this site, given by the Company of New France to the Ursulines who landed in Quebec in 1639, was founded in 1641 a convent, destroyed by fire in 1650, and rebuilt in 1651. There was erected also a church, the cornerstone of which was laid by M. de Lauzon. If was burned in 1686, and re- built in 1720. Here was laid the body of the Marquis de Montcalm in 1759, and here was celebrated the second centenary of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in this convent. The cornerstone of the present church was laid August 28, IQOI, by Mgr, L.-N. Begin, Archbishop of Quebec. Chapter I SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES OF COURSE the Ursulines were the most adven- turous of nuns; they had the most adventurous of patronesses. Saints in plenty have gone on pilgrimages; but no other saint ever carried eleven thousand virgins along with her. Saints in plenty have been martyred; but no other saint ever shared martyrdom with eleven thou- sand companions. It was the noble amplitude of Saint Ursula's enterprise which gave vivacity to her legend, and distinction to her name. Thirteen lines carved on a stone of unknown date afford the sole foundation for her story. They are called the Inscription of Clematius, and may be found in the choir of the Church of St. Ursula in Cologne. Clematius, a man of rank, built in the Fifth Century a basilica in honor of the virgin martyrs who met their deaths on that spot. So much may be deciphered from the stone; but not a great deal more, save that the basilica replaced a still older church which had fallen into ruins, and that all men were warned, under penalty of everlasting fire, against bury- 1:4 Inscription and Seals Engraved on the Wall of the Ursuline Convent in Quebec ( Translation) On this site, given by the Company of New France to the Ursuline s who landed in Quebec in 1639, was founded in idj.1 a convent, destroyed by fire in 1650, and rebuilt in 1651. There was erected also a church, the cornerstone of which was laid by M. de Lauzon. It was burned in 1686, and re- built in 1720. Here was laid the body of the Marquis de Monte aim in 1759, and here was celebrated the second centenary of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in this convent. The cornerstone of the present church was laid August 28, igoi, by Mgr. L.-N. Begin, Archbishop of Quebec. Chapter I SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES OF COURSE the Ursulines were the most adven- turous of nuns; they had the most adventurous of patronesses. Saints in plenty have gone on pilgrimages; but no other saint ever carried eleven thousand virgins along with her. Saints in plenty have been martyred; but no other saint ever shared martyrdom with eleven thou- sand companions. It was the noble amplitude of Saint Ursula's enterprise which gave vivacity to her legend, and distinction to her name. Thirteen lines carved on a stone of unknown date afford the sole foundation for her story. They are called the Inscription of Clematius, and may be found in the choir of the Church of St. Ursula in Cologne. Clematius, a man of rank, built in the Fifth Century a basilica in honor of the virgin martyrs who met their deaths on that spot. So much may be deciphered from the stone; but not a great deal more, save that the basilica replaced a still older church which had fallen into ruins, and that all men were warned, under penalty of everlasting fire, against bury- 2 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES ing anyone who was not a virgin within the sa- cred walls. In no liturgy earlier than the Ninth Century is there any mention of these martyrs. The number first given is eleven, and the step from eleven to eleven thousand was easily and quickly taken. By 850 Wandalbert of Prom had mounted them halfway. By the close of the cen- tury they had reached the eleven thousand, at which figure they remained. By that time also the vague story of their adventures showed defi- nite color and outline. It was told over and over again, the varying details leading up always to the same sorrowful and glorious end. Saint Ursula, the daughter of Theonotus, a dateless Christian king of Brittany, was sought in marriage by Prince Conon, son of a pagan king of Britain. Sometimes the situation is re- versed. Theonotus is King of Britain, and Conon Prince of Brittany. But this is an unusual vari- ant. As a rule, stress is laid upon the higher civilization of the continent, the comparative rudeness of the island. No British princess could have been described, as an old chronicler de- scribes Saint Ursula, in terms that would have fitted a devout Christian Hypatia: "She was not only graceful and beautiful, but of rare scholarship. Her mind was stored with SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 3 knowledge and enlightened by wisdom. She knew the courses of the stars and of the winds; she was acquainted with the history of the world; she had read the poets and the philosophers. Above all she was versed in scholastic divinity, so that the doctors of the Church were amazed by her learning." This accomplished lady was reluctant to marry. She sought excuses for delay, and was visited opportunely in a dream by an angel who bade her summon eleven thousand virgins, and go with them on a pilgrimage to Rome be- fore consenting to the nuptials. Undismayed, she promised obedience, and set about fulfilling the conditions. The maidens, "spotless and noble," were collected, and the fleet set sail for Italy. Adverse winds, or perhaps ignorance on the part of the ladies who, we are told, manned the sails drove them northward. The pilgrims landed at Cologne, went to Basle, and thence made their way over the Alps to Rome. They were accompanied by angels who cleared roads through the snowdrifts, threw bridges over tor- rents, and at night pitched tents to shelter them. Thus guided and protected they reached the holy city, "a fair and wondrous host," and were honorably received by the Pope, Saint Cyriacus. 4 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Here the undaunted Prince Conon joined them, and was baptized. On their way home they stopped, or were stopped, at Cologne, and were there barbarously murdered by the heathen Huns. Now what has made this legendary princess more real to us than many a saint whose name is duly placed on the Roman Calendar, and duly chanted in the great Litany? Certainly not the heap of bones which the sacristan of St. Ursula's Church shows with an indulgent smile to skeptical tourists. No, it has been left for art to take the story under its august protection, to clothe it with beauty, to trick it out with every device that can win and hold attention. Carpaccio was in his splendid prime when he painted for the Scuola di San Orsola (a home for poor little Venetian girls) the series of pictures which now adorn the walls of the Accademia. Venice, like Florence, gave the best she could command to her orphaned children. The paint- ings tell in order every detail of the saint's story, from the coming of the British envoys to ask her hand down to her final martyrdom on the banks of the Rhine. The most beautiful of all is the well-known Dream, familiar to thousands who know little else about the amazing pilgrim- SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 5 age. Ursula lies sleeping in a vast, low Italian bed. Her crown, her slippers, and her little lap- dog are neatly disposed at its foot. The angel who enters the room, casting a radiance before him, is fair haired and of a gentle appearance. He looks as if he had come to bless the sleeper, and not to command a magnificent impossibil- ity. Rivaling the Dream is the lovely canvas which shows us Pope Cyriacus receiving the virgin and her train in Rome. It is a picture full of color and animation. Banners stream in the air, the rich vestments of the ecclesiastics glisten in the sunshine, the Castle of St. Angelo rises su- perbly in the background. This is the painting beloved by Gautier, who never could make up his mind whether he most deeply admired the princess with her adorable naivete, her air of angelic coquetry, or the young prince, proud, charming, fiery, and seductive. Carpaccio was not alone in his ardor for Saint Ursula, nor was Italy the only land that strove to do her honor. Tourists who are happy enough to go to Bruges, and wise enough to stay there instead of departing post-haste to the good food and pretty shops of Brussels, find their reward in strolling day after day to the Hospital of St. 6 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES John, and looking again and again and yet again at Memling's masterpiece, La Chasse de Sainte Ursule. There it stands, the most exquisite toy (if one may without irreverence call a reliquary a toy) in the world. Every inch of the miniature Gothic chapel is covered with rich and lovely work. On its sides are painted six scenes from the virgin martyr's story. She goes with her maidens to Cologne, to Basle, to Rome, where the Pope awaits her, and where the British neo- phytes are baptized. She returns to Cologne, and the last panel shows her passively awaiting death at the hands of a young Hun who bends his bow with cautious deliberation. On one medallion we see the apotheosis of the saint, and on the other she shelters under her cloak the young girls whose blessed patroness she has become. To those who have fallen deeply in love with this perfect example of Flemish art the Chasse becomes a possession and a memory. To see it one day is to desire inordinately to see it the next; to bid it farewell is to carry away its image in our hearts, and to think of it with secret pleasure at strange hours and in unlovely places. No other masters have done so well by Saint Ursula as have Carpaccio and Memling; but Palma Vecchio painted her, and so did Cima da SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 7 Conegliano, and Lorenzo di Credi, and Simoni di Martini. She stands as an altarpiece in the Cathedral of Cologne, and she adorns most exquisitely the famous Hours of Anne of Brit- tany. Two old and charming pictures in the Hotel de Cluny tell the tale of her wanderings and of her martyrdom. A faded canvas in the museum of Seville represents her receiving with apathetic unconcern the stroke of a Hunnish swordsman, while the foreground is strewn with the neatly severed and bloodless heads of her companions. There was even a German painter whose name has been forgotten, but who was long known as the "Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula." Eighteen pictures illustrating her story came from his hand, and enriched the Church of St. Severin in Cologne. In St. Ursula's Church there is a recumbent figure of the virgin martyr, beautifully carved in ala- baster, with a dove nestling at her feet; and also a series of small paintings which tell with an ingenious wealth of anachronisms the history of her high adventure. These paintings have been admirably reproduced, and were printed in color with an accompanying text in London, 1869. Poets have not been unmindful of Saint Ur- 8 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES sula, though she has never been to them the inspiration that she has been to painters. There is a metrical version of her legend, written in the latter half of the Fifteenth Century by Ed- mund Hatfield, a monk of Rochester. It is dedi- cated to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry the Seventh, and was one of the earliest works issued from the press of Wynkyn de Worde. Hatfield, like a good Englishman, claims all the personages of the story as British born. Theonotus he spells the name Dyonothus is in his poem a Christian king of Cornwall, and Conon is the son of Agrippinus, a pagan king of the Picts. Perhaps eleven thousand virgins seemed to him an incredible number for the Cornish coast to yield, for he urbanely explains that many of these Christian maids were in reality pagan matrons of irreproachable virtue who joined the expedition because of Ursula's great renown, and who were duly baptized in Rome. He gives the names of some of these ladies, and is loud in his praise of all. Hatfield's narrative follows in leisurely fashion the familiar episodes of the story down to the massacre at Cologne. Ursula is the last to die, having scornfully rejected the advances of the Hunnish leader who seeks her hand: SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 9 This virtuous virgin abhorred his flesshely proffre, In hym rebukynge with wordes mylde and sage; The seed of Sathan her sappience might not suffre, But grenned for woo with rancour he began to rage. He drewe an arrowe his anger to assuage, And perced the prudent prymerose thrughe ye brayne, Commendynge her soule to Cryste with all courage; Thus were these sayntes dysperpled, spoyled and slayne. Heaven forbid that I should seek to rob a saint of one of the cardinal virtues; but "prudent prymerose" seems an ill-fitting epithet for Ur- sula. She was certainly prudent to refuse to marry the Hun; but she would have been more prudent still to have kept out of his way. Hers was the splendid spirit of enthusiasm, the cour- age, the confidence, the persuasive power which bends the will of man, wins the service of angels, and meets death with intrepidity. There is a sombre old French song which asks the prayers of Saint Ursula for innocent girls before whom life lies darkly, as well as for the souls of the foul heathen who slew her in a cruel and alien land. Here and there we find her name in snatches of verse; and she has a place in the supremely modern poem of Remy de Gourmont, "Les Saintes de Paradis," with its rapturous imagery and its eminently non-liturgical invo- cations: io MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Agatha, stone and iron, Agatha, gold and silver, Saint Agatha put fire in our blood. Jeanne who resembles a wrathful angel, Jeanne d'Arc put anger in our hearts. Ursula carried away on the wings of a white bird, Saint Ursula take our souls to the snows. Nowhere have I been able to discover where De Gourmont found his white bird. A dove, symbol of innocence, occasionally accompanies Saint Ursula; but no dove could carry her far away. Her only emblem is the arrow which slew her, and which was for her the key of Paradise. There is, however, a very old German legend which says that one of the eleven thousand vir- gins, "a holy maiden named Kovdula," escaped the slaughter; and, fleeing to the shores of the Rhine, beheld in a vision the souls of her com- panions, "a flock of doves, beating with their white wings against the golden gates of Heaven." Once established in the popular and pious mind as patroness of young girls, the cult of Saint Ursula spread rapidly over Europe. The Sixteenth Century saw it at its height; and when a well-born and far-seeing lady of Lombardy conceived the design of founding a religious or- der for the education of little maids, it was but natural that she should place it under the blessed SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 11 martyr's protection. Angela de Merici, subse- quently canonized as Saint Angela, was born in Desenzano, a tiny town on Lake Garda. Early orphaned, and adopted by a wealthy uncle, she was generously educated and wisely counseled. There was not a great deal to be taught four hundred years ago (quality rather than quantity set the standard) ; but it is to the credit of An- gela's imagination, no less than to the credit of her intelligence, that she proposed to teach girls in the systematic and orderly fashion com- mon to the monastic schools for boys. If this instruction was to be more than a brief and per- ishable experiment, it must be entrusted to an order of nuns who would carry on to other gen- erations the principles of their foundress. In her efforts to bridge the gap between the scholar- ship of the few and the contented ignorance of the many, this devout feminist appears very mod- ern. It would almost seem as though the cher- ished idol of our day, literacy, had appealed to her robust intelligence. There were difficulties to be encountered and overcome. Lombardy evinced no zeal for the education of its daughters, and the Church was wisely reluctant to recognize new religious or- ders. They sprang up like nettles, and would have 12 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES choked her path if she had not weeded well. Angela strove for seventeen years to carry out her purpose, and the eighteenth year saw the little school established at Brescia, under the care of twelve women who received ecclesiastical sanction and were permitted to wear a habit, but who were never recognized as nuns. It was not until 1572, years after the death of their foun- dress, that the Ursulines received, through the patronage of Saint Charles Borromeo, the status of a monastic order. The Cardinal Arch- bishop of Milan, at all times as acute as he was holy, desired their presence in his city "to direct schools for little girls." He therefore obtained from Pope Gregory the Thirteenth a decree authorizing them to live in community, to take perpetual vows, and to create new founda- tions. The desire of Angela de Merici's heart was realized after that heart had been stilled, and the survival of her life's work was assured. It is the lamentable habit of hagiographers to exclude from their narratives any circumstance which might possibly link them with life, to deny to the subjects of their pious memoirs any characteristic which savors too strongly of humanity. In their desire to be edifying they cease to be convincing. That the saint was pri- SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 13 marily a man or a woman with habits, and idio- syncrasies, and purposes, and prejudices, is a truth which they begin by ignoring as far as possible, and end by forgetting altogether. What they present for our consideration is a shining assortment of virtues, but not a fellow creature recognizable as such at any point of contact. Now the foundress of the Ursulines was a very holy woman; but she was also a pioneer. She es- sayed to do something that had not been done before, which proves her to have been moved, like Saint Ursula, by the spirit of adventure. Saint Charles Borromeo, being himself en route for canonization, honored no doubt her holiness; but what he wanted was schools for girl children, schools which should be intelligently conducted, and have the quality of permanence. That he thought well of the system of instruction which Angela had carefully outlined is shown by his counseling the nuns whom he established at Milan to adhere to it as closely as possible: "Follow the footsteps of your sisters in Brescia," he said. "There did your venerable mother plant the tree which has borne good fruit." He also ventured to assert that convent schools would spread over all the Christian world: a prophecy which has been amply fulfilled. i 4 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES If textbooks were few and lessons were simple in the Sixteenth Century, the Brescian rules laid down for the guidance of teachers were models of common sense. The habit adopted by the community must be plain but of good tex- ture so that it need not be often renewed. The members were permitted to walk the streets, but forbidden to loiter by the way. They must keep the fast days of the Church, but practise no additional austerities without the permission of director aad superior. They must hear Mass and pray, but not linger in church when there is work to be done outside. They must unite the self-respect which they owe to themselves with the civility which they owe to their neighbors, and the patient kindness which is due to chil- dren. When given an order, or asked a favor, they must comply with a good grace, doing a thing as if they liked to do it. The Ursulines were not general-utility nuns. Their purpose was to teach, and they were trained for no other work. But four years after they had been established in Milan there came to the doomed city the most terrible visitation of the plague that Italy had ever known. The part played by the cardinal archbishop in those awful days is now a page of history; but his SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 15 humble adjutants in the field have been less highly honored. All we know is that when those days were past, the survivors in the Ursuline convent, few in numbers, haggard, spent, and sad, received from Pope Gregory a blessing, and a word of commendation for their valorous services. In 1596 the order was established in France by Francoise de Bermond, canonized later by Pius the Seventh. She appears to have been a capable and humorous woman, whose recorded maxims have a trenchant quality suggestive of that model of all nuns, Saint Theresa. The great Carmelite, who detested wordy arguments about trifles, would have relished Francoise' s counsel to her novices: "If you have any opinion on a subject under discussion, state it, give your rea- sons clearly and modestly, and then stop!" Advice which, if followed, must have made the convent recreation hour a pleasurable experi- ence. It is said that when the Ursulines came under the favorable notice of Pope Paul the Third, and he bestowed on them his formal approbation, he observed to Saint Ignatius Loyola, "I am giving you sisters." The Jesuits have always been well affected to the order, a circumstance 16 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES which accounts for the summons to Quebec in 1639. Pere Coton, the Jesuit confessor of Henry the Fourth, was a firm friend. The Queen, Marie de Medicis, frequently visited the famous con- vent in Paris, founded by Mme. de Sainte Beuve; and there the little Dauphin was brought to re- cite his catechism to the nuns, and to play at ball in the spacious gardens. This was the first house to be strictly cloistered. The enclosure was effected with solemn ceremonies on the 25th of September, 1612. Cardinal de Retz, Archbishop of Paris, locked the convent door, and gave the key to the superior, while the imprisoned nuns joyously intoned the Te Deum. There is no need to dwell upon the part which the teaching orders have played in France. For centuries French women have been what French convents have made them; and other nuns have assumed a more important role than the Ursu- lines in the training of these capable, understand- ing, and dominant wives and mothers, who sel- dom mistake the shadow for the substance, and who are content to bear the burden inseparable from ascendency. The noteworthy characteristic of Ursula's daughters is their valorous spirit. It carried them as far afield as it had carried the saint to the snows of Quebec, and to the winter SAINT URSULA AND THE URSULINES 17 roses of New Orleans. In the Reign of Terror it brought twenty-seven of them a goodly num- ber to the finality of the guillotine. They played true to form when the Revolution tested the courage of its antagonists. It is said that the populace of Avignon, where part of the twenty- seven met their deaths, evinced a not unnatural irritation at the alacrity with which these "pi- ous hypocrites" prepared to die; and of those who were guillotined at Valenciennes it was re- marked: "They did not walk to the scaffold, they flew." A solitary nun, Angela Lepont, es- caped for some unknown reason the fate of her companions. She lost her chance to suffer for Church and King; but she survived to reestab- lish the community at Valenciennes, and to see little schoolgirls coming and going as sedately as though no whirlwind had swept France clean of all that was best and worst. Perhaps, when the work of reconstruction was heavy on her hands, and ineffaceable memories saddened her heart, she dreamed, like the maid Kovdula, of her happier companions winging their flight to Heaven : The old road to Paradise is a crowded way. Chapter II MARIE GUYARD THE city of Tours was, at the close of the Six- teenth Century, a singularly felicitous birth- place. Lying in the noble curve of the Loire, with a buried Roman town beneath its gray walls, and the mild skies of Touraine overhead, it was at once stirring and sedate. Enriched by the Church for seven hundred years, and by mer- chants and craftsmen for two hundred years, it lacked neither the activities of wealth nor the traditions of ecclesiastical culture. The Tour de THorloge and the Tour Charlemagne (built over the tomb of his wife, Luitgarde) defended its whole area. The great abbey church of St. Martin had survived age and ill-usage. The shrine of the saint, despoiled but not desecrated, was visited by pious pilgrims. The Cathedral of St. Gatianus, begun in 1170, had been completed for fifty years a charming if not a lordly church, with good stained glass and a beautiful choir. Artists and architects, goldsmiths, glass workers, and silk weavers thronged to Tours, bringing with them the luxuries and amenities of life. 18 MARIE GUYARD 19 The pride of the city centered in the painter, Jean Fouquet, and in the sculptor, Michel Co- lomb, who made the lovely effigies of the royal children, offspring of Charles the Eighth and Anne of Brittany, and placed at their heads and feet small devout angels, the most adorable little guardians in the world. In this ancient and historic city, under these favoring skies, Marie Guyard was born on the 1 8th of October, 1599. Her father, Florent Guy- ard, was a silk merchant of plain extraction; her mother, a serene and intelligent woman, was a descendant of the illustrious house of Barbon de la Bourdaisiere. They appear to have en- joyed that modest competency to which French thrift has always given dignity and ease. Of Marie's childhood little is recorded save that she loved fanciful and imaginative play (chil- dren's imaginations were not then starved out by a surfeit of mechanical toys), and that she was a pitiful little girl to beggars, of whom there have been plenty in Tours since the days of Saint Martin. Pere Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, the earli- est and best of Marie Guyard's biographers, pref- aces his work with a lengthy introduction in which he admits that his task has been a diffi- 20 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES cult one because the great Ursuline was con- fessedly a mystic, and mysticism was to the Eighteenth Century (Charlevoix's volume was published in 1724) a delusion and a snare. We are more receptive to-day because more familiar with scholastic philosophy which offers an avenue of approach. William Penn was a mystic, and so was Jeanne d'Arc, and Saint Catherine of Siena, and that capable woman, Saint Theresa. All experienced their first revelations at an early age. Penn was eleven when the celestial light flooded his chamber, and the celestial whisper stirred his soul. Catherine was six when she saw the vision of the Christ Child, clad in pontifical vestments and with a shining mitre on his head, which is the way a baby girl, familiar with Italian churches, would naturally conceive of Him. Marie Guyard was seven when the image of the Re- deemer smiled at her from the opening heavens. Jeanne d'Arc was thirteen when the impelling voices first summoned her to action. These spirit- ual manifestations made Jeanne a soldier, and Penn a pacifist, and Catherine a sublimated poli- tician, and Marie a pioneer. So it is that les dmes bien nees correspond unerringly with grace, and fulfill their destinies. Never too easily, indeed. When Marie Guy- MARIE GUYARD 21 ard was fourteen she greatly desired to enter the Convent of St. Benoit, at Beaumont, where Mme. de la Bourdaisiere, a relative of her moth- er, was superior. Her youth made this impos- sible; and three years later her parents received an eligible offer for her hand, which they promptly accepted, communicating the circum- stance to their daughter in the decisive fashion common to that day. The suitor was M. Martin, a wealthy manufacturer of silk. He probably had all Frenchmen do have half-a-dozen Christian names; but not one of them is mentioned in the few casual paragraphs vouchsafed him by Ma- rie's biographers. All that we are told is that she married him when she was seventeen, and that "an air of enjoyment," inseparable from her years, made her seem a happy bride. She was certainly a busy wife. Martin, as was then the custom, housed and fed his prin- cipal employees. Marie's hands were full of work, her mind was full of care. Much that she needed to know in later years as the head of a convent and a school, she learned in her hus- band's establishment. Charlevoix says that the artisans showed her "a filial tenderness and con- fidence" which is a curious way of phrasing their affection, in view of her extreme youth. The 22 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES domestic servants were many, and she ruled them with good-humored vigilance. The model wife of Proverbs could not well have surpassed her in diligence and discretion. Her spouse seems to have been affectionately disposed, and fully alive to her merits. The birth of a son so filled his heart with content that there was nothing left for him but to die, which he accordingly did, after two years of married life. It is impossible not to feel a certain sym- pathy for M. Martin. He was admittedly a kind husband, and an eminently respectable man. He must have had aims, and purposes, and high hopes of what life might bring him. At the very least he had his own individuality, his own place in this world and in the next. Yet he is always alluded to as a mere episode in his wife's history, and, from the point of view of her biographers, a stumbling-block in her career. Abbe Casgrain even hints at some deep-rooted sorrow in her heart, inseparable from her married life. If this sorrow existed, the cause is not far to seek. It was, after all, not the life she had desired; and while it was good of its kind, it was not su- premely good for her. Such truths are never plainly spoken in pious narratives; but we always discern a sense of relief when superfluous hus- MARIE GUYARD 23 bands and wives are removed from the scene of action. Be this as it may, Marie Guyard Martin was a widow at nineteen, in good repute, comely to look upon, and with as many suitors as Penel- ope. Her mother-in-law, to whom had fallen the direction of the business, greatly desired her capable assistance; but in a few months old Mme. Martin followed her son to the grave, and Marie was left free from all ties save that of motherhood. For some reason, never sufficiently explained, she who should have been rich was poor. There are vague allusions to a lawsuit which she appears to have lost; but Charlevoix and Casgrain are so taken up with telling us how nobly she bore reverses that they have little to say as to why she had reverses to bear. They are seemingly acquainted with every sentiment of her soul, every pious thought and word and prayer; but they fail to make clear to us why the widow and son of a well-to-do manufacturer should have been despoiled of their inheritance. She was not too poor to lack applicants for her hand, and those who thought they had her welfare most at heart advocated a second mar- riage as a natural and seemly solution of her life's problems. But Marie no longer owed obe- 24 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES dience to anyone. She had attained freedom, and the privilege of deciding for herself what she had better do. What she wanted to do was only too clear to her understanding. The desire of her womanhood, like the desire of her childhood, was to enter a convent. Her spiritual nature sought this outlet for its emotions; her human nature was deeply attuned to solitude, silence, and an orderly mode of existence, a soothing and sys- tematic routine. But there was her baby boy. Marie's wisdom was never more manifest than in the two de- cisions she made at this crucial period, and from which she never swerved. While her son was yet a child he needed above all things a mother's care, and her plain duty was to keep him by her side, and train him as best she could. After he was twelve, he would need the guardian- ship of men. She would then relax her hold, and commit his education to a religious order, the Jesuits, or the Benedictines. The Seventeenth Century, unlike the Twentieth, did not regard a youth as the personal property of his mother. That he should, or could, be taught by women was foreign to their way of thought. They had a well-grounded conviction that only men could fit a boy for manhood. MARIE GUYARD 25 An older sister of Marie's, Anne Guyard, had also married a wealthy citizen of Tours, and he opened his doors to his sister-in-law, being a far- sighted man who knew the advantage of having under his roof such a supremely capable young woman. He was an officer in the artillery, charged with the transporting of military supplies from one province to another. His income was ample, his household large, his duties called him re- peatedly from home. Marie began by being his housekeeper, and ended by taking his multitu- dinous affairs under her personal supervision. His kitchen, his stables, his office she man- aged them all; yet found time for hours of prayer, and for the importunities of the poor. Her son, who has written a few intimate recollections of his mother at this period of her life, tells us three things that are striking and illustrative. The first is that she was never flustered, and consequently never annoyed, by inconsequent demands upon her attention. The second, that she dearly loved to be alone when such an indulgence was pos- sible. The third, that she was unvaryingly gentle and consolatory in her attentions to the poor: "She approached them with respect as living representatives of Christ." This is a wonderful sentence. The shocking thing about poverty is 26 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the contempt it engenders in the hearts of the rich. The more active and efficient their meas- ures of relief, the deeper is this unconscious or half-conscious scorn, which is accepted un- protestingly by the objects of their charity; but which must, nevertheless, be the most unpalat- able drop in their cup of bitterness. Only a pro- foundly spiritual nature can daily contemplate their natural incapacity, their imperfect equip- ment, and their many mischances, yet bear al- ways in mind one brief decisive sentence of Holy Writ: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." So the years slipped by over Marie's head. They were not happy years. If she could not find happiness in superintending her own household, how should she expect to find it in superintend- ing her brother-in-law's ? Yet her life held many consolations. She was busy and efficient. She was devout and composed. Her son grew to vigorous boyhood by her side. Her surroundings were beautiful. Citizens of Tours grew familiar with the sedate figure of the young widow as she walked the pleasant streets, or knelt in the vast old Church of St. Julian, or held up the little Claude to see the marble children of Colomb, or MARIE GUYARD 27 strolled through the cloisters of the Petit St. Martin, now so pitifully wrecked, but then com- plete and lovely. Outside the city's gates stood the noble and partly preserved Abbey of Mar- moutier. There Saint Gatianus and Saint Mar- tin, who between them Christianized Tours, retired from time to time to live like hermits in rocky caves (Marie must have sincerely en- vied them this blessed privilege); there Charles Martel defeated the Saracens in 720; and there the seven sleepers, like those of Ephesus, lay awaiting the hour which should summon them to give testimony of their faith. When Marie was thirty and her son was twelve she felt herself free to fulfill her heart's desire and enter a convent. As the day of her deliver- ance drew near, this desire augmented in in- tensity. She had always loved solitude, and she had spent her adult years in close and compli- cated contact with her fellow creatures. She had always coveted the serenity of obedience, and it had been her task to control and direct the unruly: Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound, But for peace her soul was yearning- 28 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES and now at last it stood close at her doors- the peace that passeth all understanding. Her choice of an order was determined by circumstance. The Ursulines had recently established themselves in Tours, and she had come under the notice of their superior, Mere Francoise de Saint Bernard. This highly intelligent nun offered to receive her with- out a dower, being as well aware as Saint The- resa that, while a wealthy novice is always a welcome addition to a convent, a woman of char- acter, capacity, and holiness is a veritable god- send. It was natural that Marie's sister and brother- in-law should have been unwilling to lose her services; and it was equally natural that as they could not well plead their own convenience as a sufficient reason for keeping her in the world, they should have advanced the stronger argu- ment of her duty to her son. This was a matter which she had well considered, and of which she had never lost sight in the years of her widow- hood. She had striven always to wean the child from a too dependent affection for her. The grave gentleness of her manner toward him was un- broken by words or acts of tenderness. She never kissed or fondled him, or encouraged him to MARIE GUYARD 29 offer her any childish caress. There was un- doubted affection on her part and on his; but it was denied a natural outlet, and this denial was meant to lessen the pain of an approaching separation. Marie watched over her son with wise solicitude, and he reposed in her the implicit confidence which a child gives to a parent whom he has never detected in deception or injustice. It is hard for us to-day to regard with sym- pathy and understanding a situation which was in accord with its own time and place. Every man disapproves of what he does not do, and every generation disapproves of preceding gen- erations for much the same reason. Dr. Johnson expressed this point of view with admirable pre- cision when he said of Christians outside the English Establishment: "In everything in which they differ from us, they are wrong." The over- whelming sentimentalism of our day, the soft- ness of our moral fibre, are at variance with what Baron von Hugel calls the "astringency of re- ligion": a quality which dominated the years of persecution and the years of contest, which sac- rificed much that was amiable in personal con- tacts, but which made for fearlessness and fortitude. "I hold," wrote Von Hugel, "this 30 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES astringent emotion, this asceticism, this apparent hardness, this combat and concentration, to be, in the right place and proportion, an absolutely essential constituent of the Christian outlook. Where this element is not, there is not authentic Christianity, but some sentimental humanitari- anism, or other weakening inadequacy." Weakening inadequacy formed no part of Marie Guyard's mental or spiritual make-up. She was sure that her call to a cloistered life came from God. That it fitted her own disposi- tion and desires was not, in her eyes, a reason for renouncing it. She considered sensibly that she was more likely to be of service in a com- munity if she were happy under its rule. Her son appears to have been a perfectly normal boy. Not a single instance of precocious piety on his part has been told us, so we may be sure that there was none to tell. On the other hand, the ad- venturous spirit common to boyhood drew him now and then into trouble. On one occasion he left his uncle's house to walk to Paris, of whose whereabouts he knew nothing, but of whose wonders he had heard much. Happily, three days 5 wandering carried him no farther than to Blois, where a friend of the family found him, hungry, tired, and temporarily convinced that MARIE GUYARD 31 home and school and bed and dinner were bet- ter for little boys than freedom and the un- friendly world. To this lad, when he was twelve, Marie com- municated her resolve to enter the convent of the Ursulines, and gravely asked him to author- ize her withdrawal from the world. The boy, called on for the first time to give permission where he had always sought it, put several anx- ious questions. Was she going far away? Would he never see her again ? Being told that she would remain in Tours, and that he might see her daily, he said with a gravity equal to her own: "Then you have my consent." In his account of this singular interview, Dom Claude Martin, who had become a Benedictine monk, comments upon his mother's self-repression. " It seemed the time and the place," he writes simply, "for some mark of affection. But even then she did not offer to kiss me. She blessed me, and made the sign of the cross on my forehead, and that was all." On the 25th of January, 1631, Marie Guyard entered the Ursuline convent in Tours. It was the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul. Her father and mother, her sisters, her brother-in- law (quiescent but unreconciled), and her son accompanied her to the door. Within, Mere 32 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Francoise stood waiting to receive her into the novitiate. The goal, so long desired, was won at last. Behind her the past lay like a troubled dream. Before her the future, wilder than any dream, was veiled in comforting obscurity. Chapter HI THE CALL THE life of a novice who enters a convent at thirty-two is an incongruous one, which only tact and resolute endeavor can make normal. Marie, a widow, a mother, a woman of affairs and of wide experience, was singularly out of place amid the light-hearted, light-headed young girls who had yet to be instructed in all the duties of their profession. Wisely and humbly she did her best to render herself acceptable to them. When they talked, she was content to listen. When they advised her, she accepted and followed their counsel. In the words of Charle- voix, "she endeavored to hide from them her superior accomplishments, and was content if they did not find her insipid." Of her supreme happiness there is no shadow of doubt. Her nature fulfilled itself in this suave and regulated life, in the order and quiet, in the opportunities to obey, in the rapture of medita- tion and the profound peace of prayer. The con- vent seemed to her a veritable paradise, a heaven- sent refuge from the tormenting cares of the 33 34 MfcRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES world. She confesses that when she walked through the cloisters she seemed to tread on air, so light was her heart, so welcome were the pro- tecting walls. "When my eyes fell upon my re- ligious habit I would raise my hand and gently touch my veil, to make sure that I really and truly possessed the joy of living in the house of God, and that I belonged to Him." Like all mystics she was sometimes happy in prayer, and sometimes unduly sad; but from first to last she never doubted the felicity of a cloistered life. She summed up the situation in a few bliss-laden words: "Ah, que c'esf un grand repos a une ame religieuse! " One definite advantage accrued to this devout soul from monastic discipline: it put an end to her excessive asceticism. So long as she was free, Marie Guyard had yielded more and more to that passion for self-denial, for self-inflicted hard- ships, which may lead to sanctity or to madness. She wore a hair shirt, she slept on boards, she fasted with cruel rigor. Now such acts of morti- fication were forbidden unless practised in com- mon with her companions, and according to rule. Mere Francoise de Saint Bernard explained to the new novice that she had a duty to her neighbor as well as to God. The Ursulines were THE CALL 35 not a meditative order, they taught, and teach- ing required bodily health and a nicely pre- served mental balance. So far, Marie's youth and vigor had carried her triumphantly through the sufferings she inflicted upon herself as well as through the annoyances inflicted upon her by others; but now youth had fled. Thirty-two was an age which called for prudence and the con- servation of force. Moreover, as the superior well knew, asceticism is infectious. A convent of nuns outdoing one another in penitential ex- ercises would be as intractable and inadequate as a convent of nuns shirking the prescribed fasts and vigils. The cardinal virtue of temperance, inherited by Christianity from paganism, is es- sential to communal well-being. When, after a year's novitiate, Marie was permitted to take her vows, to become a full- fledged nun, and to receive her official title, Mere Marie de ITncarnation, she was at once ap- pointed mistress of the novices among whom she had so recently lived. It was a post for which she was eminently well fitted. Order and system were inseparable from her being. A sympathetic understanding made her a wise and kind direc- tress. Her superior intelligence enabled her to teach. The young nuns regarded her with ad- 36 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES miration which might have mounted to unreason- ing enthusiasm had she been less aloof, less grave in manner, less direct in speech. She wrote for their benefit a series of instructions which were subsequently published under the title of L'Eco/e Sainte. They are couched in graceful and supple French, with a choice of words, deliberate or unconscious, which now and then convey a sud- den and flashing picture to the mind. Pere Char- levoix, who was himself a writer of uncommon animation, says of them: "The truths of reli- gion could not be defined with more clearness* precision and simplicity." As the quiet months lengthened into years the life of Mere Marie flowed on in an even current, and it seemed as though the French convent would witness the flowering and the fading of her powers. The murmur of the outside world came muffled to her ears, the agitations of the worldly served only to accentuate the unruffled calm of her systematized existence. The young Claude had been placed at the Jesuit school in Rennes. He seems to have inherited a fair share of his mother's intelligence, but very little of her sobriety. He was a good student, but a born rover. Just as he had wandered away from Tours as a child, so he wandered back to it as a boy, THE CALL 37 making his unsolicited appearance at his aunt's door, and trusting to her affection for a wel- come. As Rennes would have no more of him, he was sent, under the care of a very able priest, Pere de la Haye, to the school at Orleans. There he consented to remain, and there he plodded along the paths of learning until he had com- pleted his course of philosophy. Then came the summons which was to change Marie's placid life into one of adventure and hardship, which was to turn the secluded nun, known only to the little city of Tours, into a pioneer whose name is a familiar and cherished one in the land of her adoption, and in the an- nals of her order. The first clear and persuasive words were written by Pere Le Jeune, the su- perior of the Jesuit missions in New France, and by far the liveliest chronicler their ranks could boast. Of all the letters and reports published in those remarkable records, the Jesuit Relations, none can rival his in vicacity and charm. He had lived a hard and half-savage life among the In- dians, and he had helped materially to build up the comparative civilization of Quebec. Now, having seen the completion of the first hospital, he asked for a school and orphanage. The boys were taught by the priests; but there was no 38 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES one to instruct the little French girls, or Chris- tianize the little Indians. Money was needed for this purpose, money and nuns. France had both in plenty. What would she spare to her col- ony? His words met with an immediate response. There was living then in Alencon a young widow, wealthy, well-born, generous, and devout, whose life had been vastly different from Marie Guyard's, and whose temperament contrasted sharply with the disciplined restraint of the Ur- suline. Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny was the only child of the Seigneur de Vaubougon, a gentleman whose fortune equalled his birth, and whose virtues so Abbe Casgrain assures us surpassed both. Virtuous he no doubt was; but as a father he seems to have been a happy com- bination of Squire Western and the choleric Lord Capulet. The young Marie was brilliantly edu- cated, according to the standards of her day. Her biographers unite in saying that she desired all her life to become a nun. They seem to think that this assertion is necessary to justify her existence. But she never did become a nun, and there is no evidence that she ever wanted to. She seems to have coveted independence as keenly as Marie Guyard coveted subjection. THE CALL 39 It is true that when Mile, de Chauvigny was seventeen she went to make a religious retreat in a neighboring convent, this being a common practice among Catholic girls and women. It is true also that she went without her father's per- mission, being probably aware that he would not have given it, and seeking to escape a paren- tal rebuff. In this, however, she had reckoned without the parental temper. It took M. de Chauvigny but a few hours to follow his daugh- ter to the convent, pack her into the waiting carriage, and convey her swiftly home. The next morning he informed her that he had chosen for her husband a young man whom he deeply esteemed, Charles de Grivel de la Peltrie, a wealthy landowner, and a cadet of the noble house of Tounois. It was in every respect a de- sirable alliance, even for his only child and fu- ture heiress, and he trusted that she would be gratified by his choice. Marie begged, as was but natural, for a little time in which to make up her mind; or, if that implied too great a liberty on her part, for a little time in which to grow accustomed to her future husband; but her father would hear of no delay. There was, he considered, no surer way of growing accustomed to a man than by marry- 40 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES ing him. He met her arguments and entreaties by saying with Lord Capulet: Get thee to church o* Thursday! (or words to that effect) ; and within a few weeks of her unwise visit to the convent, his daughter was splendidly and very securely married. M. de la Peltrie, like the humbler M. Martin, proved to be an unexceptionable husband. Like M. Martin, he was happy in his married life. Like M. Martin, he discreetly died a few years after marriage, leaving the path clear for his wife's future activities. It was a trifle dangerous to wed a woman who had an appointed destiny. Mme. de la Peltrie's only child, a daughter, died in infancy. In her early widowhood she read Pere Le Jeune's appeal for a school, for nuns to con- duct it, and primarily for funds. Was there no generous lady who would do for the children of New France what the Duchesse d'Aiguillon had so nobly done for the sick and hurt? It seemed to her that here was work fitted to her hands. She was young, strong, well educated, wealthy in her own right, and the heiress of a still larger fortune. She was ardent, enthusiastic, and ad- venturous. What better could she do with her THE CALL 41 life than devote it to little Indians who needed all that she could give ? Again she reckoned without her father who was not, and who never meant to be, a negligible factor in his family. He wanted his daughter to marry again, to marry soon, and to marry well. He wanted grandchildren of his own, and he declined to accept as substitutes the little heathens of Quebec. In the clearest possible words he gave Mme. de la Peltrie to understand that she should never leave France with his per- mission, and that if she left without it, she would forfeit every penny of her inheritance. It was a serious dilemma. In the Seventeenth Century a French daughter, even a married daughter, did not lightly defy her parents. More- over, the estate of Vaubougon was essential to the perfection of Mme. de la Peltrie's plans. She understood the barriers in her way, and she took refuge in that age-old sanctuary of bullied women, deceit. The tale of this deceit is so curious, and the accounts of it are so confusing, that we can but follow the narratives as they are given, and accept the most probable solution. What we know is that there appeared on the scene at this juncture a certain M. Jean Louvigny de Bernieres, or, as the name is sometimes given, 42 MfcRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES M. Jean de Bernieres Louvigny, a man of posi- tion and influence who held the post of treas- urer at Caen. Charlevoix represents him as a suitor of Mme. de la Peltrie's, and one so ac- ceptable to her father that he assured his daugh- ter he would die if she did not consent to the marriage. "This declaration," says the vivacious biographer, "which could not be taken literally, made little impression upon her." Abbe Casgrain affirms that the young widow herself chose M. de Bernieres as an ally and accomplice, confid- ing to him her cherished plans, and asking him to go through the form of marriage with her, so that she could carry them out under the pro- tection of his name. This he manfully refused to do; and it was only after many arguments and repeated solicitations that he could be brought so far as to make a formal offer for her hand. The delight with which this offer was re- ceived by M. de Chauvigny filled the reluctant suitor with fresh agitation; and it was then re- solved that, as neither the gentleman nor the lady wanted to be married, they would merely pretend they had been, and so cozen the world at large if such a thing were possible and particularly the irascible Seigneur of Vaubougon. This is one version of the story. Most com- THE CALL 43 mentators take it for granted that M. de Ber- nieres and Mme. de la Peltrie were married as a matter of convenience, and with a mutual un- derstanding of the somewhat complicated situa- tion. What neither of them had foreseen was the sudden death of M. de Chauvigny, whom they had planned to circumvent, and who expired, poor old gentleman, happy in the belief that he had had his own way to the last. Neither had it occurred to them that Mme. de la Peltrie's rela- tives would bring suit against her as incapable of administering her estate, and ask that she should be restrained from excessive expenditure. The case was tried in Rouen, before the Parlement de Normandie, and decided in the defendant's fa- vor; the judges expressing their belief that money spent on the needy was as well bestowed as money hoarded for heirs. Now at last the road seemed clear. Mme. de la Peltrie was able and ready to finance the long-desired school and orphanage in Quebec. She went to Paris to consult the proper authori- ties, and there had the rare good fortune to meet that noblest and sweetest of saints, Vincent de Paul, and to confide to him her hopes and en- deavors. There were still minor obstacles in her way; but the lady possessed her full share of 44 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES that quality which in her father was called ob- stinacy, but which in her went by the kinder name of determination. Her efforts were admi- rably seconded by M. de Bernieres who had fol- lowed her to Paris. The choice of the Ursulines as a teaching order was mainly due to Pere Le Jeune. It only remained to select from many eager aspirants the nuns best fitted for such diffi- cult and dangerous work. All this time Mere Marie de ITncarnation ful- filled her round of duties in the convent of Tours. She knew (the sisterhood knew) that the Jesuits in Quebec had asked for nuns to teach. She knew, after the lapse of months, that efforts were being made to supply their need. And deep down in her secret heart she knew that this would be her ap- pointed field of labor. In dreams she saw the wild, wide wastes of snow, and heard the com- pelling summons that had no need to couch it- self in words. She never doubted the reality of this call, and she never tried to break the bonds which held her in her native town. She bent her will into accord with God's will. She strove to cleanse herself of any aspiration to go, save as an instrument in God's hands. It was only by complete detachment from desire that she could make sure of a correspondence with God's grace. THE CALL 45 In effect, the solidity of her merits threatened her with defeat. M. d'Eschaux, the Archbishop of Tours, had no desire to see his convent robbed of its ablest nuns for the enrichment of New France. He represented to Mme. de la Peltrie that she would do better to draw her recruits from the well-stocked house in Paris which could furnish all she required. But the Seigneur de Vaubougon's daughter knew her own mind, and had her own way. She had heard from Pere Poncet de la Riviere, who was preparing to sail for Quebec, of Mere Marie's acquirements, and she would accept no unworthy substitute. The convent of Tours was closed to the laity. She actually wheedled the archbishop, whom she was about to rob, into giving directions that she should be received as though she were a nun. In truth no abbess could have had a more im- pressive welcome. Conducted ceremoniously into the cloister chapel, she was given the episcopal prie-Dieu on which to kneel, while the nuns sang the Feni Creator and the Te Deum, and the con- vent bell pealed joyously. Afterwards she was presented to the superior, and was embraced by the choir sisters, every one of whom secretly hoped that she might be chosen to accompany the expedition. 46 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Two only went, Mere Marie, and a young nun, Marie de Saint Bernard, a vigorous and spirited girl who could be trusted to bear hard- ships lightly. Conceiving that she owed her good fortune to the intercession of Saint Joseph, she asked and obtained permission to change her name to Marie de Saint Joseph, thus slighting one saint to compliment another. Her father, M. de la Troche, Seigneur de Savonnieres et de Saint Germain, resolutely opposed her depar- ture. So, for that matter, did Mere Marie's family, with less excuse, she being of mature years and a nun of long standing. Nevertheless they remained faithful to the good old tradition upon which all family life is built opposition. They filled the air with their clamor, and vainly tried to persuade her son, then peacefully study- ing for the priesthood in Orleans, to add his pro- test to theirs. M. de la Troche was of an irresolute disposi- tion. When first informed that his daughter de- sired to go to Quebec, he refused to allow her to leave France. Then the solicitations of a pious Carmelite nun, a friend of his household, so wrought upon his feelings that he sent a letter of consent a letter couched in language of such parental tenderness that when it was read aloud THE CALL 47 in the Ursuline community, its hearers, so we are told, melted into happy tears. It was too soon for rejoicing. Members of M. de la Troche's noble family, including the Bishop of La Ro- chelle, represented to him that he did wrong in permitting his young daughter to cross the sea to a savage land where she would probably en- counter women of evil lives. This uncalled-for suggestion (Quebec was a settlement of almost monastic propriety) so distressed the tractable old gentleman that he despatched a trusty mes- senger to Paris the travelers had gotten that far on their journey with instructions to con- duct Mere Saint Joseph back to Tours without fail and without delay. She did not go. Know- ing her parent, she sent instead a letter so full of submission, of pleading, and of reassurance, that once more he yielded his consent to her de- parture. Before he had time to change his mind again, she was on the ocean, and recall was im- possible. In Paris the nuns were lodged in the Ursuline convent of the Faubourg St.- Jacques. The in- defatigable M. de Bernieres had arranged every detail of their short journey, and attended to every need. Mere Marie pronounces him in one of her letters to be "un homme raoissant" a 48 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES phrase of unusual warmth which is rapidly explained away by her heart-felt admiration for the capacity with which he conducted their af- fairs. Visitors of distinction thronged to see them. The Duchesse d'Aguillon, whose generosity had equipped Quebec with its Hotel Dieu, and that very noble lady, the Comtesse de Brienne, car- ried them to St. Germain, where the Queen, Anne of Austria, desired their presence. She re- ceived them honorably, and with the liveliest curiosity, asking many questions about the voy- age which they had not yet taken, about New France which they had never seen, and about the Indians concerning whom they knew as little as she did. A third nun was added to the party in Paris. Also a young girl named Charlotte Barre, who was later received into the novitiate as Mere Catherine de Saint Ignace. There were the usual difficulties in securing a sailing from Dieppe. Vessels were few, freightage was heavy, accom- modations were limited. Mme. de la Peltrie, impatient as ever of delay, proposed to charter a boat of her own. It was a small boat, and M. de Bernieres considered that the voyage would be sufficiently uncomfortable on a bigger one. He counseled patience. The new nun was with- THE CALL 49 drawn, owing to the determined opposition of her family, and her place was filled by another whose relatives were either more compliant or less in- fluential. M. de Bernieres exerted himself in- cessantly on behalf of his charges. Mere Marie, more and more alive to his perfection, called him their guardian angel, and deplored the ne- cessity of parting from so kind and useful a friend. It was proposed that he also should travel to Quebec, but this he firmly declined. Even a guardian angel may conceivably weary of his task. There sailed then from Dieppe on the 4th of May, 1639, the three Ursulines, Mme. de la Peltrie and her young companion, three nursing nuns bound for the newly erected hospital in Quebec, and three Jesuit priests, Pere Poncet de la Riviere, Pere Chaumont, and Pere Barthe- lemy Vimont, who had been made superior of the Canadian missions. The day was sparklingly clear. The sea lay blue and beautiful beneath a cloud-flecked sky. A fresh wind filled the sails. The voyagers looked their last upon the pleas- ant land of France which they were leaving forever. M. de Bernieres went quietly back to his estate at Alencon. A great calm filled his soul. Chapter IV CHAMPLAIN THE Quebec for which Mere Marie was bound in 1639 was vastly different from the Quebec which was to receive Pere Marquette in 1666. Twenty-seven years sufficed to change the rude settlement into a civilized town, where life was safe, where comfort was the rule, and where pleasures were not altogether unknown. That was the Quebec to which the great Frontenac brought security and stability. Trade flourished, order reigned, and the officers of the garrison amused themselves and their friends by play- ing Corneille, like the talented and spirited young men they no doubt were. The Quebec of 1639 was the struggling colony which a greater man than Frontenac, Samuel de Champlain, had founded, nourished, lost, recovered, and loved until his dying day. Its story is the story of wild adventure, sober effort, and sustained gallantry. No page in history can better show the enduring quality of French courage, which failure makes persistent, and disaster quickens into flame. 5 CHAMPLAIN 51 What magnet drew Jacques Cartier three times over the sea before the fourth voyage (which is the first of which we have any record) brought him to the coast of Newfoundland, and the fifth to the mouth of the St. Lawrence ? He was then a man over forty, the son and grand- son of mariners. From his birthplace, St.-Malo, a proud city "virgin of English," he had seen countless ships sail into the sunset. The star of his destiny burned in the northern sky. He raised the first cross on the shore of Gaspe Bay, sang the first Vexilla Regis, and proffered the first trade to the natives of that inhospitable shore. He entered the St. Lawrence, wintered in Quebec (then an Indian village named Stadacoma), sailed up the river as far as the site of Montreal, and heard from the savages of inland seas, "where a man might travel on the face of the waters for many moons in the same direction." This much knowledge was bought at a heavy price. Cartier lost so many men from cold and scurvy that he abandoned one of his ships, the timbers of which were uncovered from a mud- bank three hundred years later. Because he had no gold or copper to take back to France, he re- solved in an evil hour to capture a few Indians, more especially Donnacoma, the headman of 52 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the village, and carry them home as living wit- nesses of his words. It was a black deed, all too easily accom- plished, and bringing nothing but trouble in its wake. Life in France was as hard on the savages as life in Canada had been hard on the French. All save one little girl sickened and died; and when, five years later, Cartier returned to Stad- acoma, he found the once friendly Indians sullen and hostile. This last expedition of 1541 had been sponsored by the Sieur de Roberval, a gentleman of Picardy, who aspired to plant a colony on the banks of the St. Charles. The site was well chosen, but the men were bad colonists. Dissatisfied from the start, they proved them- selves unequal to the hardships of their life, and unfitted for the heroic task of self-dependence. One thought possessed them, a desire to return to France; and all who lived long enough did so. This was Carrier's last voyage. He found no backer for another, and he spent his remain- ing years pleasantly enough in writing an ac- count of his adventures. The narrative made good reading, but was not especially informative. To this intrepid sailor an Indian was simply an Indian. His language, save for a list of useful words, was necessarily unknown. His tribe and CHAMPLAIN 53 his traditions were matters of indifference. The maps, which undoubtedly accompanied the man- uscript, have been lost. Cartier died in 1557. His statue stands in the Place de la Hollande, St.-Malo; and in the Hotel de Ville there hangs an apocryphal portrait which looks as its painter conceived a master mariner ought to look strong, bold, self-assured, and arrogant. The latter half of the Sixteenth Century saw a lull in French schemes of colonization. Catho- lics and Huguenots were so hard at work fight- ing over their respective creeds that exhausted France had neither time nor money to spare to the New World. But the memory of Carrier's exploits never faded from his countrymen's minds, and the spirit of adventure which he had helped to fire embodied itself fifty years later in a figure of heroic proportions, one of the great pioneers of civilization, and a maker of history in the best sense of the word. Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 in the little port of Brouage, now surrounded by salt marshes. Sprung from a hardy and a roving line, he served as a soldier in the war of the League, and as a sailor on the Spanish Main. He had already attained the rank of royal geog- rapher when he headed his first expedition to 54 MfeRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Canada in 1603. This expedition was financed by the Sieur de Chastes, a gentleman of the court, and the commandant at Dieppe. Unfortunately he died while his company was exploring the St. Lawrence, and the trade monopoly he had en- joyed was transferred to the Sieur de Monts, a Huguenot nobleman and the governor of Pons. The new commissioner was bound to transport to Canada one hundred colonists every year. Merchants of St.-Malo, Honfleur, Rouen, and Rochelle were keen to join in the adventure; Champlain, who had returned to France, was keener still to head it. Two boatloads of artisans and agriculturists were fitted out, with a wise old pilot, Pontgrave, to look after their safety, and a Paris lawyer, Marc Lescarbot, to tell the tale of their adventures. The first settlement on an island in Passama- quoddy Bay, which they named St. Croix, failed signally for lack of fresh water and proper food. De Monts returned to France in the autumn of 1605 for supplies; and his companions made a home for themselves amid the snows of Acadia. Here, according to Lescarbot, they led a hard, but by no means disagreeable, life. Their annal- ist was that rara avis in those days, a philosopher as tolerant as Montaigne. Convinced that bigotry CHAMPLAIN 55 was the most futile of human qualities, and that nothing would make men who thought at all think alike, he used to tell with glee how Charles the Fifth had learned tolerance from clock mak- ing. The emperor became an expert craftsman during the years of his retirement in the Mon- astery of St. Yuste; yet, in spite of his pro- ficiency, his clocks never would strike in unison; and he fell to asking himself whether it were possible to force men's minds into accord, when he failed to accomplish this perfect precision with wheels and springs over which he had ap- parent control. From Lescarbot we learn how Champlain, a leader of men as well as a maker of history, kept his party in good health and spirits during the long winter months. He organized his famous Ordre de Bon Temps, which regulated their days, smoothed over difficulties, saw to it that they were "cleanly and merry at food," and gave to every man a chance to entertain his neighbors. It was the experience of these two years in Acadia which rilled him with confidence in his fellow countrymen, and in his schemes of colo- nization. When the trade monopoly was with- drawn from De Monts and his company as autocratically as it had been bestowed, and the 56 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES unfortunate nobleman saw himself threatened with ruin, Champlain persuaded him that the favor of princes was not the only road to pros- perity in the New World, and that individual effort, combined with cohesive construction, might stand clear of the ceaseless intrigue which swayed the French court. This belief eventually took form in the Company of One Hundred Associates which for years controlled the fur trade of Canada. In the spring of 1608 Champlain and Font- grave, backed by the staunch De Monts, made final choice of Quebec as a site for the new col- ony. "I selected," wrote Champlain, "a spot where the river was narrowest, and there I be- gan to clear away the forest, build huts, and cul- tivate the land." The fitness of this sheltered spot for a trading station was plain to his experienced eye, and it was with absolute certainty that he laid the foundations of a settle- ment destined to grow into a valorous and su- premely beautiful city where his memory is held sacred and dear. It was a harsh life the settlers led, but sweet with a freedom which the civilizations of the world denied. They traded successfully with the neighboring Hurons and Algonquins, skirmished CHAMPLAIN 57 with the Iroquois who were unfriendly always, and followed the waterways which took them far into northern New York. In 1610 Champlain discovered the lake which bears his name. In 1615 he made his way to Lake Ontario, and to the Lake of the Hurons, where Pere le Casson, a Recollet priest, had established a mission. He wintered on the shores of Georgian Bay, and spent forty days getting back to Quebec in the spring. Traveling was slow work in New France. Champlain's letters, written largely to en- courage emigration, are full of zeal, and empty of illusions. He finds much to praise in the wil- derness which surrounds him. The soil is fair, the hunting good, the fishing unsurpassed. The berries, especially the blueberries/' a small fruit, but very good to eat," delight him. He says that the squaws dried them for winter use, but no- where else do we find any record of this house- wifely proceeding. The missionaries all agree that the hungry savages gobbled up their fruit as soon as it was ripe, and very often before it had had time to ripen. Wild grapes and wild plums were much to Champlain's fancy, crab- apples he ate without enthusiasm, and he even tried to eat May apples, being unwilling that any- thing which resembled fruit should go to waste. 58 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES With the Indians always excepting the Iro- quois Champlain managed to keep on excellent terms. He traveled far and wide in their company, without confidence, but without fear, and with- out mishap. He tells dreadful tales of their cruelty to prisoners, and he deplores the filthi- ness of their personal habits when he is forced to live in close contact with them; but for their intelligence and superb endurance he has a pioneer's understanding regard. "They have good judgment in all that pertains to their man- ner of living," he writes; "but one cannot rely on them save cautiously, and standing always on guard. They are inveterate liars. They promise much and perform little." Champlain's observations correspond gener- ally with the observations of the missionaries as told in the Jesuit Relations, those remarkable records which have furnished true and ample material for historians. The lugubrious singing in which the Indians took such pleasure was as little to his liking as it was to the liking of Pere Le Jeune or Pere Charlevoix. He tells us that in the forest one of his savage guides cut his foot so severely that he fainted from loss of blood. While the French surgeon dressed the wound, the other Indians sang, or rather howled, in chorus, by CHAMPLAIN 59 way of encouraging their companion. "More fortunate than we were, he could not hear them," comments the commander grimly. Champlain also corroborates the statement of missionaries as to companionate marriage, a custom unusual but not unknown among certain tribes. A girl was permitted to live with several young braves before making choice of a husband. The decision once reached was final unless the woman proved barren, in which case the husband might put her away, and try his luck again. The supreme value of childbearing was fully recog- nized by these least prolific of savages. For the rest, Champlain makes bitter com- plaint of mosquitoes, finding them the "most persistent of insects," which they are; he greatly and rightly admires the canoes, so well fitted to their purpose; he spells the Indian names more wildly than do the missionaries, calling one Algonquin tribe the Otaguottouemins, and two Iroquois tribes the Entouhonorons and the Chouontouarouons; and he writes engagingly of the savages' delicate appreciation of tobacco. They held it to be a semi-sacred thing, dedicated to grave occasions and high purposes. When gathered for council, the braves placed all they had, or all they felt that they could spare, on a 60 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES bark platter, precisely like an offertory col- lection, and it was solemnly burned as a fitting sacrifice to the gods. One thing which the missionaries failed to observe was clear to Cham- plain's penetrating eye. They conceived of the Indians as wretched because they saw only the wretchedness of their lives. Champlain always looked beyond the apparent. "Their existence is miserable as compared with ours," he writes; "but it is satisfactory to them because they have not tasted better, and because they believe that there is none more desirable. They are content among themselves, having no other ambition than to keep alive" It is a keen intelligence which recognizes the increased value of a threatened life. Men never came to doubt its sweetness until it grew secure. When guarded with infinite pains, and fought for day by day, peril gave it savor, and the mere act of survival became an hourly triumph over fate. As a matter of fact it was none too easy for Champlain and his handful of Frenchmen to keep alive in the snowbound settlement of Que- bec. Crops were scanty, winters were long, the fishing season which brought abundance of food was sometimes sorely delayed. Ever and always the colonists were held back by their leader from CHAMPLAIN 61 quarreling with the surrounding Indians. Ever and always he quoted the words of an Iroquois chief who preached better than he practised: " Peace and trade are one." Ever and always he strove to make headway against the traders of Britain and Holland who wanted no rivals in the field. Ever and always he struggled despairingly with the shifting policies of France. It is true that Henry the Fourth had evinced a keen in- terest in the colony, had granted Champlain an audience, and had found in him a man after his own stalwart heart. Henry, like all his con- temporaries, believed that the New World was a path to the very old world of the Orient; and that the coveted trade with China lay within the colonists' reach. So firmly fixed was this notion in the public mind that a French poet who wrote an ode to Champlain lamented the loss of such a roadway as a consequence of the King's untimely death: Had Heaven but left thee longer here below, France had been linked to China before now. The assassination of Henry in 1610 deprived Champlain of a support which was not replaced until sixteen years later when Heaven raised him up a friend in the person of Cardinal Richelieu. 62 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES This astute statesman may have believed, with all his predecessors and with all his contempo- raries, in the mythical route to China; but what interested him more keenly was the fur trade of Quebec, and the consequent need of strengthen- ing the infant colonies of New France. He it was who formed the Company of One Hundred Associates, each member of which contributed three thousand livres. The list of shareholders comprised the names of the noblest and richest in the land, from the cardinal himself and great noblemen of the court to influential courtesans and venturesome merchants of Paris. The mo- nopoly of the fur trade, once fluctuating and disastrous, brought prosperity to Canada and revenue to France. For forty-two years the company was the centre of authority, and the avenue to what these simple habitants called wealth. When its charter was finally revoked by Louis the Fourteenth, acting on the advice of Colbert, its days of usefulness were over, and better methods had supervened; but in the old rough, hazardous times it did the work at hand, and did it passing well. Efficiency and business methods, as we know them now, formed no part of the colonists' experience. The unrelenting foe of French commerce was CHAMPLAIN 63 the English privateer. Few things in life can have been more agreeable than privateering. Hunters and traders worked hard, braved the bitter cold, and risked their lives daily. Then when the boatload of precious furs sailed for France, the privateer ran it down and robbed it for his country's benefit and his own. The odds were overwhelmingly in his favor, and the reward was great. There was always a war of sorts to justify the deed, and the pirate who was also a patriot troubled himself little about anything so casual as a treaty. Indeed treaties succeeded one another so rapidly in those days that some ignorance and a good deal of indifference were noticeable even in higher quarters. When Cap- tain David Kirke, commanding a fleet of six vessels, forced the defenceless Quebec to sur- render in 1629, he lost the fruits of his labors by ignoring the Treaty of Suze, signed in the April of that year. Charles the First disavowed his subject's high-handed action, while bestowing on him a baronetcy to show that he bore no ill- will. Quebec was restored to France, and Cham- plain returned to Canada after the Treaty of St.-Germain-en-Laye. There followed a few years of peace and progress. The successful trading station at Three Rivers was established, 64 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the Indians were won back to their allegiance; and settlers, feeling themselves reasonably safe- nothing can be more relative than safety- crossed the sea in reassuring numbers. When Champlain died on Christmas day, 1635, ne left to France a colony, small and weak, but stead- fast in purpose and of unshaken loyalty. Quebec does well to honor the adventurer whose courage gave her birth, and whose wisdom and patience enabled her to survive. Parkman says that in Champlain alone we find the life of New France. Strong of will and trained to endurance, hopeful in adversity and cautious in success, keenly observant and quick to draw conclusions, he was essentially the right man in the right place. If his work was hard, his setbacks many, his pleasures few, and his comforts wholly negligible, he was spared, or he spared himself, the lot that falls to many a good man the discharging of uncongenial duties in an unsympathetic society. He had chosen his own manner of living, and it brought him some glorious hours. We know what these hours were. When he saw the beautiful Falls of Montmorency which he named after the Admiral of France. When he first looked upon the great inland seas. When he descended the La Chine Rapids, being CHAMPLAIN 65 the second white man to accomplish this perilous feat. These were the rapids which wrecked Louis Joliet a half century later. "The water falleth as it were steppe by steppe/' wrote Champlain, "and in every place where it hath some small height it maketh a strong boyling with the force and speed of its run." Champlain' s marriage was perhaps the least satisfactory episode of his life. To wed a child of twelve for business reasons is not a likely path to domestic happiness. Helene Boulle was the daughter of the secretary of the king's chamber. What the duties of the secretary of the king's chamber were is not clear. Probably he had no duties, only emoluments; but his influence was of value to Champlain and De Monts. Boulle was a Huguenot, but the little bride was trans- formed into a Catholic to meet her husband's views. She remained in France to be educated, and it was a matter of ten years before she crossed the sea to Quebec. What she found there tried her bravery to the utmost. The tradition of her youth, her gentle breeding, and the sug- gestion of luxury she brought with her, her silken dress, And her fragile loveliness, 66 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES still lingers in the old city; and a few tales are told of kindness to the savages and the sick. Champlain was then Lieutenant Governor of New France. His authority was absolute, he gave his wife what meagre comforts he could muster; and the man who enabled his followers to be "cleanly and merry" when shut in by the snows of Acadia must have made conditions bearable in Quebec. But the isolation, the cold, the ever-present hint of danger were more than Helene could bear. She had apparently no love for her husband, who was eighteen years her senior, to counterbalance the distressfulness of her surroundings. After four years she returned to France, became devote, and as a matter of course wanted to enter a convent. This was not practicable for a married woman unless husband and wife became, with each other's consent, priest and nun; and nothing could have been further from Champlain's thoughts than taking holy orders. In his old age (men grew old at sixty-eight in those days) he resembled Tenny- son's Ulysses, restless on the shores of Ithaca: I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro* Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. CHAMPLAIN 67 It was the pathway to China that Champlain always hoped to find; and it was the Far North (a thing of reality not of dreams) that he keenly desired to behold. From the savages he had heard of Hudson Bay, and his heart was set on seeing for himself "the salt water cutting into the frozen land." But he never succeeded in persuading the Indians about him to undertake the long and perilous voyage. Radisson and Grosseilliers were the first white men to approach Hudson Bay from the land; and Champlain died with longings unfulfilled, but with a brave list of achievements to his credit. The place of his interment is unknown, but Quebec has selected her fairest site on which to raise a monument in his honor. The somewhat swaggering statue that surmounts it turns from the sea to face the fort that he built and the city that he founded. In the library of Dieppe is preserved the manuscript of his early voyage to the West Indies. It was translated and published by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, and contains what was probably the first suggestion of the Panama Canal, "whereby the voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by more than fifteen hundred leagues." Champlain' s portrait, attributed to Balthazar Moncornet, is as apochryphal as Carrier's, and 68 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES as satisfactory to people not concerned with the formality of facts. If he did not look like that, he should have done so keen, resolute, and dis- tinguished. His narratives (the first dedicated to Montmorency, the second to Richelieu) are plain, straightforward accounts of New France and of his own labors. They are immaculately free from egotism and self-glorification. His life was one of singular austerity, of devotion to a cause, and of supreme loyalty to his country and his church. His wife, who by virtue of a marriage contract inherited his possessions, entered the Ursuline Order, founded a convent at Meaux, and lived long in the odor of sanctity, and in the heart of civilization. No impulse to revisit Quebec stirred her heart when, four years after Champlain's death, Mere Marie and Mme. de la Peltrie sailed joyously from Dieppe to carry the light of faith and the warmth of charity to the children of the New World. Chapter F QUEBEC WHEN we read Mere Marie's account of the three months' voyage to Quebec we are irresistibly reminded of another journey undertaken by the ever-adventurous Ursulines nearly a century later to New Orleans. That trip took five months to a day, and carried with it greater dangers and excitements. The earlier vessel, the Saint Joseph, encountered nothing more perilous than an ice- berg which loomed out of the fog near enough to threaten its safety. But Mere Marie had barely time to gather her habit closely about her, so that she might drown- if drown she must "with decency," when the danger was past and no harm done. The later boat, the Gironde, en- countered every possible disaster save shipwreck. It was swept out of its course by heavy gales, and pursued by pirates; it ran aground near the mouth of the Mississippi, threw overboard its cargo, and lost its livestock. Its passengers lived on short rations of rice, beans cooked with suet, and salt pork. The nuns, who were on their way to open the first convent school in what is now 69 70 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the United States, reached their destination in a forlorn and destitute condition; whereas the Canada-bound pilgrims crossed the sea in com- fort and seclusion, their only trouble being the scarcity of drinking water, though there appears to have been plenty of wine. What really differentiates the two voyages, however, is the contrast between their two annalists. Mere Marie tells her tale quietly and well; but one of the Ursulines who sailed on the Gironde chanced to be Madeleine Hachard, a young novice known in the order as Mere Madeleine de Saint Stanislas, and a writer of uncommon vivacity. Her story is a riot of sound and color, of vivid descriptions, and of pure fun. Mere Marie looked most of the time into her own soul. Madeleine's bright eyes were fixed on the transient happenings of each day. Mere Marie was patient and serene under every mischance. Madeleine's high spirits rose to meet catastrophe with something akin to zest. When the badly battered Gironde anchored in the harbor of the Belize, the Ursulines had still a week's journey on two small freight boats to reach New Orleans. All day they sat perched precariously on the freight, drenched with rain, and moving with caution lest they should fall into the water. All QUEBEC 71 night they lay on damp mattresses devoured by mosquitoes. Their fare was salt pork and hard tack. Madeleine does not say they bore these things composedly for God's sake; she says they bore them hilariously for the pleasure of talking about them to one another, and of writing about them to friends at home. It must be confessed that, as described in her letters, they do sound vastly amusing. Mere Marie and Mme. de la Peltrie, more sedate but every whit as courageous, had also a very uncomfortable journey from Tadoussac, where they landed on July iSth, to Quebec, which they did not reach until the first of August. The intervening weeks were spent on a small and very dirty boat laden with salted codfish. The nuns lived on the codfish (there was at least plenty of it), supplemented by ship biscuit. They were most honorably received at Quebec. Guns were fired, shops were closed, and workmen took a holiday to welcome the new arrivals. The governor, Charles Huoult de Montmagny, who had succeeded Champlain, sent a canoe laden with food to the boat, so that the poor ladies should not be too hungry when they landed. He met them on the dock with a small company of soldiers and priests. Mass was sung in the chapel 72 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES of Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance which Cham- plain had built, and where he was in all prob^ ability buried. The hospital was visited, dinner was served in the fort, and then the Ursulines were ceremoniously conducted to the shack that had been prepared for them under the shelter of the cliff which rose steeply and beautifully to the wooded highlands beyond. It was a humble dwelling place, comprising two fair rooms, an attic, and a little chapel of planks and rough plastering. Mere Saint Joseph, who was called the "laughing nun" because of her insistent gayety, christened it "the Louvre," by which name it was known in the community. The day after landing, the nuns and Mme. de la Peltrie, escorted by Pere Le Jeune and Pere Vimont, visited the mission of Sillery, a few miles from Quebec. It owed its existence to the Cheva- lier Noel Brulard de Sillery, Knight of Malta, a gentleman of wealth who held office in the French court. Deeply moved by the needs of New France, he resolved to devote his fortune to founding missions in the wilderness. The one that bore his name was the first and most important of these, and there stood until twenty years ago an old stone house whose walls defied decay, and part of which was the Jesuits' headquarters in 1640. QUEBEC 73 Siljery, when visited by the Ursulines, was a cheerful spot with a tiny church of its own, and a still tinier hospital. The Algonquin huts clus- tered closely within the inadequate protection of a palisade, and the surrounding fields were under fair cultivation. The dream of the early missionaries was to turn the savages into home- staying, housekeeping agriculturists; and it was many a long year before they learned that the red men, unlike the black men, could never be lured or driven into domestication. Mere Marie had all the hopefulness of the inexperienced, and Mme. de la Peltrie's mounting enthusiasm im- pelled her to embrace every little Indian she encountered; indifferent alike, remarked Pere Le Jeune, to the dirt of the child, or to its wonder- ment at such embraces, kissing not being custom- ary among the savages. They were habitually "cold in greeting." The ship that brought the nuns to Quebec brought also the welcome news of the birth of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis the Fourteenth. These tidings, received with joy, proved to be in the end really and truly joyful, inasmuch as Louis was the one and only French king who took a keen, lasting, and helpful interest in the American colonies. As the colonists could not 74 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES foresee this happy circumstance, their delight seems a trifle exaggerated; but life was dull in New France, and its inhabitants lost no chance to diversify and enliven it. "No sooner had the word * Dauphin' escaped the lips of the mes- sengers," wrote Pere Le Jeune, "than joy entered into our hearts and thanksgiving into our souls. The news spread everywhere; the Te Deum Laudamus was chanted, and bonfires and fire- works were prepared with every device possible in these countries." On the 1 5th of August, the Feast of the As- sumption, a procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin and in thanksgiving for the royal infant, marched to Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance. Heading it were six Indian youths dressed in costumes sent by the French court, scarlet satin, velvet, and cloth of gold. They carried them- selves proudly and with grave dignity. After them came Mme. de la Peltrie (how she must have enjoyed it!) with four little Indian girls, also in French dress. The governor, his staff, the missionaries, and all the colonists walked in the procession, "without any other order than that suggested by humility." The nuns alone were denied this pleasant privilege. To make amends, the ranks halted before the hospital and before QUEBEC 75 the humble convent, while their inmates sang the Exaudiat "to the delight of our savages," comments the missionary proudly. A vesper service closed the day, after which the Frenchmen, priests and laity, would have been glad to go to bed; but the tireless Indians assembled for a council. The governor urbanely attended, bringing Mme. de la Peltrie with him; and the weary Jesuits, knowing that speech- making was dear to the savage heart, prepared themselves to listen and respond. Inattention on these august occasions was an unpardonable offense. "Be wise and hearken," said a chief warningly to Pere Le Jeune who perhaps looked sleepy; "let not thy mind wander, lest thou shouldst lose a word of what I am about to say." He did have a good deal to say, and so did other Algonquins. Mme. de la Peltrie was so moved by their recountal of scant crops and long winter fasts that she begged Pere Vimont to assure them that if she could help to dig and plant with her own hands she would gladly do so; to which a saturnine savage replied that corn planted by arms so weak would be late in ripen- ing. The council concluded with the presentation of a little Indian dress as a gift for the Dauphin. The spokesman said that they did not expect 76 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the great king's son to wear it, but that they thought it might please him to know how the children of the forests were clad. If Louis, a king at five, resembled other little boys, this artless gift would probably have be- come his most precious possession. But it never went to France. Smallpox was rife among the Indians, and the missionaries feared lest any product of their hands should carry contagion. No words can adequately describe the ravages of this disease among a people habitually filthy, and ignorant of the simplest rules of sanitation. It was said that smallpox killed as many Hurons as did the Iroquois. Strange and dreadful tales were told of lonely deaths, of blind terror, of helpless devotion, and of stolid cruelty. An Indian woman, whose son and brother were ill, resolved to carry her son to Quebec, a journey of several days. As there was no room in the canoe for her brother, she brained him with a club. His young son and daughter begged her to take them with her, lest they should starve in the forest. She bade the boy kill his little sister, saying she could not take both. This he did, the child sub- mitting quietly to the inevitable. The three survivors reached Quebec, where mother and son died in the hospital. The boy lived to tell the QUEBEC 77 tale, and subsequently returned to his tribe. The smallpox, which had been a threat in August, became a deadly certainty in September. The hospital being rilled to overflowing, it was necessary for the Ursulines to take the children under their care. The little French girls who were waiting to be taught must wait longer while the little savages were nursed. It was the experience of Milan repeated, but with this difference: Milan was a big and rich city where all that was wanted could be procured. Quebec was a settle- ment of two hundred and fifty colonists, depend- ent for its needs upon France. Beds there were none in the convent, and the mattresses were laid so close together on the floor that the nuns had to step over one sick child to reach another. They used up their house linen, their body linen, even the available portions of their habits, to make bandages. Their neighbors gave them what help they could, and Mme. de la Peltrie and Charlotte Barre worked valiantly, no task being too hard or too repulsive for their hands. One comfort they had. The Indians were the most docile and uncomplaining of patients. This was also the experience of the nursing nuns. The savages suffered silently and died composedly. Many of those in the hospital did die, alas, while 78 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES the Ursulines lost only four children, an in- credibly small number. It may seem strange that none of Mere Marie's little sisterhood caught the infection; but so it often happens in times of stress and strain. Readers of Lady InghYs Siege of Lucknow will remember that this intrepid lady fell ill of small- pox in the early days of the assault. She could not be removed from the crowded Residency because there was no other place of safety. She could not be isolated because there was no room for isolation. She saw her friends, and heard the tragic news as it came in hour by hour. She recovered, and no one took the disease. In those days of peril and catastrophe nobody had time to catch a disease. So it was with the Ursulines. Like Hotspur, they lacked the leisure to be sick. It was February before the epidemic had spent itself, and peace was restored to the colony. The exhausted nuns were urged by Pere Le Jeune to begin at once the study of the Indian languages. They obeyed with more good-will than energy. Mere Marie found it uphill work. She said the Indian words rolled like stones in her head, bruising it; and she, who became in time so proficient, despaired at first of proficiency. The "laughing nun" made the most rapid progress, QUEBEC 79 and was soon able to speak the Huron tongue with a fair degree of fluency. As the spring ad- vanced, life grew easier and more agreeable. The ships from France brought fresh stores to the convent. The dilapidated habits were once again made convenable. For the first time since their arrival these devoted exiles could take stock of their circumstances and surroundings. What did they think of both? When the Ursulines of New Orleans had completed their horrid journey, they found awaiting them a comfortable home, and a land flowing with milk and honey. Madeleine Hachard, blessed with the appetite of youth, is loud in her praises of the good food provided by the bounteous hand of Nature and the supreme genius of the black cooks. Even the little cat that had joined the community in France, "confident that there were plenty of mice in Louisiana," enjoyed a diversi- fied diet. But Quebec, small and bleak, offered no such carnal delights. Nature was niggardly of everything except rock and river and sea. The Indians could not cook, and would not serve. Life was primitive, and would have been rude save for the imperishable amenities of French civilization. It was greatly to Mere Marie's credit that she 8o MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES recognized the beauty of her surroundings. The cult of Nature worship was then unknown; and where Nature is inimical to man, she has never been greatly beloved. Wordsworth's Nature, it may be observed, was beneficent. What he saw about him was the "moral scenery" for which Hannah More felt a patronizing regard. But in New France Nature carried a perpetual threat. Even Champlain looked at her askance. He was too great a navigator not to admire the superb rush of the Saguenay River, its depth and its velocity; but as for its shores, at which tourists now gape rapturously, he found them "very disagreeable from whatever point of view" a verdict pleasurably suggestive of Horace Walpole's "high and horrid Alps." Yet Mere Marie, who had left the loveliness of Touraine, the charming moderation of its revolv- ing seasons, "son climat supple et chaud" wrote George Sand, " ses pluies abondantes et courtes" knew that the cruel and glittering world which surrounded her was a world of beauty. The con- vent, with its back to the rock and its face to the sea, commanded an enchanting prospect; the pure keen air kept the nuns in good health, and made them hungry for the salted fish, salted pork, and sagamite which formed the staple of QUEBEC 81 their diet, and which they were frequently called on to share with their Indian friends. Among the savages hunger was a chronic con- dition, and the law of hospitality forbade that any guest should be sent away unfed. Mere Marie wrote to France that the pot of sagamite (Indian maize ground and boiled into a porridge) hung always over their fireplace, and that from time to time it was needful for her to give a "feast" to a number of visiting Indians. "On such occasions," she told her correspondent, "we require a bushel of black plums, four six- pound loaves of bread, four measures of meal made from ground peas or maize, a dozen of tallow candles melted down, and a quantity of fat bacon, the fatter the better, so that when all the ingredients are boiled together there will be plenty of grease." Such munificence meant a heavy drain upon the convent's slender resources; but its superior, who was at all times as wise as she was prudent, knew that it was money well spent. The Indians who came to Quebec were for the most part sachems, headmen of villages, and traders of friendly tribes. Their good-will was worth re- taining, and they were possible converts to boot. "I sigh over the superfluities of the world," 82 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES wrote the Ursuline, "when I see how little it takes to gratify these poor people, and send them away content." Cold and dirt were the two antagonists en- countered by the nuns; the cold being provided by Nature, and the dirt being apparently in- separable from little Indian girls. "They have lived like young animals in the woods," avowed Mere Marie, " and they care no more for cleanli- ness than if they were four-footed. Their filthy habits give us many a rude shock." In this regard, however, the nuns were a thousand times better off than were the missionaries. They could stay, and they did stay, in their own con- vent, with soap and water at their command. The priests were compelled to visit the Indian lodges, where they were stifled by the smoke, nauseated by the stench, overrun by naked children and mangy dogs, tormented by fleas, and devoured by lice. As it would have been a deadly affront to have appeared incommoded by these things, or to have shortened a visit be- cause of them, their social duties were a daily martyrdom. The worst that could happen to the nuns was a fresh inroad of never-to-be-dis- couraged vermin, a fresh scrubbing where all had been thought clean, or the finding of an old QUEBEC 83 moccasin in the soup pot. This last mishap sug- gests a very unusual sense of humor on the part of a misguided Indian child. As for the cold, it seems to have amazed Mere Marie more than it distressed her. A lifetime spent in the heart of France had done little to prepare her for such an experience. If she and her sisterhood could have gone outdoors and braved the buffeting wind, they might have warmed their frozen blood, and rejoiced in defy- ing the elements. But caged in their little house, they could do nothing but hug the fire. "Do not suppose," wrote their superior to the convent in Tours, "that we could live long without return- ing again and again to the fireplace. Even I, who have never wanted to warm myself, am now reluctant to leave it." To pray in the freezing chapel was impossible. The rosary was recited and the office read in the community room, which was a community room only when it was not needed for a dozen other purposes. Private devotions were deferred until the tired and sleepy nuns were in bed. Mere Marie considered with Saint Theresa that acute physical discomfort was incompatible with absorption in prayer. Now and then she expressed concern about the Jesuits who were always in danger of having 84 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES their fingers and ears frozen, and who seemed insufficiently aware of the fact. Now and then she heard and repeated tragic tales of coureurs de bois who were lost in the deep snows. And not coureurs de bois only. During her second winter in Quebec a manservant in the house of one of her neighbors was overcome by the cold when returning late at night, and perished alone in the darkness. Nature's primeval cruelty was a fit setting for the cruelty of her savage sons. Chapter VI IN DAYS OF PEACE Two things were apparent from the start to Mere Marie's practised eye : the absurd inadequacy of the " Louvre " to the work she had on hand, and the absurd inadequacy of Mme. de la Peltrie's income when it came to building in Quebec. This generous lady could do no more than pay the running expenses of the convent, and assist the mission at Sillery; she could spare no capital for the erection of a new house. Therefore it was that Mere Marie discovered, like the head of any modern institution, that her most pressing and most formidable task was the raising of funds. Naturally these funds could be raised only in France. The colonists had no money, but Quebec gave what she had to give ground. The gover- nor was authorized by the Company of One Hundred Associates to assign to the Ursulines six arpents about nine acres of cleared land in what was later called the upper town. The site was chosen for its comparative safety, being under the protection of the fort. The foundation stone was laid by Mme. de la Peltrie in the spring 85 86 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES of 1640, and Mere Marie set herself resolutely to the business of writing the most persuasive begging letters of her day. At first these letters went to Ursuline convents which could be depended upon for interest and sympathy. Then they found their way to other communities rich enough to be begged from. Gradually their area widened until it embraced some of the most important people in France: clerics, prelates, men of affairs, and women of rank and fashion. All seem to have been im- pressed by the practical intelligence of this se- cluded nun whose energy never flagged, and who carried every undertaking to a successful and legitimate close. It was not the education of French children that Mere Marie stressed in her appeals; that was easy and assured. It was the civilizing and Christianizing of little Indians that she urged with all the fervor of her heart, and with every argument that might carry conviction. She re- minded her readers over and over again that the good-will and affection of these convent-taught girls helped to preserve friendly relations when they returned to their tribes. She affirmed that, if well trained, they made good wives for the French colonists; faithful, obedient, and in- IN DAYS OF PEACE 87 dustrious. Miscegenation, that deadly crime in our slave-holding states, was esteemed in New France as a sensible solution of its most pressing problem, the perpetual need of wives. Above and beyond all, Mere Marie asked help in bring- ing heathen children into the fold of Christ, and this plea never failed. The simple belief of that simple day held faith to be a gift from God which Christians should cherish gratefully and share generously. Even men who were no better than their neighbors, and women who were no better than they should be (there were many such in Paris and Touraine), clung firmly to this creed. The combination of an over-developed moral sense and an undeveloped spiritual sense, which Matthew Arnold found so distressing in Nine- teenth Century England, was noticeably lacking in Seventeenth Century France. So the money poured in, and the walls of the new convent rose high. The stone was quarried near by, and Quebec supplied the sand and brick; but the artisans builders, plasterers, and car- penters were brought from France. They were engaged for three years, and their average wage was thirty cents a day, which Mere Marie thought high, especially as she had to provide their food, "even on Sundays, feast days, and in 88 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES bad weather." The three-story building was ninety-two feet long, and twenty-eight feet deep. Four great fireplaces burned a hundred and seventy-five cords of wood in a winter with very indifferent results. The nuns, being fairly crowded out of the "Louvre," took possession of their new abode before it was finished, exulting in its spaciousness, and in the blessed privacy of cells. Their numbers had increased, but their work was harder and heavier. Pere Le Jeune, in- ordinately proud of the handsome structure, wrote to France that it was "the fairest orna- ment of the colony, and a marked help in the detention and conversion of the savages." Even Mere Marie was moved to elation by its mani- fest merits, her only regret being the size of the chapel. "You would think it very small," she told her son, "but it is impossible to heat a bigger one." An old sketch of this much-vaunted edifice shows it to have been severely plain, with four stout chimneys, and A little cupola more neat than solemn for its only ornament. A well-curb marks the place where the nuns obtained "their excellent IN DAYS OF PEACE 89 supply of water." A tall paling surrounds the house and grounds. Outside this paling is Mme. de la Peltrie's modest abode. Also two pictur- esque wigwams, added evidently by the artist under the mistaken impression that he was giving local color to the scene. It was to be expected that Mere Marie should emphasize in her letters the beneficent results of her labors, that she should paint in glowing colors the piety and good behavior of the little Indians whom she taught. The Relations took the same tone with the same naivete and fervor. It must be admitted that the tales told by priests and nuns bear a singular resemblance to the tales told by Cotton Mather and his contemporaries for the edification of Puritan readers: "Some examples of Children in several parts of New England, in whom the fear of God was remark- ably Budding before they died." "A Particular Account of Some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." If the little Puritans were good because they had to be, the little Indians or at least the little Indian girls were good because generations of docility lay behind them. "This docility is common to all from seven to seventeen," wrote 90 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Mere Marie. Moreover, silence was natural to them, and in all the convent schools of the world silence is, and has always been, an overestimated virtue. Pere Vimont admitted that Indian chil- dren never fidgeted, or played, or whispered in church, as French children were sometimes wont to do. They sat still, or knelt motionless, obedient to instruction, and presenting an edifying spec- tacle. Savages are apt to be imitative. Mere Marie's little savages took to pious practices like little ducks to water. They told their beads, they sang hymns lustily, they delighted in going to confession, and in reminding one another of faults that should be confessed; they were so rigorously observant in performing small acts of devotion that even the gratified nuns were known to sigh over their excessive zeal. Yet the three children who wanted to be hermits, and who retired into the garden to lead lives of soli- tude and prayer (until the sound of the dinner bell recalled them to the world), were not unlike the little Theresa of Avila, who essayed with her brother's help to build a hermitage, and who was defeated in her pious purpose by the small- ness of the stones, and her lack of structural skill. IN DAYS OF PEACE 91 One wayward impulse remained in the hearts of these phlegmatic pupils. They were subject to spells of passionate nostalgia, and sickened for the life of the woods. Nothing could hold them back when this desire was upon them. They would slip away by day or night, and seek the shelter of their miserable homes, sometimes many miles away. The nuns christened these fugitives " 'petite 's coureuses de bois," and tried hard to close their gates when, after a few days or a few weeks, they invariably returned to the convent. But their determination to get in was equal to their determination to get out. They would crouch quietly at the door for five, ten, or twenty hours; pitiful little objects, cold, hungry, and forlorn, confident that by patient waiting they could wear out the resistance of authority. It is noticeable that Mme. de la Peltrie found the Indian children affectionate and demonstra- tive. She seems to have broken down their barriers of reserve, and they accepted her as though she had been one of themselves. They were rather lovable little creatures when they were washed, and kept washed. Mme. de la Peltrie scrubbed and combed them energetically, made them frocks of which they were inordi- nately proud ("they had not been used to seeing 92 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES themselves so fine"), taught them to sew, heard them recite their catechism, and played with them in the convent garden. Close contact with these little savages was in no way disagreeable to her, and she let them put their arms around her and press close to her knees. The "laughing nun" was her only rival in their affection. Mere Saint Joseph spoke the Huron tongue, Mme. de la Peltrie became fairly conversant with the Montagnais, and the Indian "seminarians" (a dignified term) picked up French with the facile ease of childhood. They also acquired a gentleness of manner which gave the Ursulines (ladies well-born and well-bred) justifiable pleasure. They mingled freely with the French children, though they were taught apart, and they observed closely all that went on about them. Mere Marie wrote to the convent in Tours that one little Indian girl, Madeleine Amiskoueian, behaved as though she had been born and bred in Touraine; and that another, Marie Negabamat, became "more accomplished every day." She told her corre- spondent that the nuns served the sagamite to visiting Indians in bowls of wood or bark; and that the hungry guests, finding that spoons were scarce, or that eating with them was slow work, IN DAYS OF PEACE 93 would sometimes pick up a bowl by its "ears," and devour its contents greedily and at ease. Those of us who in our childhood read Miss Edgeworth's most idyllic story, Simple Susan, will recall a somewhat similar situation. The seminarians, however, were never guilty of such an indecorum. "Our pupils are more polite," commented Mere Marie proudly. "Being in our company has made them so." One more result of education deserves to be chronicled. The little Indian girls, clean and supercilious, refused to play with the little Indian boys who occasionally came to the con- vent with their mothers, and who were both amazed and chagrined at such treatment. They were equally averse to coming into familiar contact with Indian men. Parkman, who takes note of this circumstance, attributes it to prudish- ness, to a precocious sex-consciousness, fostered by the teaching of the nuns. But looked at less superficially, it seems like a natural reaction against an age-old tyranny of which these children were becoming dimly aware. They had seen their mothers treated like beasts of burden ("women are the Indians' mules," observed Champlain crisply), and they had seen the dignified lives of the nuns, whose work, if hard, 94 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES was of their own volition. When they said childishly that they wanted to stay always in the convent, they were probably not thinking about the grace of virginity, but about the pleasures of decency and freedom. They were little unconscious feminists, and feminism being then untabulated, their distaste for boys and men was regarded as an excess of modesty. In fact Indian marriages offered to the mission- aries a broad field of perplexity. Divorce was easy and common, but polygamy was rare. When practised, it was not for amorous delight, but for utilitarian purposes. A brave who desired baptism explained painstakingly to the priest that he could not put away either of his wives because his cleared land needed the labor of two women. He was a kind-hearted young man who did not want to overwork one wife; therefore he kept a couple. Another Indian, who had been baptized, asked to be married in Lent. When told to wait until Easter, he said it was impossible because his cornfield was ready to be planted: " It is not the custom of our people to put women to work until we have married them," he said with a touch of chivalry. The only indulgence granted to squaws was a share in the torture of captives. This was IN DAYS OF PEACE 95 a highly esteemed privilege, and they showed a hideous ingenuity in prolonging the hours of pain. But the first lesson taught to converts was that cruelty was a deadly sin; and while adults were usually unpersuadable (the tra- ditions of their race held fast), children were turned aside forever from the great national pastime. Before the Ursulines had been a year in their new home, something happened which made Mere Marie profoundly grateful that she was drawing help from France. Mme. de la Peltrie went to Montreal. The impulse which carried her thither was as disinterested as the impulse which had brought her to Quebec; but impulsive- ness, however noble, is apt to be fraught with inconvenience to somebody. The founding of Montreal ranks high in the history of heroism. It was a savage spot, perilously close to the lands of the Iroquois, and frequented only by a few intrepid traders. Jacques Cartier had reached it, and had given the name of Mont Royal to the rocky eminence which overhung the island. Champlain had noted the value of the site between two navigable rivers as a trading station. But it was left for Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, an able soldier and a 96 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES devout Catholic, to lay the foundation of this stately city, which English writers (meaning to be complimentary) have called the Birmingham of Canada. Its first conception was due to the enthusiasm of Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere, a gentle- man of good birth who was receiver of taxes in Anjou. His avocation was prosaic, his family large and exacting; but he himself was a mystic, an ascetic, a dreamer of dreams. His overwhelm- ing desire to plant a mission in New France was ably seconded by a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who subsequently founded the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris. With the help of friends they established the Society of Notre-Dame de Mont Royal, raised funds, and organized an ex- pedition under the leadership of Maisonneuve. With it went two women, one of them Mile. Jeanne Mance, who was to play a notable part in the history of Ville Marie de Mont Royal, by which name the settlement was first known. The pilgrims reached Quebec too late in the autumn to risk ascending the St. Lawrence. They wintered in the home of M. Puiseaux near Sillery ; and Mme. de la Peltrie became possessed by the desire to accompany Mile. Mance to wilder scenes and greater perils than Quebec could IN DAYS OF PEACE 97 offer. To a spirit like hers danger had charms which prolonged discomfort lacked, and the duty that was close at hand was commonplace by comparison with labors more remote. When, on the 8th of May, Maisonneuve and his party embarked at St. Michel in a flat-bottomed boat with sails and two large canoes, Mme. de le Peltrie went with them. Also Pere Vimont, fully alive to the importance of the new mission, and Montmagny who, as governor, felt bound to see how the adventure, of which he disapproved, was conducted. An official's life in New France was not an easy one. Ten days were consumed in the journey, and on the i8th the little fleet glided alongside of a meadow where early flowers were blooming. In this green field an altar was quickly raised. Mme. de la Peltrie and Charlotte Barre decorated it with ready art, and Pere Vimont said the first Mass on the site of Montreal. Meanwhile the Ursulines, bereft of Mme. de la Peltrie' s liberal assistance, had a hard time fulfilling their obligations. "Temporalities, or the lack of them, retard the spiritualities," com- mented Pere Le Jeune sadly. It was characteristic of Mere Marie that she made no complaint, asked for no consideration, aired no grievance. She illustrated Saint Theresa's axiom, "Where 98 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES virtue is well rooted, provocations matter little." If, like the Spanish nun, she ardently desired clean linen and good manners, she was prepared, if need be, to do without the linen, and confine herself to the less expensive luxury, the only one, it is said, that Saint Francis permitted to his poverty. Perhaps, knowing Mme. de la Peltrie as she did, Mere Marie considered her return to Que- bec as more than likely. This hope, if she enter- tained it, was well founded. During the eighteen months spent by the fugitive in Ville Marie she found no work fitted to her hand. Jeanne Mance took into her tiny cabin a sick settler or a wounded Indian, and nursed him back to health. When money was sent her for a hospital, she was compelled to spend it in defenses against the Iroquois. Otherwise there would have been no need for a hospital; a graveyard would have suf- ficed. For seventeen years this brave lady de- voted herself to the care of the suffering, and her name has not been forgotten by the city that she served. Montreal has dedicated to her honor a street, a park, and a monument; and she deserves them all. Life in this remote and imperiled settlement was terribly hard. Maisonneuve had fortified it IN DAYS OF PEACE 99 as strongly as he could, but all who ventured beyond the protection of its fort were in hourly danger. Six Frenchmen were surprised by the Iroquois while hewing timber in the woods. Three were slain, and three carried away as cap- tives. Of these one managed to escape; the other two were burned. The Hurons were friendly if they felt it safe to be so, but false when fear smote their hearts. Outside the cleared fields the blackness of the forest held tragic possibili- ties. Even the traders came stealthily to this hidden spot, and left it with what speed they could. Compared to it, Quebec was an abode of comfort and security. To Quebec Mme. de la Peltrie returned; but not until after she had sought, and sought in vain, for permission to visit one of the Huron missions. She ardently desired to come into closer relations with the savages, and to try her hand at their conversion. The Jesuits firmly re- fused to consider this wild project. Life in the missions was hard enough and hazardous enough without the complication of a woman's pres- ence. They intimated that there was work and to spare in Quebec for a dozen intelligent women, but that the outposts belonged to men. When, after an absence of a year and a half, ioo MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES Mme. de la Peltrie went back to her empty house and her abandoned friends, she was wel- comed with warmth by Mere Marie, and with genuine delight by the little Indians who had not forgotten their kind friend and playmate. She never again left them, and never relaxed her charities in their behalf. It was her especial pleasure to provide a modest trousseau and a small sum of money for any one of them who married a baptized Indian, and this circum- stance greatly enhanced their value in the eyes of eligible young braves. When her faithful fol- lower, Charlotte Barre, entered the convent, she gave her a dowry of three thousand livres; a charming act of generosity on her part, because the loss of companionship left her very lonely. About this time she adopted a semi-religious dress, less severe and more becoming than a habit, and this dress was her nearest approach to a "vocation." Devout as a nun, devoted as a nun, she remained a free lance to the end. Quebec was growing fast. Forty French fami- lies crossed the sea, and settled within its bor- ders. Food, of a sort, was more plentiful, and safety seemed assured. If water in the casks froze every winter night, which was a trial, the IN DAYS OF PEACE 101 St. Lawrence was for two winters so hard frozen that Indians ran swiftly over the ice "as though it had been a meadow"; and this the colonists thought a beautiful sight. It seems appalling to us now to consider how largely eels figured in theii diet; but the monks of the Middle Ages, who have been reproached unduly for luxurious habits, had little else to eat in Lent. Eels are as nourishing as they are loathsome. Pere le Mer- cier, who writes of them enthusiastically as the "manna" of the habitants, would have us be- lieve that the eels of New France were of a finer flavor than the eels of old France, besides being bigger and fatter. Pere Vimont says that from the beginning of September until the end of October they were so abundant in the St. Lawrence that all the French and all the In- dians were busy catching them in enormous quan- tities. The French fished for them by day, the Indians speared them at night by torchlight, a strange and picturesque spectacle. The French salted t