'ere Marie of the llrstilines
Cbc Minivers
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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 them for winter use, the Indians, who ate
no salt, dried them in the smoke. The stench
from the drying eels and rotting refuse carried
far, but the savages were indifferent to stenches.
They stored away their dried eels in dirty heaps,
102 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
and made sure that they would not perish of
hunger in the winter, a matter of infinite im-
portance.
As the colony grew stronger, it grew gayer,
brighter, and more social. Once tolerably sure
of the necessities of life, it strove with instinc-
tive ardor for the amenities. It even being
French wanted to be amused. A few years
later this desire would have found expression in
rudely staged dramas and ballets; but under
Montmagny's ascetic rule a ballet was unthink-
able, and a drama was perforce of a semi-religious
character. Ardent play lovers, however, are not
easily discouraged; and a "tragi-comic" moral-
ity was given with so much spirit that we read
in the Relations of the amazement it caused.
Spectators could not believe that such good ac-
tors would have been found among gentlemen
unacquainted with the stage. The Sieur Martial
Piraube distinguished himself above all others;
but we are not told what manner of part he
played. The governor desired that something
which might edify and instruct the savages
should be tacked on to the performance. Ac-
cordingly it closed with a spectacle in which the
soul of a sinner was pursued by two demons, and
hurled into the mouth of a highly realistic hell
IN DAYS OF PEACE 103
which belched out flames to receive them. By
way of driving the lesson home, both sinner and
demons spoke the Algonquin tongue. This rep-
resentation may have appeared comical to the
French; but the unhumorous Indians received
it with serious and satisfactory solicitude.
Other signs and tokens point to the compara-
tive well-being of the colony. In the convent the
French scholars increased rapidly. Mere Marie
wrote to her son that M. de Repentigny, whose
little daughters were pensionnaires, was about to
visit France, and would bring him good news of
her. The number of Indian children was limited
only by the capacity of the house to receive
them. The services of the Church were conducted
with decent solemnity. In the hospital the cere-
mony of washing the feet of poor patients on
Holy Thursday was religiously observed. The
governor, surrounded by his most distinguished
associates, washed the feet of the Indian men.
French ladies washed the feet of the Indian
women "very lovingly and reverently." It is on
record in the Journal des Jesuites that the Ursu-
lines found time during Lent to paint an altar
cloth for the parish church, and that on Christ-
mas Day, 1645, they gave "a noble length of
cloth to the French and savage poor." The Jes-
io 4 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
uits made a great baking for that day, and dis-
tributed many loaves of bread. They discovered
later that the Indians exchanged this good bread
a luxury to which they were unaccustomed
for things they needed more. The nuns made
pastry for the priests' Christmas dinner; not
childish tarts, but a substantial and well-gar-
nished pate of venison, the most attainable of
winter meats. On New Year's Day they cooked
and sent to these ill-fed clerics "a perfect ban-
quet"; but we do not know what constituted a
banquet in times when a daily meal meant salted
fish and porridge.
For if everybody was open-handed, every-
body was likewise poor. Economy and liberality,
plainness and nicety went hand in hand. When
Mile. Gifford, the very young daughter of an
official, was married to M. Maure, she grate-
fully accepted from the Jesuits the remnants of
an old but fine cassock, "to line a pair of sleeves."
But we also read that when Mile. Couillar mar-
ried the son of Jean Guion in the Church of
Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance, "there were two
violins for the first time." Richness of tempera-
ment is the salvation of the pioneer who is
necessarily poor in goods. Quebec had dark
days ahead of her; but when she listened to those
IN DAYS OF PEACE 105
violins she knew that the first bitter struggle
for existence was over. She had begun to be
conscious of pleasures that exceeded the mere
joy of survival.
Chapter VII
IN DAYS OF WAR
SANTAYANA'S tragic finality, "Only the dead
have seen the end of war," was an article of
faith in New France. As in the Middle Ages, war
was more normal than peace. There were weeks
of respite, there were months of tranquillity,
there was occasionally a whole unruffled year;
but of permanent concord there was none. In
Quebec life went on with hardy composure; in
the wilderness savage fought with savage as
beast fights with beast, and the white man
survived, when he did survive, by a series of
dramatic reprieves. The rector of the Jesuit col-
lege in Rennes was called to his door to speak
to a poor wanderer, shabby, bent, and broken.
"You come from New France," said the priest,
"do you know anything of Jogues ? He was taken
by the Iroquois. Is he dead?" And the ragged
spectre, lifting his mutilated hands, answered,
"I am Jogues."
News traveled slowly from village to village,
from mission to mission. Traders carried it,
106
IN DAYS OF WAR 107
Indians carried it, sometimes a captive, escaped
as by a miracle, brought evil tidings, and showed
his scarred body as proof thereof. If the Iroquois
surpassed all other tribes in ferocity, their foes
did not err on the side of gentleness. A Soco-
quiois warrior, who had suffered hours of tor-
ture, was brought to the hospital at Sillery. His
unhealed sores sickened surgeon and nurse; but
the savages crowded about his bed, and gazed
at him with absorbed attention. "He bore the
dressing of his wounds without saying a word,
or giving any indication of pain," wrote Pere
Le Jeune. "He made known by signs the man-
ner in which they had been inflicted; but he
showed no anger or resentment against those
who had ill-treated him." The nuns nursed the
poor wretch back into the semblance of man-
hood; but they could not hide the scars, or make
his severed fingers grow again.
Mere Marie de Saint Ignace was then head
of the new hospital which had been built at
Sillery. The site was an inconvenient one for all
save the Indian patients, but they were the
people whom it was meant to serve. "The
French, when ill, have no difficulty in going to
Sillery," wrote Pere Le Jeune, "but the sick
Savages are unable to go to Quebec." The work,
io8 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
always heavy, was augmented by the deepening
hostility of the Iroquois, who "prowled all
about," and were as dangerous to encounter as
prowling tigers in the jungle. In 1643 the hos-
pital had over a hundred Indian patients, be-
sides a number of French workmen ill of a mys-
terious fever which was first observed at Fort
Richelieu, and was known as mal de terre. The
need of supplies was acute and chronic. The hos-
pital could not organize a " drive " when nobody
had any money, and it could not rent rooms at
princely rates for the same reason. Besides it
had no rooms that were not shared in common.
What it could and did do was to send to France
"Lists and Memorandums of Necessaries,"
which comprised every drug known to that day,
and every article which might be of service.
Rhubarb and jalap, aloes and incense, lancets
and holy-water stoups, white vitriol and yellow
wax, balm and ointments, linen to make shirts
for the living and shrouds for the dead, needles,
scissors, basins, and the Journee Chretienne.
These things and many others were to be sent
to M. Cramoisy, "Printer in Ordinary to the
King," and publisher of the Relations, who gen-
erously undertook to forward them to Quebec.
The careless old phrase, "When my ship comes
IN DAYS OF WAR 109
in," held a world of meaning for the Canadian
colonists.
The death of Richelieu was a heavy blow to
the pioneers whose hardihood he had admired,
and whose interests he had never ceased to
serve. The king, who had possessed the negative
merit of docility, followed him to the grave.
Louis the Fourteenth was a young child. His
mother, Anne of Austria, was the least capable
of regents, and Mazarin was the most hated of
ministers. Between them they emptied the treas-
ury which Richelieu had filled. Well might Pere
Le Jeune write that New France melted into tears
at the ill news which reached her when she most
needed encouragement. Well might he wonder
how she could pay her way and fight her battles
without help. Well might he rejoice in the ele-
mental instinct which makes men on the ragged
edge of civilization find delight in facing dangers
and overcoming obstacles. And well he knew
that this instinct would not grow atrophied from
inaction.
The same spirit in a different guise animated
the Ursulines shut up in their convent, and
deeply aware of everything that was happening
around them, as are all people who do not go
abroad. They are invariably the first to hear
i io MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
news. Mere Marie was supremely capable of
facing emergencies. She was not only remote
from fear many women are that but she was
remote from that sense of disturbance which
often nullifies courage. She was fortified against
assault. Her love for New France grew with
every year of successful work. She speaks of it
in a letter as " cette bienheureuse terre" and she
writes charmingly to the superior at Tours:
"We see ourselves here under the necessity of
becoming saints. We must consent to this change,
or perish."
Nevertheless, when summoning recruits
(whom she never failed to get), this wise admin-
istrator invariably told them that they must
die to the world they knew in order to live in the
world which awaited them. That they were fairly
successful in doing this is evinced by the fact
that in eleven years only one young nun begged
to be sent back to her French convent. Her re-
quest was immediately granted. Pere Vimont
says in the Relations that so many Ursulines
were eager to come to Quebec that he believes
the eleven thousand virgins could have been
duplicated, and he adds sapiently: "We have
room in our colony for only a few religious, but
IN DAYS OF WAR in
could spend a great deal more money if our
friends would kindly send it to us."
It was sent with ungrudging liberality. Also
vestments and silver vessels for the altar. Also
an abundant supply of woolen and linen cloths,
and such highly prized luxuries as prunes, raisins,
and dried cherries. The new nuns came from
different parts of France, and there was then a
diversity of rule as well as a diversity of dress in
the scattered Ursuline convents. It was Mere
Marie's task to arbitrate these differences, to
promote concessions, to adjust and readjust
points of dispute, to make clear what was es-
sential and what was not, to insure the harmony
and accord which are indispensable to communal
life. Six years was the term of a superior's
office. Mere Saint Athanase was elected to fol-
low Mere Marie, and the two nuns succeeded
each other while they lived. It was a pure for-
mality. Mere Saint Athanase might be the nom-
inal head of the convent, but Mere Marie ruled
it. Whether on the throne, or the power behind
the throne, the control and the responsibility
were hers. Mere Saint Joseph came near to being
elected in 1645; but the "laughing nun," serious
enough in the face of such an emergency, pleaded
ii2 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
to be left with her Indian children. She was the
right woman in the right place, and she knew it.
"I believe," wrote Mere Marie to her son, "that
she would have died of regret, if she had been
separated from her troupe of little savages."
One little savage had a strange history, and
her tale is told, a few words at a time, in letters
and in the Relations. Her name was Therese,
and she was brought to the convent by her uncle,
Joseph Chihwatenhwa, a baptized Huron who
had been in his day a fire dancer, a fire handler,
and a medicine man of repute. His peculiar
gifts, which came under the general head of
sorcery, had been rendered useless by conver-
sion; but, like many another reformed character,
he delighted in talking about his unregenerate
days. He could, it is said, pick up red-hot stones,
put them in his mouth, and thrust his arm into
the flames; but he could do none of these things
until he had worked himself into a frenzy by
dancing and singing. He assured the priests
that, far from feeling pain, the contact with fire
was refreshing to his hands and tongue.
As for his reputation as a medicine man, that
was not difficult to achieve. Pere Paul Rague-
neau, who was for years the head of the Huron
missions, tells us that these Indians recognized
IN DAYS OF WAR 113
three kinds of illness: natural maladies, super-
natural maladies, and maladies of the spirit.
Natural maladies the results of overeating, for
example were left for Nature to cure. Super-
natural maladies were the work of inimical sor-
cerers, and the good offices of the medicine
man were needed to expel from the patient's
body the cause of irritation. Maladies of the
spirit (in other words suppressed desires) were
occasioned by the sick savage's unconscious
need of some object which the medicine man
having found out what it was must endeavor
to supply. This sounds like a difficult job; but
it was made easier by an established custom
which held the patient to be cured when the
medicine man said he was cured. He might die
a few hours or a few weeks later (just as he may
die to-day after a successful operation); but for
the time being he was healed. To a really clever
person like Joseph Chihwatenhwa the situation
presented no difficulties.
The niece of this accomplished practitioner
became, as might have been expected, an alert
and docile pupil. Her name is mentioned now and
then in Mere Marie's letters, and always with a
word of praise. She was one of the little girls
who wanted to be a hermit. She learned to speak
ii 4 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
French, and to sew neatly. She was gentle in
manner and speech. After two years in the con-
vent her parents sent for her, and Uncle Joseph
was commissioned to take her home. The child
was reluctant to go, and the nuns were equally
reluctant to send her so far away; but every
possible precaution was taken to insure her
safety. A fleet of Huron canoes was leaving Que-
bec. Pere Isaac Jogues, who had been collecting
supplies for his mission to the Chippewas, ac-
companied it, and with him went two French
donnes, Rene Goupil and Guillaume Couture.
Therese, sad and silent, was put under their care.
Her quiescence was the customary immobility
of her race.
From Three Rivers she wrote her first and last
letter to Mere Marie, a painstaking little letter
which said in schoolgirl fashion, "thank you"
and "farewell." Thirty-one miles above Three
Rivers the Hurons were attacked by a body of
Iroquois two hundred and fifty strong. Some
were killed, many were captured, among them
Uncle Joseph, Therese, and a young cousin, a
boy of seventeen. The donnes might have es-
caped, but they would not leave Pere Jogues.
The prisoners and the captured supplies a rich
booty- -were hurried far away, for Montmagny
IN DAYS OF WAR 115
was at Fort Richelieu, and the savages feared
pursuit.
What followed is the old sickening story of
long-drawn cruelty. It is told in detail in the
Relations and by Parkman. Most of the Hurons,
including their leader, Eustache, were burned,
or tortured to death. Uncle Joseph, who had as
many lives as a cat, Therese, and the young
cousin were set aside for ransom or adoption.
The surgeon, Goupil, was beaten, cut, hacked,
and finally brained by an Iroquois. Couture bore
hours of torture with such undaunted courage
that his admiring tormentors adopted him then
and there into the tribe, and never in three years
relaxed their respect for him. Pere Jogues was
thought too valuable to be wasted on an eve-
ning's entertainment. The French might ransom
him, the Dutch at Fort Orange had already of-
fered to do so. Nevertheless, he was hated for
his nationality and for his priesthood. The
thrifty savages considered that in his case they
might perhaps eat their cake and have it; they
might torture him first, and sell what was left
of him afterwards.
In pursuance of this plan they cut off one of
his thumbs, crushed and mangled his two fore-
fingers, forced him to run the gauntlet, and
ii6 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
burned his wounded body with lighted torches.
When he had partially recovered, the Dutch,
with whom the Iroquois were on excellent terms,
effected his release, dressed his hurts, and
shipped him to Falmouth, whence he made his
way to France.
These were the sights which the child, Therese,
witnessed in her captivity. No harm was done
her; but sorrow and pity and fear were her daily
portion. Uncle Joseph, that man of many wiles,
escaped, and, in the course of time, revisited
Quebec. He told the Ursulines, who were full of
anxiety about their former pupil, that Therese
had borne the hardships of her new life bravely
and composedly, only saying now and then with
a touch of artless self-pity: "The nuns would be
sorry for me if they could see me now"; or:
" What would they think at school if they knew
where I was, or what cruel people kept me here ? "
In answer to their eager questions he assured
them that his niece said her prayers piously.
Her rosary had been lost, but she numbered her
Ave Marias on her fingers, or gathered a handful
of stones, and dropped them one by one to in-
sure a proper count. He said also that she was
allowed her liberty, and that several young
braves had indicated their readiness to marry
IN DAYS OF WAR 117
her. This news was most unwelcome to Mere
Marie, who saw in it the undoing of her two
years' labor.
Then followed a period in which tidings came
brokenly and at ever-lengthening intervals. A
far-traveled trader had heard of a Huron girl
who lived unmolested among the Iroquois. A
wandering Montagnais had seen her with a
party of Indians who were fishing. There was a
vague rumor of marriage, and then a blank until
a transient peace was patched up in 1645. It
might have been a lasting peace (I mean by that
a peace counted by years instead of months)
had Montmagny been of a less confiding dis-
position. He had shown tact and wisdom in
bringing it about. He had persuaded the Al-
gonquins of Sillery to spare the lives of two
Iroquois captives, and hold them as hostages,
while he despatched a third with messages of
conciliation. Guillaume Couture, who had lived
for three years among the Indians, helped ma-
terially as a negotiator. The Ursulines used their
influence so well that one of the conditions made
by the French was the return of " a Huron girl
named Therese to her people."
There is no doubt that the fear and horror
entertained for the Iroquois were enhanced by
ii8 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
their occasional for it was only occasional
cannibalism. To the reasoning mind, being eaten
after death is nothing like so bad as being tor-
tured before; but mankind at large does not
reason. Marco Polo, who was highly civilized
but not at all squeamish, pronounced cannibal-
ism to be "an evil and a parlous custom," and
the world has so considered it. The fact that
other tribes were not sinless in this regard
(Parkman says that among the Miamis there
was a clan or family whose hereditary duty or
privilege it was to devour the bodies of prison-
ers burned to death) did not lessen the abhor-
rence felt for the great offender. It is one thing
to be aware of a practice and another to come
into contact with it. "The Iroquois are not men,
they are wolves," sobbed the Algonquin women
who told Pere Jacques Buteux how they had
seen their babies roasted and eaten; and the
missionary, who was himself killed ten years
later by the same relentless foe, wrote in the
Relations: "They eat men with more pleasure
and a better appetite than hunters eat a boar or
a stag."
If it be hard to read details of cruelty practised
nearly three hundred years ago, what must it
have been to hear of them as they happened, to
IN DAYS OF WAR 119
have known and loved the victims of yesterday,
to have waited trembling for the tidings of to-
morrow, to have gone about one's daily work
with this shadow darkening life? Again and
again Mere Marie voices her excessive grief at
the calamities that have overtaken the Huron
missions. New France is no longer "cette bien-
heureuse terre" but a land of suffering. She im-
plores the prayers of far-off friends, safe by their
own firesides. She tells of many deaths, of an
occasional escape, of the amazing endurance of
fugitives fleeing through the forests without food
or shelter. Her soul that had "floated in a deluge
of peace " was racked by pity and pain. A strong
body of Iroquois ventured to attack Montreal,
and were repulsed with loss. They captured and
carried away with them a French woman whom
they tortured appallingly, wreaking upon this
helpless creature their rage and shame at defeat.
"Life is a little thing," wrote Mere Marie, "but
cruelty and torment are great and horrible
realities. Pray, pray, lest our spirits be enfeebled,
and despondency deepens into despair."
The Jesuits strove hard to prevent the torture
of Iroquois captives who were few and far be-
tween. Sometimes they were successful, some-
times they failed, hatred being stronger than
120 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
grace. The Hurons protested stoutly against the
baptism of an Iroquois warrior who was to be
burned at the stake. They said they did not want
their enemies to go to Heaven, they wanted
them to go to Hell. It was a mental attitude
closely resembling that of the mediaeval tribunals
which sentenced malefactors to die "without
benefit of clergy"; and that of the British judge
in India who hanged an offender with a pigskin
round his neck, meaning that he should believe
himself defiled for eternity. Centuries, races,
civilizations, creeds they may change the face
of the earth; but humanity, forever repeating
itself, defies them all.
It is but fair to the Indians to say that they
believed in their Heaven and Hell as simply and
sincerely as if they had been living in the Middle
Ages. They were not seeking to play upon a fear
they did not share. Mere Marie, writing to an
Ursuline nun in France, gives her an animated
account of a converted Huron named Charles
who delighted in preaching, and who came to
the convent to tell his good friends how well
he preached. " Do you know what I have done ? "
he said. "I have been to the villages, and I have
instructed young and old, big and little, men,
women, and children. I said to them: 'Quit your
IN DAYS OF WAR 121
foolishness ! It would be all very well if you had
made yourselves, or if you were going to live
always in this world; but there is a God, a great
Spirit, who has made the heavens and the earth,
and everything which they contain. There are
two roads, and you must choose between them.
One leads you to Hell and the devils; the other
to Heaven where He who has made all things
lives. If you believe in Him you will go to Him
when you die. If you do not believe in Him, you
will go down into fire, and you will never get
out.'"
" If the love of God does not animate thee,"
wrote A Kempis, "then it is well that the fear
of Hell should restrain thee." Charles was de-
termined to make sure.
The flimsy pretense of peace was rent apart by
the Mohawks in 1646. They signalized their
change of heart by butchering Pere Jogues who
had returned to New France as soon as his
wounds were healed, and he had received from
the Pope a dispensation to celebrate Mass a
privilege from which his maimed hands would
have ordinarily debarred him. Pere Jerome Lale-
mant, the head of the Canadian missions, wrote
sorrowfully to Paris that the perfidy of these
savages had blasted their hopes of security; but,
122 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
in truth, nothing had been secure since the
governor, putting faith in wampum instead of in
guns, had withdrawn the French soldiers from
the Huron country. Terrible tidings poured into
Quebec. The destruction of the mission of St.
Joseph near Three Rivers, and the death of Pere
Antoine Daniel at the door of his chapel where
he had been saying his morning Mass. The
destruction of the Petun mission of St. Jean, and
the death of Pere Charles Gamier, a holy and
heroic man who had given up wealth, station,
and the charm of life for the martyrdom of a
Canadian missionary. His assistant, Pere Noel
Chabanel, had been recalled from St. Jean; but
was surprised and murdered in the woods, as was
also Pere Leonard Garreau, returning to that
"Castle Dangerous," Montreal.
The climax of horror was reached in the deaths
of Pere Jean de Brebeuf and Pere Gabriel Lale-
mant at St. Ignace. This is the darkest page in
the history of New France, and few there are who
care to turn it. Pere Brebeuf came of a noble
Norman family, sharing his lineage (so says
Parkman) with the English earls of Arundel.
He was tall of stature, strong of limb, stern of
purpose, and stout of heart. Pere Lalemant was
frail physically, gentle in spirit, devout and
IN DAYS OF WAR 123
steadfast. The two priests were singled out for
the utmost display of cruelty of which the Iro-
quois were capable. The details of their deaths
are told in the Relations, and were read with
shuddering dismay throughout France, the bald
simplicity of the narrative serving only to
heighten its dreadfulness.
It cannot be read to-day. Suffice it to say that
Pere Brebeuf lived four hours under the torture,
and Pere Lalemant incredible as it sounds
seventeen. Pere Brebeuf's courage was resolute
and unfaltering, a proud scorn of his tormentors
mingling with and humanizing the holy courage
of the martyr. No Iroquois was ever more defiant
of pain; and the savages, recognizing the one
quality that they respected, drank his blood
and devoured his heart, that the splendor of his
spirit might reinforce their own stoicism. Pere
Lalemant prayed earnestly as long as he had
strength for prayer; but long before he died there
was left in him no consciousness save that of
suffering. He had passed the utmost bounds of
endurance, and his dim brain could register noth-
ing but pain. The mangled bodies were found
by a party of seven Frenchmen who were sent
from Ste. Marie to St. Ignace after the departure
of the Iroquois. They heard later from Huron
i2 4 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
captives, who had escaped during the journey
through the woods, every particular of the pro-
longed torture. Christophe Regnaut, a donne,
wrote the account for the Relations, telling it
precisely as it had been told to him, and winding
up with these simple words: "It is not a doctor
of the Sorbonne who has composed this letter,
as you can easily see. It is a man who has lived
more than he has thought." The skull of Pere
Brebeuf, enclosed in a silver reliquary sent from
France, is preserved in the Hotel Dieu in Quebec,
and his name has passed into a synonym for
valor.
The last victim of this desolating contest was
Pere Jacques Buteux, a native of Picardie. His
case is an interesting one because he had long
been considered as too infirm for the Canadian
mission, and had given up all hope of going. Per-
haps his superiors thought that a good mentality
and great fervor might outweigh physical weak-
ness. Perhaps the likelihood of a violent death
made health seem of little account. At all events
Pere Buteux was dispatched to Quebec; and
at the end of a year Pere Le Jeune expressed
some bewilderment as to what had become
of his infirmities. Either cold and a meagre
diet agreed with him, or else he had not the
IN DAYS OF WAR 125
time to be ill. His tiny chapel was built on
a low hill some distance from Sillery. "I have
repeatedly seen him," wrote Pere Le Jeune,
"when the wind had extinguished his lantern,
overturned him in four feet of snow, and rolled
him from the top of the hill to the bottom. This
may well astonish those who knew him in
France."
From Sillery Pere Buteux was sent to Tadous-
sac, and thence to Three Rivers. The Attica-
megues, or White Fish Indians, who lived many
miles northward, begged him to visit their
villages. In the early spring of 1651 he made the
astonishing journey on snowshoes, and survived
it. Those who are curious to know how this
could have been accomplished may read his
journal published in the Relations. It is a frag-
mentary narrative, but as good as anything of its
kind that has ever been given to the world. The
following year this dauntless adventurer under-
took to repeat his experience. The season was far
advanced, the snows were melting, the streams
swollen, game was scarce, and every step of the
way was beset by difficulties. On the loth of
May the priest, a Huron guide, and a coureur de
bois were fired upon by a small body of ambushed
Iroquois. The two Frenchmen were killed, and
126 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
their naked bodies flung into the river. The
Indian, easily captured because he was carrying
a light canoe, made his escape in the forest, and
brought back the sorrowful news to Three
Rivers.
Throughout these years of warfare, fugitives
had poured into Quebec as their only refuge.
It had been terribly hard to find them shelter
and food; but unstinted charity accomplished
this daily marvel. The colonists had very little,
but they parted with everything they could
spare, and with much that they could not. The
Ursulines stripped their convent bare; and Mere
Marie, who had mastered the Algonquin and
Montagnais tongues, began the study of Huron
that she might come into closer contact with the
savages who thronged to the convent for food.
When the skies were darkest and hope burned
low, when the ranks of the Jesuits were thinning
fast, and the ranks of the blessed martyrs were
expanding unduly, when Mere Marie's letters
had become a repetition of disastrous news,
there arrived tidings too good to be credited.
The Onondagans, bravest of the five Iroquois
nations, had made conciliatory overtures to the
unsubdued little colony of Montreal, which had
never ceased to put its trust in God, and keep
IN DAYS OF WAR 127
its powder dry. "Naked and defenseless," a
delegation of Onondagan warriors confided in
the white man's promise, placed themselves in
the white man's power, and proudly asked for
peace. The French, uncertain whether this was
a new and daring, ruse or a miracle from Heaven,
received their visitors courteously, and watched
them apprehensively. Terms were discussed and
word was carried to Quebec. "One day," wrote
the astounded Pere le Mercier, "the Iroquois
are burning and killing, the next they are making
visits and sending gifts. Undoubtedly they have
their designs. God, too, has His."
Chapter Fill
A NEW START
ON THE night of December 30, 1650, the Ursuline
convent, "the fairest ornament of the colony,"
burned to the ground. Snow lay deep on the
frozen earth, the icy air held the profound still-
ness of winter. Suddenly Mere Anne des Sera-
phins, who had charge of one of the dormitories,
started from her sleep to find the room full of
smoke, and the flames already licking the floor.
Quickly she gave the alarm. There were then in
the building fifteen choir and lay sisters, Mme.
de la Peltrie, who had taken up her abode in the
convent shortly after her return from Montreal,
a dozen or so of little French girls, and two score
little Indians. All these children were led,
carried, or driven into safety; but no time was
given them to dress. The fire was sweeping the
lower story, and it was hard work herding them
to the doors. They shivered in their night clothes,
"toutes leurs robes et leurs petite s equipages ay ant
ete brutes" The nuns were not much better off,
though some of them had snatched up their
cloaks as they fled. Mme. de la Peltrie made her
128
A NEW START 129
escape in her night dress "quite an old worn
night dress," observed Mere Marie with regret.
She evidently considered that a new one would
have been more appropriate to the situation.
There was no hope of saving the house, and no
time was wasted trying to do so. The good people
of Quebec swarmed to the rescue with all the
clothing they could carry for the half-frozen
fugitives. Mere Marie was the last to leave the
burning convent. She had hoped to save some
bales of cloth which lay in the vestry, and which
would have meant so much to the denuded com-
munity, but the flames barred her way. She did,
however, collect a few important papers and
what money she had before hurrying to the
chapel, which was the last part of the building
to go. Pere Vimont and two other priests had
arrived. The blessed Sacrament, the sacred
vessels, and a few vestments were carried out.
Then the fire took this last refuge and laid it in
ruins.
When there was time to ask questions, the
source of the catastrophe was quickly revealed.
The kitchen and the cook were to blame. "One
of our good sisters," wrote Mere Marie to her
son, "having to bake the next day, had put her
dough to rise; and because the cold was so intense
130 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
she placed a pan of embers under the bread-
trough to keep its contents warm. She meant,
of course, to remove this before she went to bed;
but, tired and sleepy, she forgot. Another sister
passed through the kitchen at eight o'clock, and
noticed nothing wrong. As the wood grew dry
in the heat it caught fire, and the flames spread
unchecked from the bench to the floor, to the
walls, and to the room above where Mere Anne
des Seraphins slept with the savage children."
No word of reproach for the erring lay sister
was ever heard. Mere Marie rivaled Sir Isaac
Newton in her forbearance. She could not say
with him: "Oh, Diamond, Diamond, you little
know what mischief you have wrought " (words
no less famous for being apocryphal), because
the unhappy culprit knew too well what mischief
she had wrought, and her self-reproach needed
no augmentation. Nevertheless, to abstain from
upbraiding is to insure composure of spirit and
a mannerly atmosphere. It was a Roman philoso-
pher who said : "Those who love God bear lightly
whatsoever befalleth them," and it was a French
nun who proved his words.
If the destitution was complete, the relief was
immediate and energetic. "We are reduced to the
nakedness of Job," wrote Mere Marie, "but
A NEW START 131
with one great difference. Our friends are com-
passionate and helpful, which is more than can
be said of his." The governor (M. d'Aillebout
had succeeded Montmagny) proposed sheltering
the homeless Ursulines in the fort; but the
hospital at Sillery opened its doors to them, and
they gladly took refuge there until Mme. de la
Peltrie's house could be prepared for their re-
ception. Mere Marie assured her son that the
kind nursing sisters were more troubled about
the condition of their guests than were the guests
themselves. "They have clothed us with their
own gray habits, and have furnished us with
linen and with all other necessities. They have
done this eagerly and cordially, which was
generous on their part for we did need so much.
We live as they do, eating at the same table and
keeping the same rules" (wise Mere Marie!),
"just as if we were of their order."
Three weeks the Ursulines stayed at the
hospital, and then transferred themselves to
Mme. de la Peltrie's little home which had so
fortunately escaped the flames; but which, hav-
ing been built for two, was somewhat inadequate
for sixteen. They knew they would have to re-
main there for many months, so took their
measures accordingly, compressing themselves
i 3 2 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
into the smallest possible space by day, and
sleeping in tiers at night. Mere Marie admits
from time to time that they are pressed for room;
but she has a great deal more to say about the
kindness of their neighbors. The Jesuits sent
them provisions, linen, bed covers, and all the
black stuff held in reserve for new cassocks, so
that they might make themselves habits, and
return the borrowed gray ones to the hospital.
The governor and Mme. d'Aillebout were gener-
ous, and everybody lent a helping hand. "No
one is so poor that he has not something to
offer," wrote Mere Marie. " Every day we receive
gifts; a stove, a cloak, a towel, a newly stitched
chemise, a few eggs. You know what the country
is like, but its charity is greater than its poverty,
and Heaven helps us all."
Nevertheless, the prospect of rebuilding might
well have daunted the stoutest heart in Christen-
dom. Mere Marie had begged with some show of
assurance for her first convent; but how could she
approach her former benefactors with demands
for a second? She might forgive the heedless
sister who left a pan of embers under a wooden
bread-trough; but her correspondents in France
would naturally think that when they had given
money to build a school, it was as little as the
A NEW START 133
nuns could do to keep it standing. Yet it had to
be replaced and replaced at once; the need was
urgent. The Jesuits, who are always rich because
they are always poor, offered to lend eight thou-
sand livres; the governor advanced eight thou-
sand more; and with this sum in hand, Mere
Marie, a woman of fifty, whose life had known
no respite from toil and care and responsibility,
set herself to rebuild a structure which, with its
furnishing, had cost sixty thousand livres. "We
must do this or return to France," she wrote,
"and our courage has not yet fallen so low as to
admit defeat. We have not been beaten to the
point of flight."
It is needless to say that the Hurons improved
the occasion by holding a council, making
speeches, and offering the Indian equivalent of
resolutions. Naturally they would not lose such
a chance. A delegation headed by the chief
Taiearoux (whose name uses up all the vowels)
proceeded to Sillery, and harangued the Ursu-
lines, Pere Ragueneau being present. The oration
was sincere, naive, and touching. "In the fire
that consumed your home," said the sachem,
"we Hurons beheld again our flaming villages.
You are now as poor and as unhappy as we are.
Do not leave us. When your friends in France
134 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
learn that you are houseless, they will say
'Return to your country and your people.' Do
not go. Show that your care for us is greater than
your love for what is your own. To strengthen
your purpose, we present you with two belts of
wampum. With the first we beg that you will
remain in Quebec, planting your feet firmly on
the soil. With the second we beg that you will
rebuild your school, and open its doors to our
children."
Poor Mere Marie needed no solicitations to
remain. Her whole soul cried out against leaving
this spot which had seen her hardest labors, her
highest hopes, her deepest disappointments.
Her feet were, indeed, rooted to the soil, and,
happily, land does not burn. Its permanence
was to stand her in good stead. Very little of the
nine acres had hitherto been put under culti-
vation; but the convent chaplain, Pere Antoine
Vignal, a thrifty and resolute cleric, now pro-
posed that every available rod should be turned
to account. He took charge of this work in the
spring, ploughing and planting as though to
the manner born, seeking counsel from farmers,
spurring his hired help to harder labour than
they had ever known, and raising crops of peas
A NEW START 135
and barley that were the wonder of Quebec.
"We have six cows that furnish us with milk and
butter," wrote Mere Marie, "and a double team
of oxen that serve for farm work, and to draw
building materials for the new convent. We can
look out of our windows and see it grow. The
foundations are laid, the chimneys are in place,
in a few days the carpenters will be at work.
Pray for me, my dear son, that I may complete
the task to which I have pledged my honor and
my life."
On the 4th of April, 1653, Mere Saint Joseph,
the "laughing nun," died. She came of a noble
race, feudal lords in Anjou who had in their day
dealt justice (or injustice) with a high hand to
their tenantry. She had been sent to the Ursulines
of Tours when she was nine years old. There she
played, a merry and contented child; there she
studied, a gay and popular schoolgirl; and there
she was admitted into the novitiate at sixteen.
She was twenty-four when Mere Marie asked
for her as a fellow worker in Quebec; a wise
selection, for the young nun's qualities were
precisely those most needed in this field of labor.
For some unfathomable reason she is frequently
alluded to in the Relations as "cette Amazone
136 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
Canadienne" ; but no one could have less re-
sembled those diamond-hard warriors whose
pastime was in battle.
Mere Marie and Mme. de la Peltrie were
women of affairs. They had known the world;
Mere Marie the world of the bourgeoisie, Mme.
de la Peltrie the world of the noblesse. They had
lived, and struggled, and passed through many
vicissitudes. Mere Saint Joseph knew only the
life of a religious. The little savages whom she
tended and taught had no simpler outlook than
hers. She was not a remarkable woman, and she
had no sense of leadership; but for winning confi-
dence, for inspiring affection, for taking life as
it came and extracting savor from it, she was
without a peer in the convent, or in Quebec. The
Indians, young and old, sought her services and
her sympathy. They felt that she, and she alone,
could see clearly the difficulties that beset their
path. It was to her that a baptized Huron, who
had been mocked at by his people, and whom
she exhorted to patience, said simply: "You do
not know how hard it is for a man to be called a
woman."
The poor "laughing nun" suffered sorely in
the last weeks of her illness because of the un-
skillful treatment of the doctors. She was tended
A NEW START 137
solicitously by Mere Marie, who had brought
her to this strange new world, and had laid upon
her shoulders the burden now about to be lifted.
Night after night the older woman watched by
the bedside of the younger, the firelight serving
for a lamp. Often Mme. de la Peltrie joined the
vigil, or relieved the tired nurse. The savages
came daily to ask when they could see their
friend, and left uncomforted. They followed her
to her grave in the convent ground, and for many
months pointed out the spot to trading Hurons,
saying simply: "There she lies."
Because of her goodness and the love that was
felt for her, stories gathered thickly about Mere
Saint Joseph's name. It was said that on the
night she died her radiant spirit appeared to an
old lay sister of Tours who had taken affection-
ate care of her when she was a little child. " Dear
Sister Elizabeth," the apparition said, "you have
a journey to take. Come, come, it is time to
start." Smiling, it vanished, and the aged nun
wakened, and went to sleep again, confident that
her hour was at hand. She died very serenely
before the month was out.
Another tale was told of a little French girl,
Anne Baillargeon, who had been captured as a
child of three or four by the Iroquois, and had
138 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
been adopted by a woman of the tribe. During
the years of her captivity she had lost all re-
membrance of the white man's speech and of the
white man's ways, and had become a hardened
little savage, scarcely distinguishable from the
Indian children. When the treaty of 1655 brought
her release, she naturally did not want to leave
the only friends she knew. She fled into the
woods, fought fiercely when captured, remained
sullen and speechless during the journey to
Quebec, and made her last stand for freedom
outside the convent door. Enter it she would not,
but struggled with her little might to break away
and escape. Then came a presence, felt by all,
though unseen by any save the frightened, furi-
ous child. Silently it took her by the hand.
Silently the defiant eyes were raised to meet
those other eyes that understood and pitied.
Then the snarling lips softened, the tense little
body relaxed, and Anne Baillargeon, led by the
"laughing nun," turned her back upon savagery,
and went with confidence into her new home.
There were now two hopes burning high in
Mere Marie's unconquerable soul: the hope of
peace restored, the hope of her convent rebuilt.
Not for a moment did she entertain the notion
that the Iroquois had experienced a change of
A NEW START 139
heart. She understood clearly that when they
cried quits with the French, it was because they
had another war on their hands (this time it was
with the Fries), and preferred concentrating on
one foe at a time. Nevertheless, a breathing spell
meant much to the harassed and discouraged
colonists, who did not themselves err on the side
of simplicity. Montreal promised to celebrate
with a procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin
every anniversary of the blessed day on which
had come the overtures of peace; but Maison-
neuve permitted no sign of joy or relief to reach
the enemy's eye. He held his head high, and his
words were few and stern. He asked, as proof of
good-will, the release of all French and Indian
prisoners, many of whom were, indeed, returned
to their homes. It was bitter hard for him to
make any terms with savages who had com-
mitted such hideous cruelties; but the French
were far too weak to dream of subduing their
antagonists. That task was left for Frontenac,
who thirty-seven years later paid back the long-
standing debt with interest.
The Iroquois, on the other hand, laid aside
their customary arrogance, and exhibited a truly
mystifying suavity. They assumed the open,
honest manner that was so endearing in lago,
i 4 o MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
and expressed a pained surprise that the white
man should doubt their sincerity. "My heart is
in my tongue," said a warrior to the governor in
Quebec, "and my tongue is in my heart. They
are one and the same." Pere Vimont admitted
that he was lost in admiration at the wiles of
these accomplished savages. They would make
presents of beaver skins and wampum, seeking
in return the firearms which they never got.
They would profess friendship for the French,
and enmity for their allies, the Dutch. They
were more than willing to release their captives.
" Pray observe the fashion in which they conduct
their councils," he wrote in the Relations, "and
never tell me that they are like brute beasts.
Their education is of the best. Their purpose is to
free themselves from fear of us that they may
the more easily massacre our allies. This would be
simplified if we would only give them arms. They
lack the spirit of truth and honor; but, like the
children of this world, they are wise in their
generation."
Parkman tells us that the Five Nations, who so
successfully terrorized white men and red, never
mustered more than four thousand warriors
scattered over a huge area. It sounds incredible;
for though such numbers seem immense as com-
A NEW START 141
pared with the numbers of French fighting men,
they were small as compared with the massed
Indian nations who failed to hold their own
against an enemy subtler, bolder, and immeasur-
ably more ferocious than they were. "I had as
lief," wrote Pere Vimont, "be beset by goblins
as by the Iroquois." " Inordinate pride, the lust
of blood and of dominion were the mainsprings
of their warfare," says Parkman. They were the
worst of conquerors; but when conquered, the
qualities of their defects induced a savage
grandeur which turned defeat to victory. There
is an account in the Relations of an Iroquois
chief tortured to death by the Montagnais,
which demonstrates this rather important fact.
"I am content," said the victim in the midst of
his agony. "You cannot make me tremble or
cry. I have slain my enemies, and my friends will
slay many more to avenge my death."
There was a note of conviction about the last
sentence which must have seriously damped the
pleasure of the occasion.
No other American colony ever put as much of
its history into print as did New France. The
forty-one volumes of the Jesuit Relations form
but a small part of the literary output. Their
especial value lies in their fidelity to facts, and
H2 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
in the closeness of the tie which bound the
missionary to his country. He was every whit as
loyal to France as to Rome. As a unit of a per-
fectly systematized whole, his devotion and
heroism were tempered by wisdom, and con-
trolled by authority. He and the trader were the
only white men who had any real inkling of the
Indian's psychology; and, of the two, the priest
Was the more tolerant observer. " Every mission
post became an embassy," writes Mr. William
Bennett Munro, " and every Jesuit an ambassa-
dor of his race, striving to strengthen the bonds
of friendship between the people to whom he
went and the people from whom he came. As
interpreter in the conduct of negotiations, and in
the making of treaties, the missionary was in-
valuable."
He certainly played an important and diffi-
cult role in the peacemaking which followed the
Onondagan overtures to Montreal. Pere Simon
le Moyne, who was sent into the heart of the
Iroquois country, spent weeks conducting and
attending councils, making and hearing speeches,
giving and receiving presents; and returned un-
molested to Quebec, which was a good deal more
than his friends had hoped for. He also had some
curious and interesting experiences. One Iroquois
A NEW START 143
chief gave him a New Testament which had be-
longed to Pere Brebeuf, and another a little
devotional book which had been found on the
body of Pere Gamier. Why these relics, so
meaningless to savages, had been preserved for
several years, it would be hard to say; but Pere
le Moyne received them as gifts from Heaven.
He was shown the salt springs of Onondaga,
useless to the Indians who ate no salt, and who
believed that an evil spirit dwelt in the waters
and fouled them. Game was so abundant, es-
pecially on the return voyage, that it seemed to
the priest as though the deer pursued the hunters.
" My boatmen are in the best humor possible,"
he wrote in his journal; "for flesh is the paradise
of a man of flesh."
Another Jesuit, Pere Joseph Antoine Poncet,
was instrumental in fixing the terms of peace; but
he did not escape unharmed from the hands of
the Mohawks. He and a colonist, Mathurin
Franchetot, had been taken prisoners at Cap
Rouge, and carried into the wilderness; a hard
journey made with pitiless speed. When their
destination was reached, Franchetot was burned
at the stake, and Pere Poncet given to a squaw
to replace a dead brother. Before disposing of
him in this fashion, however, an old Indian
144 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
examined his hands carefully, called a child of
six, gave the urchin a knife, and bade him cut off
the captive's left forefinger. The amputation was
neatly done, the wound was cauterized with a
live ember and bound with a scrap of corn husk,
and the priest handed over to his new relative,
who treated him with the kindness invariably
shown to the adopted. When peace was proposed,
Quebec asked for his release, and the Indians
deemed him an excellent envoy to carry their
terms to the French. It never occurred to them
that he owed them a grudge for his lost finger
or his lost friend. These things were incidental
to war.
Several Mohawk warriors accompanied Pere
Poncet to Quebec under promise of protection.
He came laden with gifts, and so did they. "At
last," wrote Pere le Mercier to France, "the
skies look serene; but the Iroquois are ever and
always perfidious. We may think ourselves at
peace with them, and find to our cost that they
are not at peace with us. They do not, however,
seem badly disposed towards the French. Their
inextinguishable hatred is for our Indian allies."
The only creature in New France that had
profited by the war was the beaver. Freed in
some measure from continuous and cruel pur-
A NEW START 145
suit, these admirable little beasts had increased
and multiplied, and built themselves beautiful
homes, and lived in happiness and security. But
what was life to them was death to the prosperity
of Quebec. "Canada," says Parkman, "lived on
the beaver." When the harassed and fleeing
Hurons could no longer bring in their yearly
quota of skins for exportation, the colonists had
no assured income. Pere la Richardie says that
while the Paris livre was the customary "money
of account," the "actual currency" was as a rule
the castor or beaver-skin, worth in 1650 about
four livres a pound. As the value of the yearly
export was often from two hundred thousand to
three hundred thousand livres, we can estimate
the casualties in the ranks of the beavers, and
the money in the pockets of the traders. Now
that peace had been temporarily restored, the
poor little animals were found to be so numerous
that Quebec became almost rich, and Mere
Marie, though still weighted with debt, had
money to pay the artisans who were putting the
finishing touches to her convent.
Such labor as it had represented, such hopes,
and fears, and triumphs, and disappointments!
Pere Le Jeune confessed frankly that he failed
to see how the work had ever been accomplished.
i 4 6 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
He was not without experiences of his own; he
had surmounted difficulties in his day; but this
structure, bigger and more solid than its prede-
cessor, had gone up step by step in defiance of
circumstance. "He who builds here," he wrote,
"does not soon come to an end. It is useless to
do as did that man who wished to build a tower.
Sedens computabat sumptos suos. It is useless to
reckon principal and income. One is always short
in a country like this where everything is twice as
dear as in France, and where the few workmen
who are to be found do not hire themselves out
for a price in silver, but for their weight in gold."
Mere Marie's letters give us a pretty clear
insight into the ways and means by which she
accomplished her miracle. On the morning of
May 19, 1651, the indefatigable Mme. de la
Peltrie laid the cornerstone of the new convent;
and from that day on every departing ship
carried batches of papers, and every ship that
came into port brought some measure of help.
There was no time to import workmen from
France, and Mere Marie considered with Pere
Le Jeune that wages in Quebec were uncommonly
high. "Forty-five to fifty sols [sous] a day to
artisans. Thirty sols a day and their food to
laborers." She probably got more for her money
A NEW START 147
than did the Jesuit, being trained to business,
and having a perilously narrow margin to her
account. When it came to providing meals, she
no doubt did better than any priest could have
done. The capacity of the French middle-class
woman to feed her men thriftily and well has
been a powerful factor in making France a great
and contented nation.
It was uphill work. "Write to me generously,"
she entreats her son, "and forgive my silence.
My family is so big, and I am charged with so
many affairs. I must see to it that all we need
is sent from France. I must meet all payments
for these goods. I must deal personally with the
captain of the ship, and persuade the sailors to
prompt delivery. There seem at times a thousand
little cares plucking me by the sleeve, a thousand
things to be remembered and attended to at
once." After this exposition of her duties there is
something naive in her remark that she needs
the courage of a man to overcome her difficulties.
"I feel my way uncertainly step by step, and
know not what the future may bring forth."
What it did bring forth was a helping hand in
every fresh emergency. There is no denying the
skill with which Mere Marie drew into her toils
the wealthy and the generous; or else the flame
i 4 8 MfeRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
of her spirit communicated itself to theirs. Now
and then she paused to marvel at her own suc-
cess, and to admit that twenty-four thousand
livres were "pure Providence." The Jesuits did
not fail to set forth her needs in the Relations.
Pere Ragueneau wrote a strong appeal in 1651.
Quebec, he said, could not get along without the
hospital and the school. They were the things
that every stranger asked to see. The colonists
were not able to send their little girls to France
to be educated; and as for the little Indians, they
had no other home, no other chance to be lifted
out of savagery, and made into "good Christians
and housewives."
It was undoubtedly a trial to Mere Marie
that Mme. de la Peltrie should, at this particular
juncture, have set her heart upon building a
church for the new convent; not a chapel, which
was merely a room set apart and dedicated to
religious services, but a separate and com-
paratively expensive structure. It was useless
to tell her that the needs of the children came
first. She merely replied that it had been the
desire of her life to build a church. "God has
not given her the grace to detach herself from
desires," observed Mere Marie philosophically,
and refrained from further comment. It was not
A NEW START 149
her habit to waste time on arguments. "Avoid
the discussion of grievances," was one of her
axioms; and "Try and get a clearer view of
people with whom we are out of sympathy,"
was another. They help us to understand how
two women so fundamentally unlike as the
disciplined nun and the impetuous fondatrice
remained firm friends and co-workers to the end.
With or without Mme. de la Peltrie's help, the
convent was ready for occupancy in the spring
of 1654. On the eve of Pentecost the Ursulines,
escorted by a procession of priests and people,
moved into their new home. Bells were rung and
bonfires were lit. A few months later Mere Marie
wrote happily to her son that, although she was
still in debt, her creditors were kind; and that
the peace had brought a great increase of little
Hurons and Algonquins. She would probably be
compelled to seek new nuns from France. If
only "ces demi-demons" the Iroquois, could
be held off, all would go well. The harvests were
ripening, the beavers were plentiful, the colonists
were full of courage and of hope. Notwithstand-
ing their perils and privations, it was her firm
conviction that they were better off in Canada
than they would have been in France.
Chapter IX
WHITE MEN AND RED
LA HONTAN says that the Canadian farmer lived
better than the French gentleman. It is a much
quoted statement, but over-emphatic, as are all
La Hontan's statements, and written in a period
of comparative peace and plenty. Even in Mere
Marie's time, however, the grants of seigneuries
had begun. The first was ceded in 1623 to Louis
Hebert, a Paris apothecary, who came to Quebec
when Champlain was governor. A tract of land
overlooking the settlement was given to him;
and, in the absence of drugs and customers, he
turned farmer, felled his trees, built his home,
and grew rich in possessions if not in money. The
one imperative duty of the seigneur was to in-
duce settlers to come and live on his estate. The
ground was rented to them on terms too easy
to be burdensome. Six days' labor in the year,
a bushel or so of grain, a few chickens or turkeys,
a share of the fish caught in the seigneur's river,
and the pleasant duty of planting a Maypole
before the seigneur's door. Around this Maypole
the tenants gathered to gossip and sing; at its
150
WHITE MEN AND RED 151
foot they built a mighty bonfire in the seigneur's
honor, and when that burned low they adjourned
to eat and drink under the seigneur's hospitable
roof. It sounds, until we look a little deeper into
the picture, like the carefree peasantry of the
opera.
There is an allusion in one of Mere Marie's
letters to the Eve of Saint John, and to the bon-
fire which was the traditional feature of its cele-
bration; so we know that this ancient custom of
France and Germany was preserved in the New
World. There was always plenty of wood for the
firing. It was the one thing in which the colonists
were rich. And if in France, where every little
twig is held of value, a town like Amboise can
to-day build for Saint John a bonfire so massive
and so mighty that it burns twelve hours, what
could not Canada with its towering forests
accomplish in this regard ? These were the pyres
on which in the Middle Ages, and long afterwards,
were tossed the cats offered as a holocaust to
the cruel humor of men. Countless little victims
were burned in France before Louis the Thir-
teenth, then a child, interceded in their behalf,
and Henry the Fourth put an end to the sport.
Happily the colonists, if not gentle, were certainly
not cruel. They were sickened by the prevailing
152 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
cruelty of the savages, and their natural reaction
was to kindness.
It is inevitable that the history of New France,
like the history of all other countries, should be
written in terms of war. It is not only the fre-
quency of war, but its positive quality and the
type of men it creates, which engages our at-
tention. The hostility of the Iroquois had a great
deal to do with the character of the French
colonist, especially in Montreal where it de-
veloped a heroic strain; but if we contemplate
it too long the picture is unduly darkened. There
was never a time when a large proportion of the
farmers failed to sow and reap their crops. They
were not safe from Indians, but they were safe
from tyrannous laws and harshly administered
taxes. Winters were long and summers were short;
but the land grew wheat, and rye, and maize,
and peas. There was no orchard fruit, but berries
were plentiful. Tobacco, that priceless boon, was
easily raised. The game, which in France was
worth a peasant's life, was free to all who could
shoot or trap it. The farmers had stout roofs, hot
fires, and rough protecting clothes. What wonder
that their numbers increased in spite of the rov-
ing strain in the habitant's blood, which brought
him to New France in the first place, and which
WHITE MEN AND RED 153
kept him from settling down when he got there.
He breathed the intoxicating air of liberty, and
it sent him wandering into the forests and over
the waterways; hardy, fearless, quick-witted,
and vigilant, a man who could manage to keep
himself alive when all the forces of Nature con-
spired to kill him. It has never been the habit of
the pioneer to listen too intently for the threat
"which runs through all the winning music of
the world."
Canadian authorities had always to reckon
with the nearness of the wilderness, the lure it
held for men who should have been sober tillers
of the soil, the ease with which these men van-
ished into its dim recesses. The coureurs de bois
"coureurs de risque s" La Hontan calls them
who in the early years had been indispensable
as traders, guides, news carriers, and searchers
for copper, became in time a peril to law and
order. Quebec was comfortable, but the woods
were free, and freedom was the breath of their
nostrils. Farming was profitable, but trading was
more so, especially when pelts were bought with
brandy, and sold privately instead of to agents
of the company. Du Lhut, the most famous of
the coureurs, organized his followers into a band,
mapped out their routes, built huts in the forests
iS4 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
for their headquarters, and appraised their wares.
He grew rich if he did not stay rich preferring
to squander than to save and he was a hero in
the eyes of the Canadian youth.
Nothing vexed the King more sorely than the
impunity with which these wanderers escaped
from ordinances, and taxes, and tithes, and mat-
rimony, and hard work, and everything that
was decent and admirable in the eyes of sover-
eignty. He ordered laws to be passed, forbidding
unauthorized departure to the woods, and
severely punishing all offenders. These laws
failed to prevent the exodus; but they served to
keep the fugitives in their asylum. Men would
not come back to be whipped and branded and
imprisoned in Quebec, when they might stay
where they were, avoiding with care the hunting
grounds of the Iroquois, having friendly Indians
always within reach, and perhaps an Indian wife
or two if they were domestically inclined. Re-
spectable settlers stood ready to buy their furs,
for the same reason which induced respectable
Englishmen to buy for years smuggled tea and
brandy and tobacco. Louis, ruler of a land where
no outlaw could escape, found it hard to under-
stand conditions in a land where no enterprising
outlaw could be apprehended.
WHITE MEN AND RED 155
Some controlling and uniting force is essential
in every type of community; and in New France,
as in New England, this force was centred in the
Church. "To the habitant," says Mr. Munro,
"the Church was everything; his school, his
counsellor, his almsgiver, his newspaper, his
philosophy of things present and of things to
come. It furnished the one strong, well-disciplined
organization in New France." The governors
who came between Champlain and Frontenac
were not men of penetrating ability. No one of
them stands nobly out as does Maisonneuve in
the dark setting of Montreal. Parkman says that
Montmagny was "half-monk," and D'Aillebout,
"insanely pious"; but Montmagny was an adroit
negotiator, and D'Aillebout a very brave and
able soldier. Jean de Lauzon, appointed in 1651,
was a capable man of business, but inefficient as
a ruler, and held in some contempt by white
men and by red. Argenson was of stronger calibre
but his day was a short one; and Dubois d'Avau-
gour had the qualities of a commander, when
what was wanted was a skillful helmsman to
steer in troubled waters.
Nevertheless all these men contributed their
share to the well-being of Quebec, which was the
social and commercial centre of New France.
156 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
The colony was run as sedately as a Puritan
settlement, but a wider margin was left for pleas-
ure. Drunkenness and blasphemy were punish-
able offenses. Church-going was enjoined. But
the ascetic Montmagny planted the Maypole at
the church door, and bade the soldiers salute it
with a volley of musketry. He also provided
fireworks for the Feast of Saint Joseph. D'Aille-
bout was not too "insanely pious" to promote
the gayety of New Year's Day; but made a
round of visits, and sent acceptable gifts to
officials and employees. Even Lauzon laid aside
his habitual thrift, and gave gallantly on this
most beloved of French feasts. By the time
Argenson and D'Avaugour came into office,
little luxuries had crept into daily life, little
formalities had added dignity to living; and every
wedding and christening was made an excuse for
entertaining friends and neighbors. The lists of
presents, so carefully noted down in the Relations,
assume a dignified appearance. Pigeon pies and
candied lemon peel still hold their own, wax
candles are still mentioned with respect, and
prunes with appreciation; but cake is coming
into notice, capons outrank pigeons, and good
French cognac must have warmed many a chilly
heart. When we read that the Jesuits sent to the
WHITE MEN AND RED 157
Ursulines small enameled images of Saint Ignatius
and Saint Francis Xavier, to the hospital a num-
ber of religious books, and to M. Bourdon, the
chief engineer, a telescope and a compass, we
know that the day of primitive needs was over.
For a long time after moving into the new
convent, Mere Marie's letters are full of hope and
of something akin to confidence. She has much
to say regarding the excellent deportment of the
Iroquois. In the autumn of 1654 she writes that
they have returned unharmed to Montreal a
young surgeon who had been captured in a skir-
mish. They have been profuse with promises and
presents. They have treated honorably two
French coureurs de bois whom they had invited
to be their guests, and who had temerariously
accepted the invitation. They have brought
letters from the Dutch colonists at Fort Orange,
saying that nothing is so much desired as a truce
to hostilities. "It is an admirable thing to hear
these savages talk about the blessings of peace,"
she confides to her son, "for they have chosen
chiefs of great repute to be their spokesmen, and
all who hear them are impressed with their
intelligence."
The French had sought to persuade the Onon-
dagans to send some boys and girls to Quebec as
158 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
proofs of confidence and good-will, but in this
they were unsuccessful. Frontenac was the only
governor to whose charge these distrustful
because perfidious savages ever committed
their children. But whenever a delegation of Ir-
oquois warriors came for a council, they visited
the Ursuline convent, and expressed their grave
satisfaction with the appearance, the demeanor,
and the accomplishments of the little seminarians.
They asked how long it took to make a French
child out of an Indian child, and they seemed to
have no doubt as to the superiority of the civil-
ized article. Especially were they pleased with
the way the girls sang. We have Pere Vimont's
word for it that the savage children could be
taught to sing in such fashion that listening to
them was, if not a pleasure, certainly not a pain.
Their delight in their own performance was so
great that a small child who knew only one hymn,
as Ave Stella Maris, would sing it over and over
again for an hour unless someone put a stop to
the diversion.
On one memorable occasion, several Iroquois
chiefs, after listening attentively to half-a-dozen
hymns, offered to entertain in their turn, and
sang strange chants in their own tongue, and to
their own manifest satisfaction. Mere Marie, who
WHITE MEN AND RED 159
relates the incident, makes no comment beyond
an admission that the visitors were "less tune-
ful" than the seminarians; but to her readers the
picture is a strange one. Warriors of the Five
Nations laying aside their habitual arrogance,
forgetting their native ferocity, and entering
into a singing contest with small prim children in
a convent school.
1 There was one Iroquois, however, sterner than
his companions, who said a word to Mere Marie
which she remembered and took to heart. Her
pride in her Indian pupils was natural and com-
mendable, but it was excessive. Pere Le Jeune
admits that these savage children, wild as little
animals when they came to school, fitted them-
selves quickly into the prescribed order, imitat-
ing the French children as best they could, and
learning their simple lessons with ease. " If their
stability were assured," he adds cautiously,
"they would be as civilized as we are." But he
remembers the life that lay before them, and has
misgivings.
Mere Marie cherished the hope that these
docile, intelligent Indian girls would find French
husbands. She forgot occasionally that it was to
be their mission to carry the seeds of faith into
the wilderness, and had a human desire to keep
160 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
them safe and close in the shelter of a habitant's
home. "We have in the school now," she writes,
"Huron girls who are as gentle and well-bred as
French girls are. They speak French correctly,
they dress and behave like their white com-
panions. We believe that in time inter-marriage
will become the rule, and this must depend in
some measure on the colonists finding Indian
wives who can speak their tongue and follow
their customs."
With this object in view, Mere Marie spared
no pains to make her seminarians sedate, useful,
and attractive. From the day that the Ursulines
landed in Quebec, and, kneeling, kissed the soil
made sacred by the zeal of confessors and the
blood of martyrs, they had never wavered in
their devotion to work so well fitted to their
hands. Pere Le Jeune has nothing but praise for
the order and discipline of the school, for the
precision of method which secured such remark-
able results. Even the Iroquois were duly im-
pressed; but one chief observed with disapproval
the too manifest pleasure which Mere Marie
took in her pupils, her too manifest concern for
all they said and did. "You think overmuch of
children and of youth," he told her. "All white
men do. With us, young people are deemed of
WHITE MEN AND RED 161
little importance. When they speak, no one
listens. When they relate marvels, no one be-
lieves them. But when warriors speak, we listen
and believe. Their minds are firm and hard."
Indian folk-lore confirms this point of view.
The child who figures so prominently in the
legends and fairy tales of Europe, the youngest
son who outwits his brothers, the king's little
daughter bewitched by a cruel stepmother, the
infant, lost or stolen, befriended by a kindly
animal these familiar variants have no counter-
parts in Indian traditions. There is only one
highly imaginative story of a serpent so mon-
strous that when it lay coiled around a village of
Senecas no man could climb its mighty bulk,
and so invulnerable that no weapon could make
any mark upon it, yet which was slain by a
magic arrow shot by a little boy. We know how
mediaeval writers would have interpreted this
tale; but the Iroquois version stands free of
symbolic significance. It is related as a thing of
chance.
Most Indian legends are dark with a pervading
sense of terror. Not only was Nature a perpetual
foe to these poor dwellers on her bosom; but
they had managed to acquire that most universal
and harmful of all superstitions, a fear of the
162 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
dead. They feared even the spirits of the animals
they killed. They made addresses to the deer,
begging them to overlook their slaughter; and
they buried the bones of the beavers lest these
proud little beasts should resent being devoured
by dogs. Pere Le Jeune felt and said that the
superstitions of the savages Were more vivid,
and certainly more pardonable, than the super-
stitions of the colonists who should have known
better. The Indian who pounded, burned, and
scattered to the winds the bones of an animal
that he might dispel the sorcery which threat-
ened his sick friend was more imaginative than
an old Frenchwoman Christian born and bred
who hung around an invalid's neck a bunch
of keys as a charm. The stupidity of the thing,
no less than its heathenism, offended the fastidi-
ous priest.
The Algonquins were especially apprehensive
of being haunted by the spirits of the dead.
They would try and frighten away a wandering
soul by beating loudly on the walls of a cabin;
they would spread a net at the door to entangle
it; they would burn some stinking herbs or de-
cayed matter to drive it off. Their devices were
not unlike the devices by which the Chinese
endeavor to keep demons out of their homes; but
WHITE MEN AND RED 163
the Indians never knew the agony of fear which
eats out the heart of the Chinese. Their alarm
was real, but of a gentler order. What they
thought was that the lonely soul wanted to
carry with it as a companion to the land of
shadows some friend or relative. As no friend
or relative desired to go, they took these pre-
cautionary measures.
There is one truly terrible story that made
part of the folk-lore of the Iroquois. They be-
lieved that a nameless monster haunted the for-
ests, and that the bones of the men whom it killed
never lay quiet in their graves. Their skeletons
were seen swimming with hideous speed and
dexterity in the Lake of Teungktoo. Of all the
tales of unquiet dead, this is the most appalling.
The lonely lake, and the powerful skeletons for-
ever cleaving its dark waters, passing and re-
passing one another like the damned in the
Hall of Eblis.
The temporary peace and comparative plenty
which followed the treaty with the Iroquois
emboldened Maisonneuve to ask Mere Marie
to found a school and orphanage in Montreal.
It was in its way a tempting invitation. Labor,
hardships, and danger combined to make it
desirable from the Ursulines' point of view.
164 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
But Mere Marie never lost sight of the feasi-
bility of performance. She would not embark
on an undertaking unless she saw some reason-
able chance of accomplishing it. Mme. de la
Peltrie had made possible the start in Quebec;
but there was no fondatrice for Montreal, and
no money for a foundation. Happily, the children
were not untaught, for Marguerite Bourgeoys,
a young Frenchwoman who had been an ex-
terne in a convent of Troyes, did for them what
Jeanne Mance did for the sick and hurt. On her
own initiative she opened a humble school in a
disused stable, lodged with her little Indians
in the loft, and begged the money for their few
necessities. Hers was the noblest spirit of the
pioneer. The success which crowned her efforts
proved their worth. Other schools followed in
the wake of her modest venture. She was the
good angel of the savages; but she could not give
to the French children of Montreal the kind of
education which the Ursulines gave to the chil-
dren of Quebec.
One request, or rather demand, made by the
Iroquois envoys was of an amazing and un-
welcome character. They sought a French
settlement on Lake Onondaga. It was the last
thing they had been expected to ask, and the
WHITE MEN AND RED 165
very last thing which could with reasonable
safety be granted them. It meant a heavy cost
and a much heavier risk. It offered a possible
avenue of trade, and an assured field for the
confessor and the martyr, the one being tolerably
certain to develop into the other. For months
the question was debated; but the Iroquois
pressed hard, and it was difficult to say them
nay. They had certainly treated Pere le Moyne
with respect, and with what might have been
termed official affection, calling him father,
brother, uncle, and cousin. "I never before had
so many relatives," he observed. They presented
him with an image of the sun made of six thou-
sand porcelain beads, as a token that the clouds
of misunderstanding had been dispelled by the
rays of friendship which would make even mid-
night shining and bright. He at least was wholly
in favor of the new mission, and confident of its
success.
So at first was Mere Marie. She writes with
enthusiasm of the devotion of the Jesuits, the
courage and hardihood of the laymen. "The
priests who have been chosen for this venture
deem themselves fortunate. I cannot say with
what zest and fervor they face the countless
hazards of their voyage. Apart from the savages,
1 66 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
who have hitherto shown themselves so fero-
cious, the dangers and difficulties of traveling
in this wild country are greater than anyone in
France could ever imagine or understand."
Later on, her growing uneasiness finds ex-
pression in a juxtaposition of religious senti-
ment and political sagacity which has the merit
of absolute candor. "Ah, how I long to see a
group of Iroquois children in our school," she
writes. "How we should cherish them for Christ's
sake, and teach them His holy faith. They would,
moreover, be of great service as hostages while our
countrymen are in Onondaga. Not that it would
ever be well to consider them as hostages, but
only as catechumens. And, indeed, their conver-
sion is the thing we most earnestly desire."
The cost of the venture fell, as was usual, on
the Jesuits. Pere le Mercier, Pere Dablon,
Pere Chaumont, a French officer, Zachary du
Puys, nine soldiers, and a small group of habi-
tants made up the party. They were well re-
ceived at every stage of their journey; and, on
reaching their destination, were charmed by the
beauty of the lake, the flocks of wild pigeons,
the air of abundance, and the hospitality of their
hosts. Feasts were spread, gifts were exchanged,
and the Onondagan warriors sang to them by
WHITE MEN AND RED 167
the hour. The sentiments of these bland savages
would have done credit to any peace-at-all-price
congress in our day. "Farewell war," said one
chief, presenting a collar made of seven thousand
beads. "Farewell arms. We have been fools till
now, but in the future we will be brothers. Truly
we will be brothers."
Among the presents offered by the priests was
one from the Ursulines, sent as a token that they
would gladly receive and teach the Onondagan
children; and one from the hospital sisters to
indicate that they would be equally ready to
receive and nurse the Onondagan sick. These
gifts were received with manifestations of de-
light. "If after this they murder us," wrote Pere
le Mercier in his journal, "it will be from fickle-
ness, not from premeditated treachery."
In sharp contrast to these diplomatic in-
sincerities was the pathetic joy of the Huron
captives at sight of the Jesuits, their only friends.
These poor creatures had not been adopted, only
enslaved, and their lot was a bitter one. A few
weeks after the arrival of the French, a woman
of the Cat nation was butchered by order of her
mistress, her offense being that she was "too
opinionative." She was hacked to death in the
open, and the occurrence was so common that
168 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
it did not even disturb the children at their play.
Mere Marie's letters give a more detailed
account than do the Relations of the perils which
beset the Onondagan mission, and of its final
collapse. Charlevoix and Francis Parkman take
their versions from her. She says that the
Jesuits made many converts among the Iroquois.
These were mainly women; but the Iroquois
women played a far more important part in
communal life than did the women of other
tribes. They were distinctly "advanced." The
French were all housed in one capacious lodge,
protected by a palisade. They were tolerably
safe from attack; but the savages had a dis-
concerting custom of bivouacking outside the
palisade, and seeing to it that no one left the
lodge without their knowledge and consent. As
months went by, their manners changed from
fervent warmth to sullen civility which carried
the shadow of a threat. The trouble, as the
priests were well aware, lay with the Mohawks,
who had not signed the treaty, and who profited
by their independence to raid several Huron
villages. This easy and advantageous fighting
annoyed the Onondagans who, for all their
axioms about peace and trade, were firm be-
lievers in the economic value of war. They
WHITE MEN AND RED 169
wanted their share of the spoils; and their
deepening discontent made them more and
more hostile to the French. Mere Marie is dis-
posed to believe that this growing animosity was
"without doubt the work of demons enraged at
seeing so many souls snatched from their power. "
But the Iroquois had no need to be taught by
demons. They could themselves have given a
lesson or two to any imp of Hell.
Happily the French became aware of the plot
for their destruction, and outwitted their hosts.
Secretly they built in the loft over their lodge
two light, flat-bottomed boats to supplement
their canoes. Secretly they laid their plans for
escape. When all was ready they sacrificed their
well-guarded stores and made a feast, a semi-
sacred feast for the savages who gorged them-
selves to repletion, and slept the lethargic sleep
of the gluttonous. Not one of them stirred when
their prisoner guests embarked at midnight,
breaking the thin crust of ice on the lake, and
paddled swiftly for the Oswego River. It was
reached before dawn; and thirty-four days later
the exhausted fugitives were back in Quebec,
having lost three men who were drowned in the
rapids of the St. Lawrence. It is characteristic
of Mere Marie that she closes her narrative
170 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
with a word of pity for the poor Hurons who
could never hope to escape, their villages being
either destroyed, or lying far beyond their reach.
Her friends were safe; they would have been
butchered had they remained even a few days
longer; she is rejoiced to see their faces once
again; but her woman's heart (it was a great
heart which could feel and suffer keenly) is
wrung with sorrow because Christian Indians,
beyond the reach of succor, must live out their
lives in slavery.
Chapter X
A PRELATE
RIVALING in bulk the statue of Champlain on
the waterfront is the statue of Francois Xavier
de Laval Montmorency, first Bishop of New
France, which stands in an open space before
the Quebec post office. It bears witness to the
part played by this remarkable ecclesiastic in
strengthening "the rocky perch of France and
of the Faith" which was Champlain's gift to the
world. It brings to our minds the vivid picture
of a man who fought his way through life; proud,
humble, kind, quarrelsome, beloved by friends,
begirt by foes, a man apt to be in the right, but
incapable of those concessions which hold to-
gether a disjointed world, and keep it in running
order.
For half a century the Canadian church had
been under the nominal jurisdiction of the Arch-
bishop of Rouen who discreetly left it in the
hands of the Jesuits. The Recollets had, indeed,
been the first in the field, and had done good
work; but they were few in number, and lacked
the driving force which Saint Ignatius has be-
171
172 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
queathed to his sons. When the growing im-
portance of the French colonies, to say nothing
of their growing difficulties, called for a spiritual
ruler, the Jesuits chose the man. They foresaw,
however, many disturbing changes, and so did
Mere Marie; for we find her writing to her son,
not with the pious pleasure which such an oc-
casion seemed to warrant, but with the appre-
hensiveness of one well versed in ecclesiastical
strife. Things were going well, she said. There
was no immediate need for a bishop. The mission-
aries had done all that mortal men could do.
What if someone should be sent who was not of
their way of thinking? That she subsequently
became an ardent upholder of Laval proves that
she had a mind open to doubt and to conviction.
It was not as bishop but as vicar apostolic
that the new autocrat came to Quebec. His most
noble family of Montmorency stretched back to
the days of Clovis, by whose side one of his
ancestors had been baptized, assuming then
and there the family motto, "Dieu ayde au
premier baron Chretien" which was in the nature
of a reminder. Francois Xavier was the third of
five sons, and was being educated for the priest-
hood when his two elder brothers were killed in
the battles of Freiburg and Nordlingen. It was
A PRELATE 173
then expected that he would lay aside his studies,
and take his place as head of the family, his
father being dead. This he refused to do, to the
distress of his mother who recognized and re-
spected his ability. His rights and titles were
transferred to his younger brother, Jean Louis.
The fifth son, Henri, entered a Benedictine
monastery; the only daughter, a convent. War
and the Church took a heavy toll of the great
houses of France.
On the 1 6th of June, 1659, Monseigneur de
Laval, titular Bishop of Petraea and Vicar
Apostolic of New France, landed in Quebec. A
more lovely season could not have been chosen,
and the beauty of this sentinel town stirred his
heart with a sense of exhilaration and delight.
He was honorably received, and the ever-useful
house of Mme. de la Peltrie was prepared for his
accommodation. It had been made part of the
new convent; but the proprieties were ob-
served by building a palisade to divide it from
the grounds occupied or cultivated by the nuns.
Two hundred livres was the rental paid to its
owner, and it was large enough to hold the prel-
ate's modest household. In his suite was a young
priest, Henri de Bernieres, a nephew of Mme.
de la Peltrie's faithful and acquiescent friend,
174 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
who, while remaining firmly and safely in France,
never forgot the lady in whose service he had
ventured so far. He attended to her affairs,
wrote her sedate letters, and sent her useful gifts.
Mere Marie makes joyous mention of these gifts,
especially of five puncheons (poincons) of wheaten
flour, a highly esteemed luxury in Quebec where
bread was made of a mixture of wheat, rye,
barley, and occasionally according to Mere
Marie ground peas, which gave it a dreadful
density. With the flour M. de Bernieres sent a
hundred livres for Mme. de la Peltrie's Indian
children, and that most desirable of colonial
possessions, a clock.
If all classes lived plainly, it was soon ap-
parent that the bishop's conception of plain liv-
ing fell far below the colonists' comfortable
standard. His austerities were not excessive, but
they were unremitting. They simply meant that
for him the element of pleasure did not enter
into the daily necessity of eating and drinking.
Many of us believe that food was meant to be
enjoyed, and that we are in harmony with the
divine scheme when we enjoy it. This was not
Laval's point of view. His monotonous diet con-
sisted of porridge or broth, dry bread, and a
bit of meat or fish, whichever was forthcoming.
A PRELATE 175
Sweets, even the dried fruit which made the
staple luxury of Quebec, never appeared on his
table. His drink was hot water flavored with a
modicum of wine. His establishment consisted
of a house servant and a gardener, the latter
being at the disposal of his poorer neighbors.
His dress, save when he was on the altar, was
threadbare and shabby. He rose early, opened
the church doors, rang the church bell, and said
the first Mass on the cold, dark winter mornings.
"Of all men in the world," wrote Mere Marie,
"he is the most austere and the most detached.
He gives away everything he has, living meanly
and in holy poverty." As he died in his eighty-
seventh year, it is plain that his austerities
failed to shorten his life. It would sometimes
seem as though the body that is hard driven and
thinly nourished lasts longer than the body that
is pampered with food and warmth and care.
Kings are the only men mentioned in history as
having died of a "surfeit"; but many a com-
moner has trodden this ignoble path to the grave.
If the colonists were beguiled into believing
that the bareness of Laval's life stood for an
excess of humility, they were destined to be
rapidly undeceived. A Montmorency was no less
a Montmorency for being poorly lodged and
176 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
badly fed. Laval was a fighter both by nature
and by grace; by virtue of the blood which
flowed in his veins, and by virtue of the author-
ity he represented. He was as unyielding in
small things as in big ones, in matters of prece-
dence as in matters of policy. Should the gover-
nor or the vicar apostolic receive the first salute,
or be seated first at table? Should the soldiers
stand or kneel when they mounted guard at the
procession of the Fete Dieu? The poor Jesuits
had so much trouble keeping the peace that they
may be pardoned for refusing to invite either
governor or vicar to their dinner on the feast
of Saint Francois Xavier. It was the easiest
way out of their difficulties.
If in matters of no moment Laval refused con-
cession, in matters which concerned the rights
and privileges of his office he stood firmer than
a rock. It was the age-old dispute between
Church and State, the age-old question of what
shall be rendered to Caesar and what shall be
rendered to God. Mere Marie, who heard in
her convent the echo of discord, appraised the
combatants with acumen and with singular de-
tachment. She liked and honored the governor,
Argenson, knowing him to be a brave and honest
man. She recognized in Laval a higher intelli-
A PRELATE 177
gence, a stronger purpose, a deeper devotion,
all the qualities which belong to a maker of
history. "Monseigneur our prelate," she wrote
to her son, "is zealous and inflexible; zealous
in all that appertains to the honor and glory
of God, and inflexibly opposed to all that would
cast discredit upon them. I have never known
any one with a firmer disposition. He will not
have a house of his own, but is content to rent
a very ordinary one. Yet he stands much on
his dignity, and desires all the services of the
church to be conducted as splendidly as our
simple circumstances can permit. He will do
nothing to please those in authority for the sake
of support. Perhaps in this regard he may be
too stiff-necked; we can accomplish little here
without official help. So at least I feel, but pos-
sibly I am wrong in saying it. Every one must
go his own way to Heaven."
One fertile source of contention was ready to
Laval's hand. He found on reaching Quebec a
rival claimant to his jurisdiction. The Arch-
bishop of Rouen, who had gradually come to
consider New France as an extension of his dio-
cese, had abandoned his policy of non-interven-
tion, and had the year before appointed as vicar
general the Abbe de Queylus, a Sulpician priest
178 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
of Montreal. It was therefore a question of
right and might between a vicar general with
the backing of the Archbishop of Rouen, and a
vicar apostolic with the backing of Mazarin
(reluctantly given) and of Rome. In other words,
it was a question of whether the Gallican or the
ultramontane spirit should prevail in the Cana-
dian colonies.
Both men felt themselves leaders in a just
cause. The abbe was a devoted cleric, pious,
charitable, rich (the Sulpicians took no vow of
poverty), and as autocratic as his opponent,
which is saying a great deal. Laval was the
stronger man, and had undeniably the higher
claim; but Canada was some distance from
France, and very far from Rome. As the two
ecclesiastics could not well challenge each other,
and decide the leadership by force of arms, they
were compelled to bide the decision of authori-
ties who were naturally less interested in the
matter than were the colonists of Quebec and
Montreal. Laval's triumph was assured from
the start. The Pope supported the titular Bish-
op of Petraea, and Louis the Fourteenth put
an end to the threatened schism by recalling
the abbe to France. There he remained for seven
tranquillizing years, until Laval (who in all his
A PRELATE 179
belligerent life never cherished any personal ill-
will) asked him to return to his labors in Mont-
real. That he did so humbly and gladly proves
him to have had the heart of a missionary, if
he lacked the head of a strategist. Montreal was
not yet a desirable place of residence.
Laval's quarrels with the successive gover-
nors of Quebec were of a more lasting and dis-
astrous character. Argenson had a brother in
France who was a counselor of state. To him
Laval wrote, complaining of the governor's ob-
stinacy, and to him Argenson wrote, complain-
ing of the vicar's interference. "He thinks he
can do what he likes because he is a bishop,"
said the exasperated official, "and he threatens
excommunication." The subjects of dispute were
many and varied; but one stood out above all
others for forty years the ever-renewed, ever-
agitating question of selling brandy to the In-
dians. The missionaries had opposed this traffic
with all their might since their first coming to
Canada; and in Laval they found their most
determined and persistent upholder. Under no
circumstances would he condone a freedom of
commerce which meant the moral destruction
of the consumer.
The Indians were the worst drinkers the world
ite MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
has ever known. They had no use for alcohol
except to get drunk on it, and, when drunk, they
were invariably quarrelsome and violent. The
brandy which was beneficent to the temperate
French colonist, warming his cold body and rais-
ing his sober spirits, was a deadly peril to the
savage. He was like a child playing with fire.
Mere Marie, who stood heart and soul with
Laval and the Jesuits in this matter, gives us a
vivid picture of drunken Indians, even the bap-
tized, sedate, guarded Hurons of Quebec, who
became every whit as outrageous as their un-
civilized brethren.
"We have a heavier burden to bear than any
the Iroquois have laid upon our shoulders. There
are Frenchmen so lost to the fear of God that
they destroy our converts by giving them
brandy in exchange for castors. The conse-
quences are indescribable. Men and young boys
grow mad with drink. They run amuck through
the streets, shouting, brandishing knives and
hatchets, and driving every one in terror from
their paths. Murders and monstrous unheard-
of brutalities are committed. The reverend fath-
ers have done all they could to check this evil,
and Monseigneur our prelate has tried every
A PRELATE 181
means within his power to put an end to it.
With his customary gentleness he endeavored to
win over the authorities; but they insisted that
the sale of wine and brandy was permitted
everywhere like the sale of other commodities.
He represented to them that the liberty which
was right and reasonable in civilized countries
could not be stretched to cover transactions
with savages who had to be protected from them-
selves. Finding argument to be of no more avail
than kindness, he was moved by his zeal for
religion to excommunicate all who were en-
gaged in such nefarious traffic. Even this thun-
derbolt failed to ensure submission. The insub-
ordinates claimed that he had lifted into the
catalogue of sins against the Church a legal
transaction which was not under ecclesiastical
control. Now Monseigneur has sailed for France
to seek a remedy for such disorders. If he fails,
I believe he will never return to Quebec, which
would mean an irreparable loss."
He did not fail, and he did return. The intract-
able Argenson had by this time been replaced
by the still more intractable D'Avaugour. La-
val obtained D'Avougour's recall, and helped to
select his successor, Saffray de Mezy, who made
182 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
more trouble than either of his predecessors,
being a man of equal obstinacy and of less char-
acter and discretion. For the time, however, the
sale of brandy to the Indians was forbidden, and
Mere Marie rejoiced greatly. A permanent meas-
ure was not possible for the simple reason that
trade was diverted from the French outposts to
the Dutch and English which had no handicap.
Quebec "lived on the beaver," and the gov-
ernor was as responsible for the temporal wel-
fare of the colonists as was the vicar apostolic
for their spiritual welfare. Consequently the law
was imperfectly enforced, and finally repealed
when Courcelle and Talon built up the prosperity
of New France, and Frontenac sent Joliet and
Pere Marquette to put the Mississippi on the
map of North America.
In 1674 the titular Bishop of Petraea became
actual Bishop of Quebec: an appointment which
increased his dignity and authority, drew him
closer to Rome, and simplified his line of action.
If it made him a trifle more unyielding (there
was no room for much change in this regard),
it gave a fresh impetus to what had become his
life's work, the building and maintaining of
schools. He was a modern of moderns in his zeal
for education, for technical education especially,
A PRELATE 183
so far as such a thing was possible in a com-
munity of pioneers. His income was inadequate,
and was mostly preempted by the poor; but
the king helped him royally. A seminary for the
training of secular priests was his most ambi-
tious project; but attached to it was a "little
seminary" for schoolboys whose only instructors
heretofore had been the overworked Jesuits. The
pupils of the little seminary, both French and
Indian, wore by way of uniform a blue cloak
confined by a belt. The studiously inclined were
taught the humanities, so as to be partially pre-
pared for the priesthood if their inclinations set
that way; but by far the greater number were
given some manual training to fit them to be-
come artisans. Later on an agricultural school
was established at St. Joachim, to teach coun-
try lads the principles as they were then under-
stood of scientific farming.
All this was in accord with the prevailing spirit
of New France. It was not a scholastic spirit.
"Canadian children," wrote Abbe de Latour,
"have intelligence, memory, and facility. They
make good progress; but their instability of
character, their dominant taste for liberty, and
their hereditary and natural inclination for physi-
cal exercise deprive them of perseverance and
184 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
assiduity. They are satisfied with that measure
of knowledge which is required for their oc-
cupations. There are few resources, few books,
and little emulation."
With the Indians Laval was always on good
terms. They offered no opposition to his author-
ity, and he laid the blame for their drunken ex-
cesses on the Frenchmen who sold them brandy.
This was their own point of view. They had an
ingenious fashion of excusing themselves for such
misdemeanors by saying that they had not com-
mitted them of their own accord. It was the fire
water within them which cut, and hacked, and
roared, and maltreated children, and shamed the
fair name of their tribe. And all against their will.
Laval ransomed Indian captives, baptized
the Iroquois chief, Garaktontie, in the cathedral
of Quebec, and stood faithfully by Courcelles in
his efforts to keep the peace secured by the vet-
eran Marquis de Tracy in his expedition against
the Mohawks. "The bishop is a man powerful
in word and deed," wrote the appreciative Tracy
to Pope Alexander the Seventh. "He is a prac-
tising Christian, and the right arm of religion."
Indeed these two were firm friends as well as
allies. They made a pilgrimage together to the
Shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, enjoyed each
A PRELATE 185
other's society, and parted with reluctance when
the marquis took his victorious army back to
France.
It was a grievous misfortune that Laval and
Frontenac, the best governor sent to New France
since Champlain, could not keep on good terms.
They had many perhaps too many qualities
in common; and they must both have known
that they were so far above the men about
them as to be essential to the welfare of the
land. That Frontenac preferred the Sulpicians
to the Jesuits was no reason for a quarrel.
That both men were quick to resent any in-
terference on each other's part was a reason,
but not a good one. The wise Colbert in France
was infinitely annoyed that so excellent a gov-
ernor and so excellent a bishop could not work
in harmony. The king also was displeased. He
spent his life, according to Saint Simon, in ad-
justing the jealous dissensions of his courtiers,
and it seemed to him hard that he should be
called on to arbitrate in Quebec.
A divided authority, especially when the line
of division can be looked at from different angles,
is a prolific source of trouble. When Laval re-
signed the bishopric in 1688, and retired for a
few years to France, his successor, Saint Vallier,
1 86 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
took up his quarrels, and added a number of
his own. Saint Vallier was a man of irreproach-
able life and of superabundant zeal; but there
was a hint of John Knox in his discomforting
activities. He objected to the extravagance and
impropriety of women's dress, which shows that
the colonists' wives were beginning to have
clothes good enough and gay enough to be no-
ticed. When Front enac proposed that the officers
of the garrison should play Tartuffe, and as-
signed the casting of the parts to Lieutenant
Mareul, the new bishop protested so strenuously
that the project was abandoned. These cheerful
soldiers had already acted with credit Corneille's
Cid and Heraclius, and Racine's Mithridate; but
Saint Vallier drew the line at Moliere.
It was a tempest in a teapot. The Jesuits had
always looked with favor, or at least with tol-
erance, upon the love of acting which distin-
guished the exiled French. Scholars themselves,
they had a natural liking for anything that ap-
pertained to scholarship. They may also have
considered that studying interminable lines of
good verse, and reciting them with gentlemanly
ease, was as harmless a diversion as Quebec could
well afford. The occasional ballets were less to
their fancy; but they never interfered, save per-
A PRELATE 187
haps in regard to the attendance of very young
people. We know that when the first of these
entertainments was given, eight years after Mere
Marie's coming to Canada, the Ursulines for-
bade the French school children to go to it, and
that one little girl, "la petite Marsokt" disobeyed
the injunction and went. A chance allusion in a
letter tells us this much and no more. What
happened to Mile. Marsolet the next morning is
still a matter of conjecture. .
Laval returned to Canada, and lived out his
life in Quebec, the place which in all the world
was nearest to his heart. He spent his last years
in the seminary when it was not being burned
down (which happened twice), or at St. Joachim.
To his young priests he was always a kind and
comprehending friend. The rules he drew up
for their guidance were of a wise and cautious
leniency. Mere Marie praises him as a second
Saint Thomas of Villeneuve. He gave to others
all he had, even his time and strength. When in
1659 a ship brought into port a number of sailors
and immigrants sick of that strange infectious
fever known in English as the "purples" (Ma-
tilda, sister of George the Third and Queen of
Denmark, died of it in Celle), Laval nursed day
and night in the hospital. He was exceedingly
1 88 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
deft in bed making, and in every art that added
to the comfort of his patients. It was useless to
represent to him that his life was too valuable
to be risked in this fashion. He merely replied
that here was work to his hand which he could
do better than most volunteers. Several of the
nursing sisters caught the fever which spread
in a modified form through the town. "Thank
God, our community has escaped," wrote Mere
Marie. "We are in a high and healthy spot, ex-
posed to winds which blow away infection. The
air is clean and cold. We are in excellent condi-
tion."
So the years sped by. Laval's popularity and
authority had greatly increased since he resigned
the bishopric. All men revered his single-minded-
ness, his self-denial, his amazing industry, his
deep devotion; qualities that took on a finer
lustre with age. When he spoke, they listened,
when he counseled, they obeyed. The mischiev-
ous and uncivilized custom of charivari, which
had obtained a hold in Quebec, was abandoned
at his solicitation. He lived to see Frontenac
recalled to France, and the disasters which
brought him back as the sole hope of the im-
periled colonists. He lived to see the massacre
of La Chine which Frontenac amply avenged;
A PRELATE 189
and the invasion of the English under Sir Wil-
liam Phipps, an invasion which his young farm-
ers of St. Joachim, like the "embattled farmers"
of Concord, helped stoutly to repel. When the
ship on which Saint Vallier was returning to
Quebec fell into the hands of the English, and
the bishop was detained in London for five
years, Laval "carried on" in his absence with
renewed energy, and possibly some enjoyment
of the situation. Age seemed powerless to affect
him. "My health is exceedingly good," he wrote,
"considering the bad use I make of it." He took
the hard journey to Montreal to administer con-
firmation when he was seventy-nine. He sang
the High Mass on Easter Sunday in the cathe-
dral of Quebec when he was eighty-four. He
died at eighty-six, and the watchers by his bed-
side asked for a few words of exhortation, such
as many holy men have uttered with their last
breath. Not so Laval. "They were saints," he
said sternly. "I am a sinner." And with these
noble words upon his lips, his soul spurred to
the judgment seat.
Quebec holds his memory dear, and his spirit
dwells in Laval University, the big descendant
of his small foundation. Its spacious and agree-
able shabbiness, so unlike the wealth-laden uni-
igo MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
versities of our wealth-laden land, reflects faith-
fully the image of the austere and dauntless
pioneer priest, the supremely human laborer in
the vineyard, who felt himself to be a sinner,
but who did work enough for half-a-dozen saints.
There is a sentence of Rene Viviani's which gives
us with singular lucidity (such are the haphaz-
ards of inspiration) a clue to this life force: "No
man can say that he draws strength from him-
self alone. Heart and soul and mind and body
would break were he to try it." Heart and soul
and mind and body held together unbroken
through Laval's eighty-six years. He drew
strength from the faith that was in him.
Chapter XI
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT"
f t-
BY 1660 the colonists had ceased hoping for
peace. Their training and experience had not
fitted them to live in a fool's paradise; but rather
to recognize every sign of danger, and to be per-
petually on their guard. The Mohawks were
openly hostile; but the other Iroquois nations
were playing a more dangerous because more
subtle game, covering up bad deeds with fair
words, weakening the outposts of French civili-
zation that they might more securely attack its
strongholds. Every year their depredations in-
creased, their urbanity diminished. In a daring
raid on the Isle d'Orleans, Lauzon's son was
killed, and the body horribly mutilated. Mme.
Picquart and her four little children were cap-
tured at St. Anne. That Quebec was saved from
assault was due primarily to information given
by a warrior of the Mohegan or Wolf tribe who
had been adopted as a child by the Iroquois,
and who was taken prisoner and burned by the
Algonquins. This unfortunate consented to be
baptized, and "told all he knew 1 ' to quote the
191
192 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
words of Mere Marie before being bound to
the stake. He said that eight hundred Iroquois
had planned to attack the French, and were
even then on their way; but of their immediate
whereabouts he could, or would, say nothing. $
Argenson's faith in the Mohegan's report
prompted him to take immediate action. The
defenses were strengthened, the streets were bar-
ricaded. The nursing sisters and the Ursulines
were removed to the new Jesuit buildings; the
first because the hospital was in a perilous posi-
tion, the second because the school, high perched
and strongly built, was occupied by troops.
Mere Marie was extremely reluctant to leave
her spotless and neatly furnished convent to the
rude handling of soldiers. She asked permission
to remain, and, with the wisdom of the serpent,
backed her request by offering to feed and serve
the garrison, keeping with her for this purpose
three lay sisters. The offer was too tempting to
be refused. The four nuns worked so hard all
day, and were so tired by night, that they had
no time to think about the Iroquois, and the
men were probably better fed than they had
ever been in their lives. Mere Marie was, how-
ever, much impressed by the thoroughness of
Argenson's preparations:
(C
((
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 193
Redoubts were built," she wrote to her son,
the strongest being near our stable. It de-
fended the church on one side, and the barn on
the other. All our windows were boarded and
pierced with loop-holes. The only means of exit
left in the court was one little door, barely wide
enough to permit a single man to pass through it.
In a word, our convent was turned into a fort,
garrisoned by twenty-four brave soldiers. The
whole town was safeguarded. The approaches
were patrolled day and night. A dozen great dogs
helped to keep watch and ward."
And where were the Iroquois so fearfully ap-
prehended, so slow to materialize? The eight
hundred may be considered as a figment of the
Mohegan's brain. He had told more than he
knew; and if he took a saturnine delight in fright-
ening his captors, who can begrudge him this
final satisfaction? Nevertheless there were sav-
ages prepared for war and advancing to attack.
The danger, though not overwhelming, was
acute. It was averted by one of those daunt-
less deeds which would seem beyond belief were
it not for the ineradicable heroism of men's
hearts.
A young Frenchman of Montreal, Adam Dau-
lac, Sieur des Ormeaux, had heard the Mohe-
194 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
gan's story. He was twenty-five years of age,
strong, fearless, resolute, and weary of waiting
for an evil day. Therefore he asked for a handful
of volunteers to carry the war into the Iroquois
country. He did not propose to accomplish the
impossible; but he knew just how much might
be done, and he stood ready to do it. Sixteen
men of varying occupations, and all, like their
leader, young, offered their services in other
words, their lives. Maisonneuve consented to
their departure, and perhaps, bearing always on
his shoulders the intolerable burden of danger
and responsibility, envied them their brief ad-
venture and their certain death. It was not for
them a question of returning with their shields,
or on their shields. They would do neither. The
wilderness would receive their broken bodies,
and their faces and their names would be for-
gotten. They confessed, communicated, and at
the foot of the altar swore an oath that they
would accept no quarter. Four Algonquin war-
riors and a small body of Hurons joined them.
Scantily equipped save for arms and ammuni-
tion, of which they carried as much as their
canoes could hold, they bade farewell to Mont-
real, and started on their long and last journey.
Great numbers of Iroquois had wintered in
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 195
the woods that bordered on the Ottawa, and it
was Daulac's audacious design to waylay them
as they descended the river. He and his men en-
trenched themselves behind a rude but strongly
fashioned palisade at the foot of the rapids
known as the Sault St. Louis. When the first
canoes filled with Senecas, who thought them-
selves safe from molestation, came swiftly down
the stream, they were greeted by a deadly fire.
The unexpectedness of the attack scattered their
fleet; and as they naturally wanted to know
the strength of the enemy, they asked for a
parley which was curtly refused. Daulac had not
come all that way to talk.
Then followed five days of the strangest war-
fare ever seen. A fast-growing horde of Indians
held at bay by seventeen Frenchmen behind a
barricade that looked even more insignificant
than it was. The Hurons, being promised their
lives by the Iroquois, who had no intention of
keeping the promise, deserted promptly all save
their chief, Annahotaha, who, seeing his own
nephew about to fly, shot him dead. The Algon-
quins, made of sterner stuff, held their ground.
The enemy lost so many warriors, including the
Seneca chief, that but for the very shame of
the thing they would have abandoned the con-
196 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
test. As it was, learning from the Huron desert-
ers the weakness of their opponents, they drew
together their forces, made a massed attack, and
smashed their way through the flimsy pretense
of a fort. Its defenders, mindful of their oath,
fought to a finish. Daulac was killed in the first
onrush. When the Iroquois took stock of their
spoils, they found thirteen Frenchmen, the four
Algonquins, and Annahotaha dead. Four French-
men were still breathing; but of these, three
were so near the end that their captors lost no
time in building a pyre, and flinging the dying
men to the flames, hoping against hope that they
might still have life enough in them for a few
minutes of agony. The fourth, whom they judged
might possibly live for a time, was reserved for
more leisurely handling.
Twenty-two men died on the shores of the
Sault, but they did not die in vain. Troubled
and humiliated by their losses, the Iroquois
had no mind for further fighting. They turned
back sullenly, asking themselves what manner
of men these were who battled against hopeless
odds. A fear, half normal, half superstitious,
filled their savage hearts. Courage was good,
they were themselves courageous; but it was
courage with victory as an end. The Frenchmen
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 197
could never have dreamed of victory. They had
come to the Sault to die.
Escaping Hurons brought back the news to
Montreal and to Quebec. It must be said for the
Hurons that if they were indifferent fighters,
they were adepts in flight. They were the jail
breakers of the wilderness. No bonds and the
Iroquois bonds were sternly fashioned could
hold them fast. Pegged down securely at night,
they were missing in the morning, and the
friendly forests hid them from pursuit. Mere
Marie, who tells at inordinate length and with
many doubtful details the story of Daulac's ad-
venture, was reluctant to believe that these
friendly Indians played so sorry a part. Her in-
formants were Huron fugitives, who were nat-
urally disposed to present themselves in as good
a light as was consistent with the fact that they
were living, and the French and Algonquins
were dead. She clearly understood the nature of
the service which had been rendered to New
France. Had the Iroquois made their attack that
spring, they would have found the defenses
save in Quebec inadequate, and the farmers
scattered in the fields. Now, realizing the cer-
tainty of the danger, Argenson redoubled his
precautions.
198 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
"We know for sure," wrote Mere Marie, "that
the savages will return in the autumn or in the
following year, and we are making ready to re-
ceive them. The governor has compelled every
village to build a small fort and a strongly pro-
tected communal granary, so that the men can
defend themselves and their harvests. He bears
always in mind the danger of famine; for if the
Indians descend upon us in the spring, they put
a stop to the sowing, and if in the autumn, they
ravage the crops."
Pere Boucher bears witness in the Relations
to the reverential gratitude which was felt for
Daulac and his companions, as for men who
had laid down their lives for their friends. "Well
may we give glory to these seventeen Frenchmen
of Montreal," he writes. "It would be shameless
to do otherwise, for it was for us and for our
homes they perished. By their deeds and by
their deaths they have averted at least for a
time the storm that threatened to destroy us."
It was never fair weather for long in New
France. If the Indians refrained from pernicious
activities, Nature took a hand, and saw to it
that her sons should not grow soft through
safety. Five years lay between the death of
Daulac and the final outbreaks which brought
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 199
the Marquis de Tracy as lieutenant general to
Quebec. These years were fairly well filled with
savage raids and internal dissensions; but in
1663 the colonists experienced a disturbance of
a different order an earthquake of exceptional
and terrifying severity. It came without warn-
ing on the 5th of February, the Feast of Saint
Agatha. The atmospheric disturbances which
often precede such an event were conspicuously
absent. There were of course the usual number
of persons who (being on the safe side of proph-
ecy) recalled dreams and visions in which they
had been distinctly told what was about to hap-
pen. There were others who had seen strange
signs in the heavens, blazing serpents and balls
of fire that scattered sparks like rockets. But as
none of these portents and predictions were con-
fided to the public until after the earthquake
was over, the colonists were happily spared the
terrors of anticipation. There is a good account
of what happened in Quebec written by Pere
Jerome Lalemant in the Relations, and there is
a still better one written by Mere Marie in a
letter to her son. She had always the gift of nar-
rative:
"The day," she wrote, "was absolutely serene
when of a sudden we heard a loud rumbling as
200 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
if hundreds of carts were rolling with mad speed
through the streets. Yet this sound seemed to
come at once from the earth and from the air,
a strange and terrifying thing. A roaring as of
winds and waters was in our ears. A shower of
stones came rattling on the roof, as though the
rocks on which Quebec is built had been torn
from the soil, and tossed down on us from the
sky. A thick dust filled the air. Doors opened
and shut of their own accord. The church bells
clanged, and all the clocks in the convent struck
at once. The floors heaved, the walls swayed.
Chairs and tables were overturned. Amid the
confusion we could hear the barking of dogs and
the distressful bellowing of cattle. We ran out
of the house and felt the earth tremble under
our feet. It was as sickening as though we stood
on the unquiet deck of a ship. Men and women
flung their arms for protection around the trunks
of trees which seemed to give way under their
grasp, while the branches sweeping downward
struck at them angrily. The terrified savages,
possessed by the belief that the souls of the dead
were responsible for all this uproar, fired their
guns in the air to frighten them away, thus add-
ing to the indescribable tumult and commotion."
The shocks continued with lessening violence
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 201
throughout the night. Mere Marie says that some
of the watchers counted thirty-two; but as she
herself was not aware of more than six, we may
be tolerably sure that six was the number. All
night she knelt in the church, the new church
built by Mme. de la Peltrie, and which, though
"small and plain," had cost a great deal of
money. The strong stone houses of Quebec stood
firm, and not a life was lost. But along the banks
of the St. Lawrence heavy landslides changed the
face of the country. The river charged with mud
and ground-up rock was undrinkable for months.
Near Tadoussac, where the shocks were heavy
and continuous, a fair-sized hill crowned with
trees sank into the water as though it had been
a pebble. Springs were dried up, and little
streams turned from their courses. There were
no roads to destroy, but travel was made in-
creasingly difficult. The uneasy earth quieted
slowly; and only when midsummer brought her
peace did she resume her friendly and familiar
aspect, and the fear in men's hearts was stilled.
The area covered by the earthquake was a wide
one. As news came to Quebec, Mere Marie heard
of the deadly peril of Montreal and Three Rivers,
of the plight of Fort Orange, and of the extreme
terror of the Iroquois, whom the Dutch had as-
202 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
sured on the authority of a local prophet that
the world had but three more years to live. Five
French captives had been ransomed and sent
home by the friendly Hollanders. "They have
always been kind to our poor prisoners," wrote
Mere Marie gratefully. A British ship came into
port, and the sailors told her that in Boston,
"a beautiful town which the English colonists
have built," the shocks had been very severe,
and had lasted five hours and a half. There was
little news that failed to find its way to that
fenced-in convent and to those listening nuns.
It was inevitable that the fright experienced
by the colonists and their long weeks of suspense
should bring about a religious revival. The
churches, always full, were now crowded. The
indifferent became devout, the devout redoubled
their devotions. Mere Marie reported joyously
that men were searching their consciences, con-
fessing their sins, and giving thanks for their
preservation. "At the same time that God shook
the rocks and the mountains of this wild coun-
try," she wrote, "He shook the souls of men.
The days of careless living have been changed
to days of prayer. Processions and pilgrimages
succeed one another soberly. Young and old are
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 203
fasting on bread and water. Priests are spending
long hours in the confessional, absolving peni-
tents. Enemies are reconciled. Sinners openly
acknowledge their transgressions and promise
amendment." r
This last statement was especially true. Sin-
ners are always ready to make the most of their
opportunities. Mere Marie relates, among other
instances, the case of a soldier at Fort St. Fran-
cois Xavier who had led a loose life, and who
was so terrified by the first shock that he cried
to his companions: "No need to look further
for the cause of this catastrophe. I am the sinner
whom God punishes for his offences." If this
poor fellow exaggerated, after the manner of his
kind, his importance in the Divine scheme, he
was at least sincere in his conversion, which, we
are assured, was permanent.
It was all very natural and very human. If
the colonists were fairly inured to danger, it
had hitherto been the kind of danger which
called for action on their part. When the Iro-
quois were at their doors, they knew that it was
a case of Heaven helping those who helped
themselves. But when Nature is in a revolu-
tionary mood, man is subdued to humility. He
204 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
is, as ever, the captain of his soul; but he is not
just then the master of his fate, and he has rea-
sonable doubts of contingencies.
Five years after Daulac's expedition, and two
years after the great earthquake, came the Holy
War, so called because it was meant to decide,
and did decide, the permanence of the French
occupancy. Louis the Fourteenth in the heyday
of his youth and power never lost sight of
New France. He had a sincere desire to advance
its interests; and if his measures were sometimes
fluctuating and uncertain, this was because of
the multiplicity of his counselors. He could not
have sent better men than Courcelles and Talon
as governor and intendant, and he could not
have given them better advice in regard to the
friendly Indians than in this often quoted letter
of instruction :
"The first desire of the King is to bring about
the conversion of the savages to the Christian
Catholic faith; and to that end his subjects
are enjoined to treat them justly, kindly, and
gently. No wrong nor violence is to be done them.
Nor is their land to be taken from them on any
pretence whatever. Certainly not because the
French colonists would make better tenants of such
land"
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 205
How does this last sentence sound to the ears
of Americans familiar with the tragic history of
Indian reservations ?
If savage allies were to be treated with kind-
ness and consideration, savage enemies and
first and foremost the offending Mohawks were
to be taught a stern lesson; and their chosen
instructor was an officer of some renown, Alex-
andre de Prouville, Marquis de Tracy, lieuten-
ant general in the army of France. He was sent
first to the West Indies, and then to Canada,
reaching Quebec on the 3Oth of June, 1665. His
landing was a great event in the annals of the
colony. He brought with him four companies
of the first regiment of regular troops ever,
sent to New France, and he was furthermore ac-
companied by a number of well-born young men
eager for adventure. The pomp and splendor of
his following amazed the habitants. Twenty-
four guards and four pages led the way. Richly
dressed gentlemen walked by his side. Tracy
was sixty-two, heavily built, and consumed by
a fever caught in the tropics; but he climbed the
steep heights to the fort, and to the cathedral
where Mass was said; refused the comfort of
a prie-Dieu, refused a cushion, and knelt on the
rough stone floor until the service was over and
206 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
the Te Deum sung. Mere Marie reports his edi-
fying conduct, his cordial bearing, his great size,
and the hopes he aroused in men's hearts :
"M. de Tracy has been wise and watchful.
I believe he is a man chosen by God to bring
us order and safety. He bids us remember that
this expedition is in the nature of a holy war.
Pere Chaumont goes with him because he speaks
the Huron and the Iroquois tongues like an
Indian born. Pere Albanel and other priests will
interpret the Algonquin and the Montagnais.
We all know that unless we can defeat and hu-
miliate the hostile savages, they will eventually
drive us from the land."
The Mohawks, whose outrages had grown in
frequency and ferocity, were to be attacked in
their strongholds, a thing which had never been
dared since the first colonists had come to New
France. The invasion was planned on a scale
which for the time and place seems heroic. The
regiment of Carignan-Salieres arrived in de-
tachments, Salieres, its colonel, landing with the
last companies. All was in readiness; but, before
starting, the wily Tracy built three new forts
at salient points, Fort Richelieu, Fort St. Louis,
and Fort Ste. Therese, to protect Quebec from
raids. He took with him six hundred French
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 207
soldiers, five hundred Canadians trained to arms,
and a hundred and ten "bluecoats" of Montreal,
so called from the hooded mantles that they
wore. They were the hardiest woodsmen in the
country, skilled in the use of snowshoes, well
versed in savage warfare, difficult to kill and
impossible to daunt. There were also a hundred
Indians who served as scouts and runners.
It was a magnificent fighting force; but a bit
cumbrous for transportation over a strange and
wild country. It could be trusted to subdue the
Mohawks if it could get at them; but no march-
ing to and fro over Europe could prepare troops
for a Canadian wilderness. Crossing Lake Cham-
plain in three hundred large canoes was easy
work; crossing Lake George was not much
harder; but then came a mountainous march of
a hundred miles with an Indian trail by way of
road, and with every obstacle that Nature could
devise to bar their progress. The difficulty of
transporting provisions was very great, and white
men, unlike red men, could not do without food.
Every member of the party, officer as well as
private, carried his own belongings, and this
was no easy matter for the unaccustomed.
Pere Chaumont confessed later to Mere Marie
that the burden on his back rubbed it sore, and
208 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
gave him a painful tumor. Fortunately the season
was October, and streams, which in the spring-
time would have been drowning deep, were easily
forded. Also the chestnuts were ripe, and kept
the hungry troops from semi-starvation.
On the 1 5th of October, being the Feast of
Saint Theresa, the first Mohawk town was
sighted. A heavy storm promised the possibility
of a surprise, and Tracy pushed on all night
through the soaked and dripping forest. When
he emerged in the morning there lay before him
a compact, stoutly constructed, well-protected,
empty village. A few Indians perched on sur-
rounding rocks fired aimlessly. The rest had re-
treated to a higher stronghold. The Frenchmen
were tired, wet, and hungry, but their leaders
knew the danger of delay. A morsel of food, and
they followed the trail, this time a broad and
well-trodden one, which led to the second village.
It was deserted like the first. So were a third and
a fourth. In the last, however, they found an
Algonquin squaw, long held a captive, who told
them that the Mohawks had entrenched them-
selves behind the walls of Andaraque, the high-
est, biggest, and strongest of their towns, to
which she joyfully offered to lead them. Dusk
was falling when the French made their final
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT 55 209
assault, and found to their amazement that the
triple palisade, twenty feet in height, was unde-
fended. An infirm old Indian, two squaws, and
an abandoned little boy were the only inhabi-
tants of Andaraque. The savages, panic-stricken
by the size of the invading army ("the whole
world is coming against us!") and by the fren-
zied beating of the drums, had fled to the in-
violable security of the woods.
Yet when Tracy and Salieres examined the
defenses of the Indian stronghold, they mar-
veled that it should have been so easily sur-
rendered. The Mohawks had learned much from
their allies, the Dutch, and this fortified town
was apparently prepared for attack. The size
and comparative comfort of the lodges, the great
stores of food laid up for winter use, the tools
and household utensils, the warm furs and gay
apparel, all told their tale of savage affluence.
The French soldiers took what grain and booty
they could carry (one hundred kettles found
their way back to Quebec), and set fire to the
village. Even the palisades were burnt to the
ground. The squaws threw themselves despair-
ingly into their flaming homes. The little boy
was carried with the kettles to Quebec, where
Mere Marie pronounced him a handsome child.
210 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
The four other villages were destroyed, and the
Mohawks left to face the winter without food,
shelter, or equipment :
"God has done for us what He once did for the
people of Israel," wrote Mere Marie. "We were
victors without a blow. Had the savages, well
armed and strongly fortified, stood by their
homes, our losses must have been severe."
There were not wanting those who censured
Tracy for leaving the Indians unpursued. "With
half that number of men," they said, "Maison-
neuve would have fought the Mohawks to a
finish." But against savages scattered and hid-
ing in their familiar forests, massed troops are
at a terrible disadvantage. Tracy, like a good
general, saved his men, and let Nature do the
work for him. He illustrated Sheridan's cruel
pleasantry, spoken two centuries later, concern^
ing the crow which would have to carry its own
rations if it flew over the ravaged land. The
ethics of war are not affected by time, or race,
or circumstance. How many Mohawks perished
that winter, nobody ever knew; but their
strength was broken, their spirit crushed, their
prestige with the Five Nations destroyed. The
blow was not a final one; there are few finalities
in the world; but for twenty years something
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 211
resembling peace reigned in the land. New France
secured a fresh lease of life. When that expired,
it was renewed by Frontenac's hand.
While the Holy War was reaching this satis-
factory conclusion, Quebec waited and hoped
and prayed. Three weeks after the departure
of the troops, Mere Marie wrote to France:
"We know nothing of what has befallen. God,
who is the God of battle, knows all. If He has
aided us, we are victorious. His holy will be
done; for in the order of this will He is glorified
by our losses no less than by our gains. Never-
theless we are having the forty hours devotion
in our four churches, and never cease our prayers.
We feel that on the success or failure of this
expedition depends the life or death of the French
colonies."
When Tracy returned with his good news and
his undiminished forces, he was disposed to
elude as far as possible the ceremonious, con-
gratulations and rejoicings which are the plague
of the victorious soldier. He was bulky, he was
gouty, he was feverish, he was fatigued, he
wanted to be let alone. The sympathetic and
grateful French forbore to harass him; but the
Indians were not to be gainsaid, and he let them
have their will. The Hurons made him six gifts,
212 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
accompanied by six orations. The Algonquins
made him nine gifts, accompanied by nine ora-
tions. He could not understand a word that was
spoken, save as interpreted by the Jesuits, and
he did not want the gifts; but he remembered
the king's instructions, and behaved with pa-
tient urbanity. When, however, deputations of
Iroquois now thoroughly frightened and keen
for peace arrived with fresh gifts and fresh
orations, he grew restive. Especially was he
weary of collars and belts of porcelain (wam-
pum), and he asked if he might not refuse them
a suggestion which froze his hearers' blood
with horror. It was represented to him that
such a deed would shake the foundations of so-
ciety. Words might be lies, promises might be
broken; but wampum was a sacred thing, the
symbol of authority, the bond of friendship, the
record of treaties, the sign and token of all that
the red men valued. To reject it would be an
unpardonable and unforgettable insult.
Tracy yielded with a good grace to these ar-
guments, and accepted a fresh supply of bead-
work; but he said very plainly in replying to
the Iroquois speeches that his master, the great
king, desired deeds not words, friendship not
gifts. He demanded the return of all captives,
"DANGER'S TROUBLED NIGHT" 213
and the surrender of hostages as a guarantee of
good behavior. That his terms were accepted,
and the conditions fulfilled, proves that these
arrogant Indians had been for once subdued by
the vision of the power of France.
For Mere Marie, Tracy conceived a very deep
respect. A man of swift decision and of timely
action, he measured her worth by her work. A
far-traveled man of the world, he admired her
grave composure and direct speech. Before leav-
ing Quebec, he gave her a proof of his regard.
When the convent church Mme. de la Peltrie's
church was being built, and money was run-
ning short, Pere Jerome Lalemant demurred at
the expense of a little side chapel, some twelve
feet square. Mere Marie, who greatly desired this
chapel, pleaded that it was included in the plan,
and would cost only four hundred livres. Pere
Lalemant said dryly that four hundred livres
would go a long way toward supporting a savage
orphan; and Mere Marie, finding this argument
irresistible, yielded to it without further words.
Ten years later, when Tracy was being shown
the convent and the church, one of the nuns
said: "This is where our Mother wanted a
chapel." Whereupon the gallant commander of-
fered then and there to build one for her; and
214 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
he did so on such a lavish scale, and with so
complete an unconcern about the savage or-
phans, that it was said to have cost twenty-five
hundred livres.
What wonder that Mere Marie, who had the
most amazing knack of getting sooner or later
what she wanted, wrote enthusiastically of
Tracy's goodness and intelligence? What won-
der that she regretted his departure for France ?
"He was the best friend we have ever had in this
country."
Chapter XII
THE MARRIAGE MART
"SEND me wives," wrote that gallant adven-
turer, Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville, when he was
exploring Canada's waterways, and building her
forts. "With wives I will anchor the roving
coureurs de bois to the soil of New France, and
make of them the farmers that we need."
It was an oft-repeated cry. Talon, who never
lost anything through not asking for it, impor-
tuned the king so stoutly for both men and
women colonists that Colbert told him plainly
that his majesty could not depopulate France to
people Canada. Soldiers he must have to guard
his realm and fight his battles; but, by the same
token, there were many marriageable girls to
spare, and Quebec should have her share of
them. Louis expressed himself as being well
pleased that only sixteen of the last boatload of
maids should have been left unmarried at the
end of a few months.
In truth the whole question of marrying and
giving in marriage had been a serious problem
from the beginning. There were few white
315
216 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
women among the early settlers, and the Indians
had been used to easy and frequent divorce.
"Ah, but these savage marriages give us trouble/*
sighed Pere Le Jeune. The looseness of the
tie appalled the missionaries, and a hard-and-
fast bond was inexplicable and unwelcome to
the Indian convert. Now and then we catch a
note of sympathy for his dilemma on the part
of an understanding priest. Pere Vimont, for
example, expresses something akin to pity for
the young brave who is compelled to "bend his
neck under the yoke of marriage which may one
day lie heavy on him." He plainly considers
that to patiently and profitably bear this yoke
requires "a miracle of grace." A Frenchman is
from first to last a man's man. He cannot be
anything else. It is this characteristic which has
made the Frenchwoman sane and balanced. She
has not disintegrated under adulation.
Mere Marie had always hoped to supply the
needed wives by marrying her Huron and Al-
gonquin girls to settlers. The Church favored
such unions, but there were not enough pupils
to be of much service to the rapidly growing
colony, and many of them preferred men of
their own race. When they had been taught to
read and write, to speak French and wash them-
THE MARRIAGE MART 217
selves, to sing hymns and say their rosaries,
they carried these accomplishments into the for-
est, and lived their old savage lives. The in-
grained docility which had made them such good
school children made them obedient wives. Re-
sponsive to surroundings and to control, they
relinquished the niceties of civilization as un-
protestingly as they had acquired them.
In this regard Mere Marie tells a strange and
touching story. When the Iroquois surrendered
their prisoners in fulfillment of their promise to
Tracy, a number of squaws were sent to Que-
bec, and placed temporarily under the care of
the Ursulines. Among them was an Algonquin
girl, who, although a captive and no better
than a slave, had been taken to wife by an Iro-
quois warrior. Indian marriages were, as a rule,
practical rather than romantic; but this young
brave set so high a store by his woman that he
followed her to Quebec, and besought Mere
Marie to give her back to him. She told him that
she could not release her charge. The governor
must do that. She told him that if he wanted the
Algonquin as a wife, he must be baptized, as
she had been in childhood, and must marry her
in Christian fashion. He consented eagerly to
both demands. He would do anything, be any-
MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
thing. Only give him the girl. Filled with dread
lest her people should carry her away, he
haunted the convent, pleading his cause with
such intensity of desire that Mere Marie was
forced to yield, and intercede for him with the
governor. "There was nothing else to do," she
wrote. "I had never believed that a savage could
bear so great a love for a woman, especially a
woman of another tribe." Of the Algonquin's
sentiments, no word is said. We know she must
have been willing to go, because she went; but
if there burned in her breast any emotion to
correspond with her young husband's ardor,
Mere Marie makes no mention of the circum-
stance.
Four companies of the regiment of Carignan-
Salieres were left to garrison the Canadian forts
when their commanders, Tracy and Salieres, re-
turned to France. A number of soldiers received
their discharge, and remained as settlers, being
well pleased with the beauty of the country and
the freedom of the life. Each of them was given
land on which to build a home, and goods to
the value of one hundred livres. Each of them,
if unwedded, was promised a wife when the next
shipment of young women reached Quebec. The
importation of marriageable girls had been going
THE MARRIAGE MART 219
on for some years. As early as 1654 Pere le Mer-
cier makes mention of eighteen maids, brought
from honest and respectable families, "for we will
receive no others," who came under the care of a
nun from Quimper, Mere Renee de la Nativite.
By 1666 the numbers had greatly increased.
The Journal des Jesuifes records the arrival of
a ship from Normandy having on board one
hundred and thirty farmers and artisans, and
eighty-two young women of good character,
fifty of whom had been trained by nuns in Paris.
The principal sources of supply were at first
the homes and asylums where orphan children
had been cared for since infancy; but it was soon
discovered that country girls, accustomed to
farm work, made the most helpful wives. "Ex-
perience shows," wrote Mere Marie, "that no
others fit so well or so happily into these sur-
roundings." They were drawn from the large
families of small farmers, were selected by the
cures of their respective parishes, and were well
content to hazard a new life, a strange country,
and an unknown husband. It was something to
be called the "king's girls," by which name
they were known, and it was more to receive
from the royal purse a small dowry, usually the
equivalent of eight months' provision. Talon re-
220 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
quired the applicants to be healthy, free from
any repulsive disfigurement, and provided by
the cure or by a magistrate with a certificate
of good behavior. Colbert wrote to the Arch-
bishop of Rouen, asking him to charge the priests
of his diocese with the task of looking up coun-
try girls who were strong enough to bear the
cold of New France, active enough to help with
field work, good enough to make helpmates for
decent young colonists, and adventurous enough
to be willing to cross the sea."
Great care was taken of the prospective wives
during the voyage. They were put in charge of
a matron paid by the king for her services. Mme.
Bourdon brought several convoys of girls to
Quebec; Marguerite Bourgeoys looked after
those destined for Montreal; and we read in the
Hisfoire de la Colonie Fran$aise of a Demoiselle
Etienne who in 1671 was paid the sum of six
hundred livres for keeping watch and ward over
the girls sent from French convents to Canada,
and for seeing that they were safely married.
It is estimated that in twenty years no less than
a thousand young women were despatched to
New France "pour peupler le pays," which duty
they amply fulfilled.
THE MARRIAGE MART 221
It was inevitable that amid such numbers of
assisted emigrants there should have been some
"mixed goods," to use Mere Marie's telling
phrase. A favorite jest among the loose-tongued
was that Paris ridded herself of prostitutes by
marrying them to colonists. La Hontan, writing
after Talon had been recalled, permitted him-
self some witticisms on this subject; but La Hon-
tan always preferred a plaisanterie to a sober
fact. His book is entertaining, and its illustra-
tions are truly delightful. There is a picture of a
beaver of such ferocious aspect that it would
have struck terror into the hunter's heart, while
its house of mud and sticks bears a striking re-
semblance to the catacombs. But the author
could not see his way to being both accurate
and amusing, and he preferred to amuse. As a
matter of fact, every reasonable precaution was
taken to exclude women of loose lives from the
lists. We have Colbert's word for it, and Col-
bert's word counts for more than La Hontan's.
"The utmost care was exercised," he wrote,
"in the selection of colonists for New France.
When girls were sent over to be married, their
conduct was rigidly examined, their stories and
their circumstances were well known. Moreover
222 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
their good behaviour as wives and helpmates
was a proof of the success of the system."
The system was successful. There is no doubt
about that. It proved the correctness of Dr.
Johnson's axiom that the majority of marriages
would be as happy if the Lord Chancellor made
them. Not an atom of romance entered into
Canadian wedlock, unless indeed it happened
that a man and a maid felt a mutual attraction
for each other at first sight. The girls sent to
Quebec were housed in the Ursuline convent, and
presented en masse for inspection. The habi-
tants looked them over, "like cattle," La Hon-
tan said. But the chosen girl, unlike the chosen
cow, was free to say "No" if she did not fancy her
suitor. Questions and remarks were exchanged.
The young man asked the young woman where
she came from, and to what kind of work she
was accustomed. The young woman asked the
young man what was his occupation, if he had
a home to take her to, and how was his farm
stocked. So sure were the colonists that these
would be the first queries, that when a ship was
expected they made pathetic efforts to have
what Mere Marie calls "une petite etablissement"
ready and waiting for the much-desired wife. She
tells us also that no sooner was the ship sighted
THE MARRIAGE MART 223
than they hurried to the convent, eager to get a
first glimpse, and, if possible, a first choice. As
it had to be a final choice, it was naturally a
matter of importance.
It was well that the habitants were ready and
eager to marry, for Talon had no mind to per-
mit them to remain single. The Jesuits' sym-
pathetic regard for bachelorhood was neces-
sarily lacking in a man whose one idea was to
populate the country. Courcelles shared his
views, and both were subject to vigorous prod-
dings from France. "Those who refuse to marry
should be made to bear the heaviest burden of
taxation," wrote Colbert sternly; "and it would
be well if some especial mark of infamy could
be added." In 1668 the king enjoined Laval to
do all that lay in his power to promote early
marriages. A royal fund was established which
gave to every youth who married before he
was twenty-one a bonus of twenty livres, and
to every girl who married before she was seven-
teen the same uncompensatory sum. Munro
quotes a list of fifty young couples each of which
received from this fund a gift of fifty livres.
As for infamy, Courcelles could not well
brand the unmarried colonist as a felon, or weld
an iron collar around his neck; but what he
224 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
could do, he did do. When a boatload of girls
came to port, the few recalcitrants and there
were very few were told to choose a wife
within a reasonable time, or forfeit the right to
hunt and fish in the woods. Parents who neg-
lected to arrange marriages for their children
were fined. The affluent were not exempt from
the performance of this great duty. A few fairly
well-born, well-bred young women were sent
from France to marry officers and colonists of
standing who could not find wives among the
daughters of their friends. Mere Marie writes
more than once that the supply of girls is ex-
hausted, and that Quebec is waiting for more.
It was made clear to all these newly wedded
couples that they were expected to increase and
multiply, which they did. In 1660 Laval was
able to report that the colonies were growing
rapidly because the women of New France bore
more children than did the women of old France,
and because more children lived "maladies
being rare." In 1668 he wrote to M. Pointevin:
"Our French colonists have very large families;
eight, ten, twelve, and occasionally fifteen and
sixteen children. The Indians, on the contrary,
have as a rule but two or three, and very seldom
above five."
THE MARRIAGE MART 225
Incentives to paternity were not lacking.
Bounties on babies on an excess of babies
were offered by the governor in the name of
the king. A man who had ten children born
in wedlock received a pension of three hundred
livres a year, A man who had twelve children
received four hundred livres a year, no insig-
nificant sum for the time and place. Mere Marie
comments again and again on the size of the
families and on their sturdy health. "It is as-
tonishing," she writes, "to see so many good-
looking, well-built children. They run around
bareheaded, barefooted, with only a little shirt
on their backs, they live on bread, and sagamite,
and eels, and they are hardy, big and bold."
Pere Dollier de Casson, most intrepid and
most humorous of priests, wrote to France that
while the Canadian climate was generally in-
vigorating, women throve in it better than did
men. They had large families of healthy children,
and themselves remained buxom and strong.
Aubert, who made a more careful study of con-
ditions, had little but good to report. "The
colonists of New France," he wrote, " are vigor-
ous men, well-made, nimble, and self-reliant.
They are always ready for war, and capable of
enduring great fatigue. They are born in a good
226 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
climate, are sufficiently nourished, and accus-
tomed from childhood to physical exercise,
hunting, fishing, and canoeing."
It probably sounds better than it was, like
the Happy Valley, and Merrie England, and
the Golden Age; but certain requisites for hu-
man content are visibly present in the picture.
Men were perforce self-reliant when they had
no one but themselves to rely on. They could
not send around the corner for anything they
chanced to want, so they looked ahead and pro-
vided for their own needs. They were, in the
main, free. If constrained now and then, as in
the matter of marriage, such laws were in ac-
cord with normal human desires not in fa-
natical opposition to them. The colonist was poor,
but then no one was rich. He did not know the
bitterness of contrast, the unfathomable gulf
between plutocracy and penury, the perpetual
vaunt of wealth he might not share. His life
was hard, but had in it no element of servility.
"Poverty," said Bossuet, "is no evil to men who
derive from it a sense of independence and
liberty."
Chapter XIII
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
THE successful termination of the Holy War
changed the face of New France. Peace meant
expansion, and expansion meant a more exact-
ing civilization, a higher standard of comfort,
and a notable increase in internal bickering.
Being less occupied with the iniquities of hostile
savages, the colonists had more leisure in which
to find fault with one another. Public affairs
did not then mean news to be read unconcern-
edly in the morning paper; they meant matters
which touched individual habitants very closely,
improving their circumstances or increasing their
taxes as the case might be. Laval candidly ad-
mits that the king spent much on the colonies
and got little from them. His interest was great,
his generosity excessive; but, being Louis the
Fourteenth, he was fundamentally incapable of
allowing the colonists to manage their own af-
fairs in their own way. On the liberty and the
capacity to do this has depended the ultimate
well-being of every New World settlement. Cour-
celles and Talon were aware that Canada was
227
228 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
being kept too long in leading strings, and an
Ursuline nun shut up in a convent on the hill
came to the same conclusion. Having studied
the new rules for regulating commerce, for pre-
serving order, and for raising revenues, Mere
Marie observed thoughtfully: "It all sounds
well, and begins well; but God alone knows how
things will turn out. We have learned from ex-
perience that the results of law-making can never
be foreseen."
The oppressive sense of danger had been
lifted from men's hearts, or rather had been
shifted from the hearts of the colonists to
the hearts of the Iroquois where it did them a
world of good. So fearful were they of a fresh
invasion that, according to Pere Dollier de Cas-
son, every tree and every bush appeared to
them a Frenchman. Mere Marie writes that
savages who had hitherto felt themselves mas-
ters of the wilderness now spared no pains and
certainly no promises (they had always been
liberal in the matter of promises) to secure peace.
"They are humbled to the dust."
Missionaries were sent to them, among others
Francois de la Motte-Fenelon, a Sulpician, and
a cadet of the illustrious house of Salignac, the
glories of whose past were to be revived in the
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 229
brilliant and popular Archbishop of Cambrai.
The Abbe Fenelon bore no resemblance to his
famous relative. He had received minor orders
in France, and had been ordained in Quebec.
He went from one remote post to another, liv-
ing for years among the Indians, and maintain-
ing amicable relations. Always silent, he grew
more and more taciturn. We owe most that we
know about the aborigines of New France to the
freely related experiences of the missionaries.
"Sagacious and keen," says Parkman, "with
faculties sharpened by peril, they made faithful
report of the temper and movements of the dis-
tant tribes among whom they were distributed."
Fenelon was an exception to this good rule. His
reports were brief, his comments negligible.
When Laval begged him to tell at length the tale
of his adventures, he replied: " Monseigneur,
the greatest kindness you can accord me is
to spare me from talking about myself." When
Mere Marie, abandoning the abstract for the
concrete, asked him how he managed to live
for so many months in the year on an unbroken
diet of sagamite, he said that he had ceased to
think of food in any other terms. A remarkable
answer, and a no less remarkable frame of mind.
A tide of something which the modest minded
230 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
might have called prosperity poured in upon
Quebec. One of the outward semblances of
wealth, currency, was fast displacing the cum-
brous system of bartering goods. According to
Mere Marie, Tracy and his troops were largely
responsible for this change. " Money is now com-
mon," she writes. "The French officers brought
a great deal of it to this country, and the soldiers
paid in cash for everything they bought." Trade
with the Indians was conducted as it had always
been, and the farmers still exchanged their prod-
uce for household goods. Among the plain
people a little coin went a long way. They made
what they required. This was a matter of pride
to Talon, who wrote to Colbert that he could
clothe himself from head to foot in Canadian
products: homespun cloth, homespun linen,
homemade leather, and all of them good. Only
a pioneer people knows how many things it can
do for itself, and how many more things it can
do without. Mere Marie tells her son that four
years will turn forest into farm, and that the
grazing land is better than any that can be had
in France; but when her sister desires seeds and
bulbs of Canadian flowers the nun is amused at
the notion. The flowers of New France, she ex-
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 231
plains, are as wild as the natives. They are not
planted in gardens. They spring from the gen-
erous soil.
As Quebec developed, Mere Marie's letters re-
flect every phase of the development. She writes
less and less about the things of the spirit, and
more and more about what is going on around
her. No wonder that she is the often quoted
authority for the Histoire de la Colonie Frangaise
en Canada, published in Montreal in 1866. Its
author, Abbe Faillon, meant this work to be
a comprehensive record of New France from
her first beginnings to the English occupation;
but only three volumes of the proposed twelve
were ever written. The narrative closes in 1675;
and embracing as it does the period of Mere
Marie's activities, it makes such good use of her
letters that it seems at times to hang upon her
words. Her concern for the colony was deep and
lasting. She was as much interested in a new
brewery, a new tannery, a new market-place, as
in a fresh supply of livestock sent by the king
to the farmers. She tells us that M. Follin has
been encouraged by Talon to manufacture two
much-needed articles, potash and soap; and that
the householders of Quebec have been taken to
232 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
task for not having their chimneys properly
swept, at a cost of six sous a chimney. Like a good
economist she is delighted to record that New
France, which had for so long been dependent
upon imports with only beavers to offer in ex-
change, has now a line of exports. Three ships
were chartered in 1670 which carried white pine,
fish oil, salted eels, and dressed hides to the West
Indies, sugar from the West Indies to France,
and commodities of all kinds from France to
Quebec. "And this triple commerce is com-
pleted in a year.'*
To Talon is due the credit for all commercial
development. He simply could not bear to see
the poverty of a country teeming with potential
wealth. It was he who built the big brewery in
Quebec, partly because the colonists spent too
much money on French brandy, and partly be-
cause Colbert approved of malt liquor; "for by
reason of the cold nature of beer, its vapors
rarely deprive men of the use of their judgment."
It was Talon who vowed that New France, which
had hitherto raised little but rye, should, before
he was done with her, send wheat to Europe,
which prophecy was actually fulfilled.
Montreal shared in the general well-being.
Once sure of her life, she began to reap the
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 233
fruits of her superb situation. Indian traders
came from the great lakes, and coureurs de bois
brought their spoils to this accessible colony. The
year after the Holy War, two splendid adven-
turers, Radisson and Groseilliers, brothers in
arms and as shrewd as they were daring, reached
Montreal with a fleet of canoes, three hundred
Indians, and a cargo of furs worth two hundred
thousand livres. It was the rich result of several
years spent in the wilderness, and was quickly
disposed of. Neither of these typical wanderers
cared to linger longer than was needful in the
haunts of civilization.
The weekly markets established in Montreal,
in Quebec, and in Three Rivers stimulated traf-
fic. Everything that could be bought, sold, or
bartered was brought to them for inspection:
tobacco, produce, pelts, lengths of cloth, and
clumsy homemade shoes. A cask of salted eels,
holding five hundred, sold for thirty-five or
forty livres. A marketable hog was worth ten
livres more. Butter brought from twelve to six-
teen sous a pound a costly luxury. In her con-
tent with the improved circumstances of the
country, Mere Marie would even have us be-
lieve that the officers left in charge of Tracy's
new forts had rather a good time, which could
234 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
never have been their way of thinking. "They
clear the land," she wrote in 1667, "and live
well, having plenty of cattle and poultry. The
rivers and lakes are full of fish, the forests give
them game. Passable roads have been made from
one fort to another. These gentlemen have mar-
ried Canadian wives, and have built themselves
comfortable homes."
There was no lightening of Mere Marie's
labors as her years drew to a close. She had
mastered the Huron, Algonquin, and Iroquois
tongues; but it had taken the hardest kind of
study. "I could not have dared to fancy myself
teaching our little Indians in their own speech,"
she wrote. "Yet by the grace of God this is just
what I am doing." She was by no means vain of
her accomplishments; but her carefully culti-
vated humility was not proof against the com-
ments of friends who said that the task could
not have been so very difficult inasmuch as she
had mastered it. This neighborly line of reasoning
she declined to accept. "A great desire," she
protested, "will carry one far. I would force
my soul into my tongue to make it utter the
words I wish to speak."
Speaking was, however, only one of many
requisites if her work was to outlive her. For a
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 235
number of years she instructed the young nuns
in the Indian languages so that there should be
a supply of trained teachers. For their use, and
for the use of her little savages, she wrote simple
catechisms in the Huron and Algonquin tongues,
a sacred history and a collection of prayers in
Algonquin, a catechism and a primitive dic-
tionary in Iroquois. Even to friends this must
have implied a fair amount of toil. Mere Marie
was by nature a daughter of Mary. All mystics
are. She would fain have sat at the feet of Christ
in blissful quiescence and contemplation. But the
role of Martha had been assigned her, and she
ennobled and sanctified it.
v In one regard the letters of this observant
woman grow less sanguine with increasing years.
She had begun, just as the Jesuits had begun,
by hoping and believing that the Indian could
be permanently civilized. After long experience
she came to see that he was not a savage by
chance but by nature, and that he offered an
adamantine resistance to the processes of civili-
zation. The marvelous adaptability of the ne-
gro, who fits easily into "the ringing grooves of
change," had no counterpart in the North Amer-
ican Indian. Savagery, civilization, slavery, free-
dom, ignorance, education the negro has ac-
236 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
cepted them all, and has thriven on them. The
Indian led his own life, or he died.
Mere Marie's letters to her son are filled with
accounts of the natives, both children and
adults. His interest in them seems to have been
unending, and his conception of them cynically
clear. In answer to his doubts as to whether the
Huron and Algonquin converts were aussi par-
faits as primitive Christians, she admits that
they were neither polite nor very agreeable, and
that their intelligence, though keen, had been
trained along especial lines. But she insists that
they understood the truths and followed the
practices of religion. When the sailors or colo-
nists sold them brandy, they became drunk
and violent. On recovering, they did penance at
the church door, being forbidden to enter for
two or three days. Their behavior was like that
of a child sentenced to stand in a corner. These
penances were imposed by the elders of the vil-
lage, who were more severe with the culprits
than the missionaries thought it wise to be. ~
Mere Marie echoes the Jesuits' praise of the
modest fashion in which the Indian women
dressed. She greatly admires the ornaments made
of porcupine quills, some of which were colored a
deep red, "as beautiful as the cochineal dyes of
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 237
France." She gives an amusing account of the
puzzled awe with which the braves regarded a
letter. They would carry one from Quebec to a
remote village, and listen "in ecstasy" when it
was read aloud to them, and they recognized the
accuracy of the news. "They could not under-
stand how a scrap of paper could tell so many
things and never be mistaken."
The passion of the Indian for gambling gave
genuine distress to this level-headed nun who
had been used all her life to thrift and wise ex-
penditure. Other vices were more degrading, but
no other was so inherently futile, and no other
took so tight a grip upon its victim. The sav-
age had little to lose, but that little was his all.
Charles Fox would have been considered a very
ordinary gamester in the woods of North Amer-
ica. A bowl of bark and some black and white
pebbles, in lieu of dice, constituted the simple
outfit. With its help the young brave risked his
tobacco, his ornaments, his weapons, his wife,
his blankets, beavers, moccasins, and whatever
else he happened to possess. Reduced to naked-
ness, he wagered his hair, which, if he lost, was
cut off and burned; and a finger or two which
were severed from his hand, though of no earthly
use to the winner. It must be said for him that
238 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
if he was the worst of drinkers, he was a model
gambler. He never permitted himself to show
the slightest annoyance when he lost, nor any
exultation when he won. The jubilant laughter
of the successful and highly civilized bridge
player would have seemed to him indecent and
ill-bred.
Mere Marie considered that the few Iroquois
children who had been sent to the convent were
more adroit and intelligent than other little
Indians, but also more impatient of restraint,
and more prone to melancholy if restrained.
"They love their liberty," she writes, "and their
values are different from ours. Nothing in their
eyes is of any worth that does not relate to war
or to the chase." Here and there in her letters
are charming and very modern touches. She de-
scribes the small savages marching in a self-
constituted procession round and round the
creche at Christmas time, carrying little torches
of bark because candles were so dear. She hears
an Indian mother say to her children who were
fearful of being left in the convent: "If when
I was your age I could have had such a chance
to be tended and taught, I should have been
only too glad to go to school." Which proves that
in a world of seeming variety and of undoubted
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 239
change, parents are, and have always been,
generic.
Very little is said in Mere Marie's correspond-
ence concerning her French pupils. To learn
about them we must turn to other letters, or
to an occasional paragraph in the Relations. One
of the early editors, Abbe Ferland, who was
Laval's great friend and champion, grows elo-
quent on the subject. He refers again and again
to the inestimable advantage it was to Quebec
to have, even in her hard and primitive days,
a group of women who could give her children
the rudiments of education, and train them "in
the purposes and niceties of life." The historian,
Suite, says much the same thing in his Histoire
des Frangais Canadiens. He finds the Ursulines to
have been sufficiently well educated "to keep
intact the accent, the vocabulary, and the gen-
eral tone of good society." It was due largely to
their influence that the amenities of social con-
tact were preserved in the families of Quebec.
Ferland and Suite are reinforced by Mr. C. W.
Colby in his Canadian Types of the Old Regime.
"Apart from its insistence on religion," he writes,
"the convent education aimed at preserving
purity of speech" (the beautiful speech of Tou-
raine), "at inculcating courage, and at humaniz-
2 4 o MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
ing the pupil through the medium of such polite
accomplishments as seemed suited to the needs
of a young country. From the outset the nuns
identified themselves with the land."
This identification was complete. As the years
went by, Mere Marie chose Canadian novices in
preference to French ones, simply because they
would not "miss France." We know that in
1669 the pupils paid one hundred and twenty
livres a year for board and tuition. In addition
to their studies, which were probably very
simple, the little girls were taught "les ouvrages
de gout" which meant fine sewing, embroidery,
lace making, and perhaps painting or what
passed for painting in the convents of that day.
The nuns made the church linen, and found time
amid their many avocations to embroider hand-
some altar cloths, and to paint "two pieces of
architecture to match the Tabernacle of the
parish church " a somewhat cryptic statement.
They also learned indefatigable women that
they were! to copy the precious wampum; and
we read in the Histoire de la Colonie Franqaise
that the collar of beads given by the governor
to Garakontie was made in the convent, and
was both "big and beautiful."
Ferland had as keen an admiration for Mere
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY 241
Marie as had Tracy, and he knew a great deal
more about her. He judged her qualities with
an impartial eye, and paid a just tribute to her
life's work. "At the head of a community of
women," he wrote, "and devoid of resources,
this remarkable nun inspired her companions
with the courage and the absolute trust in God
that animated her own soul. If misfortunes
came, she met them with composure and stead-
fastness. Always tranquil, she would neither be
stayed by fear, nor swept to excess by zeal.
Her thoughts were clear, her style correct, her
judgment firm."
Perhaps the constraint of zeal cost this de-
vout soul more than did the banishing of fear.
She was not wont to be afraid, and she disliked
exceedingly to hear the petty discomforts and
the semi-occasional perils of her life exaggerated
by those about her. She found no hardship in
plain living, and she resolutely declined to think
herself in danger when she was not. But no one
could have better understood the inadequacy
of fleeting emotions, even the noblest, as a foun-
dation for endeavor: "In our transient enthu-
siasms," she wrote to her former superior at
Tours, "we naturally and unconsciously think
more of ourselves than of the objects we face.
242 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
When this first ardor weakens, our tendencies
and inclinations remain on the ordinary plane
of life/'
To have learned such a lesson without resent-
ment and without discouragement is to have
climbed one pinnacle of Christian philosophy.
Chapter XI V
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY
IT HAS been said very often and very truly that
men and women who shut themselves away from
the world are not best fitted to train the young
for contact with the world. But the barriers
which divided the Ursulines of Quebec from the
closely knit society about them were so flimsy
as to be for all practical purposes non-existent.
The nuns did not go into the town, but the town
came to them. They knew, not only everything
that happened, which was not much, but every
conflicting purpose which helped to keep the
colony in a turmoil. Mere Marie, whose interest
was unflagging, took pains to be well informed.
Her reputation for sanity kept pace with her
reputation for holiness. If she believed too readily
in the first report that reached her, she did not
cling obstinately to an early conviction in the
face of later evidence. She was on more intimate
terms with Courcelles than with Talon. The in-
tendant, who had a quick and lively disposition,
found little to attract him in her grave bearing
and direct speech. He liked better to go to the
243
244 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
Hotel Dieu, where a brilliant French nun, Mere
Marie de la Nativite, charmed him with her
grace and wit.
The jurisdiction of New France was clumsily
contrived, and was administered in the interests
of the litigious; but it did not stand for tyranny
or oppression. The governor, the intendant, and
the council, which had been called "supreme"
until Louis changed its title to "superior"
("supreme" being a word which he reserved for
his own use and benefit), ruled the country.
There were at first five, then seven, then ten
councilors, including always the bishop. They
did not work together very amicably, and they
wrote as many complaints to Colbert as he
would tolerate. Their salaries were too small to
tempt cupidity, and fees were strictly pro-
hibited; but the post was an honorable one, the
gift of the king, held as a rule for life, and oc-
casionally inherited by a son. The advantage
of the system was that it left no room for
"planks" or "platforms," for currying the favor
of constituents, or for making preposterous
promises unlikely, if not impossible, of fulfill-
ment.
A pioneer community is necessarily demo-
cratic. Adam delves and Eve spins, and there is
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 245
little room for the gentleman. The seigneur did
his best to play a gentlemanly part, and he had
all the outward semblances of rank. His pew in
the village church was as wide, as deep, and as
decorated with armorial bearings as though he
had been a British squire. Special prayers were
offered for him in the pulpit, as though he had
been a member of the royal family. He walked
next to the officiating priest in processions; and
everybody waited after Mass until his carriage
had gone bumping down the road; if he had a
carriage, and if there was a road. He was also
buried in the church instead of in the church-
yard a coveted privilege.
Seigneurs only might be ennobled; and the
desire to belong to the noblesse was so strong
among the plain-living landholders of New
France that the king was both amused and ex-
asperated. He said that they kept too many
horses and too few cows; and he expressed a fear
lest, having no money on which to support their
high pretensions, they might become robber bar-
ons as in the Middle Ages if only there had
been some one rich enough to rob.
Opposed, though in no unfriendly fashion, to
the aristocratic pretensions of the seigneur was
the very real dominion of the farmer and the
246 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULXNES
trader. On them Canada depended for her daily
bread, and very often for the chance to eat that
bread in safety. Soldiers defended the towns and
trading posts, but countrymen defended them-
selves. Every Sunday afternoon, save in mid-
winter, they were drilled in the use of arms.
The captain of the local militia was appointed
by the governor. He was less imposing than the
seigneur, but of more practical importance, being
responsible for the security of his neighbors.
He might be peasant born, but he was em-
powered to raise the flagstaff emblem of royal
authority before his door. He was necessarily
a man of sagacity and of cool courage. He il-
lustrated in his homely fashion the proud words
of Froissart, who had small thought of farmers:
"The kingdom of France was never brought so
low as to lack men ready and willing for the
combat."
The methods by which information was con-
veyed to the public made for democracy. Or-
dinances were read aloud at the church door
after Mass, and all important news was retailed
in the same fashion. The congregation, which
had no Sunday paper, was thus posted on mat-
ters social and political, and it discussed them
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 247
at leisure before going home to dinner. Every-
man learned what his neighbor thought, and
popular opinion was slowly solidified, a word
and an idea at a time. That axiom of old France,
"It is best that people should not be at liberty
to speak their minds/' was unknown in New
France. More than once taxes were readjusted
to meet the reasonable demands of farmers who,
having made up their minds, spoke them with
decision and despatch.
Justice was harshly administered. When Pierre
Boucher he who boasted to the French king
that he had one hundred and fifty living de-
scendants was asked if Quebec were a law-
abiding town, he answered sternly, "We know
how to hang in Canada." One could wish that
the first culprit to learn this bitter truth had
not been a girl thief of sixteen; but in pioneer
communities theft is a grievous offense. The habi-
tants, who had not as a rule a lock on their doors,
depended upon one another's honesty, and this
was a matter of pride as well as of convenience.
The principal sources of danger were the sailors
in port, and the soldiers left behind by Tracy
to garrison the forts. Mere Marie tells a dread-
ful story of a friendly Iroquois chief, Sonnon-
248 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
touan, who was robbed and murdered by three
soldiers of Montreal. They plied him with
brandy, killed him in his drunken sleep, hid the
body, stole his valuable furs, and sold them,
which sale led to their undoing.
It was a crime fraught with danger to Mont-
real and to New France. It struck a blow at the
friendly relations between the French and In-
dians, and it threatened to destroy forever the
red man's confidence in the white man's word.
Courcelles lost no time in indecision. He hurried
to Montreal, called together the Indians, Iro-
quois and others, made them a brief, stern ad-
dress, repudiating the deed with horror, and
ordered the three murderers to be shot then
and there before the assembled throng. "This
appalling spectacle," writes Mere Marie, "did
more than appease the followers of Sonnon-
touan. It seemed to all the savages an excessive
punishment. Only one Indian had been killed.
Why should three Frenchmen die ? This was not
their conception of justice, and they tried to
prevent the triple execution, saying that the
death of one soldier was enough to expiate the
crime. Courcelles replied that by the law of
France all were guilty, and all must die. After
the sentence had been carried out, he restored
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 249
the stolen furs to the family of Sonnontouan;
and the Indians dispersed, deeply impressed,
and more than a little terrified."
Talon, who, although masterful, was the least
quarrelsome of men, tried hard to restrain the
habitants from litigation; but many of them
came from Normandy, and the Normans have
always been wedded to lawsuits. The story of
New France is one of strangely blended inhu-
manity and kindness, of quarrels and friendly
deeds. There was constant friction between the
clericals and the council; but the governor sent
fresh fish to the Jesuits twice a week during
Lent, and they repaid him with jars of olives,
when they had any. The citizens of Quebec
could see without concern a girl of sixteen
hanged for stealing; but when the wife of
Jacques Fournier was prosecuted and fined for
humorously libeling an unhumorous acquaint-
ance, the fine, at the intercession of the governor,
was turned over to her children, so that the
jester was none the worse for the sentence.
Dueling was not uncommon among the officers,
and on one occasion two of Mere Marie's out-
door servants undertook to settle their differ-
ences "after the fashion of gentlemen." They
seem to have been inexpert swordsmen as no
MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
injury was done to either of them; but the harm-
lessness of the diversion failed to justify it in
the eyes of the indignant nun. On the other
hand, when the house of Guillaume Bance, a
poor man, was burned to the ground, fifteen of
his neighbors helped him to rebuild it, working
even on a holiday for this good end.
In their dealings with the red man, the nuns
imitated as closely as possible the methods of
the Jesuits, who, while teaching the truths of
Christian doctrine in their very simplest forms,
forebore to outrage the sensitive pride of the
savage, or to disestablish customs which usage
had endeared to him. The structural complete-
ness of Christianity made no impression on his
mind; but its emblematic side attracted his
curiosity, and ritual won his heart. He had em-
blems and ceremonies of his own, and was
familiar with these avenues of approach. An In-
dian woman who feared that her baby, born in
the forest, might die before it was baptized, hung
her rosary around its neck, so that the good
Lord, recognizing the symbol of faith, might
know that, although unchristened, it was a
Christian child.
Everything was done to enhance in savage eyes
the dignity and desirability of faith, and no op-
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 251
position was offered to the simplicities of an
abandoned heathenism. A Huron girl, who died
in the hospital after baptism, was buried with
all her most precious possessions, beaver skins,
moccasins, and beads, so that her relatives might
not be outraged by seeing her go naked and un-
adorned into the spirit world. An Algonquin
squaw, long held captive by the Iroquois, was
sent with her six-year-old daughter to Quebec
after the Holy War, and was there instructed
and baptized. Much was made of the occasion.
"His grace the bishop officiated," writes Pere
Dablon, "and Mme. d'Aillebout" (widow of the
"insanely pious" governor) "stood godmother
to the woman, who was christened Louise. The
child was named Marie Anne. The Ursulines,
to whose care she has been confided, say that
she is a very intelligent little savage. M. Talon
provided a feast which followed the cere-
mony."
It has been well said that the Jesuits who
made the first Indian converts had a firm grasp
of kindergarten methods long before the days
of Froebel. Their teaching was an ingenious,
strenuous, highly developed object lesson. Every-
thing had to be presented to the savage intelli-
gence through the medium of his senses. He
252 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
measured and appraised the unknown by the
known, applying to all problems the rules and
tests with which he was familiar. Hence his
never-failing confidence in the efficacy of noise.
He knew that it terrified the enemy. He had been
frightened by it himself. Therefore he used it
as a remedy for illness, and as a protection from
storms, floods, and earthquakes. Wherever evil
influences were at work, noise might drive them
away. The same method of reasoning induced an
Indian woman to refuse baptism because she
was too old to undertake a journey to Heaven.
She had back of her a lifetime of long and hard
migrations.
The missionaries learned all that they knew
by experience, and if experience be the best,
she is also the costliest of teachers. Pere Dablon,
rejoicing in the unbroken peace of 1669 and in
the new missions opened that year, observes
thoughtfully: "The Iroquois are always Iro-
quois, and the Algonquins are always Algon-
quins. It behooves us to keep both in the straight
path, the first through their fear of France, the
second through their wonder and admiration.
The haughty and superb Iroquois must more-
over be handled with great care, and spared the
humiliation of being thought to fear"
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 253
Pere du Perron, who did not lack adjectives,
said that the Indians in their native state were
"patient, liberal, and hospitable; but also im-
portunate, visionary, childish, thieving, lying,
deceitful, licentious, proud and lazy." Of these
superabundant demerits, childishness was the
most difficult to control. A good man may ap-
proach a bad man with some basis of understand-
ing ("there, but for the grace of God, goes
John Bunyan"); but the wisest of men is at a
loss before the vagaries of an undeveloped in-
telligence. Mere Marie, enlarging on this theme,
tells the story of an Iroquois brave who was
hunting in the forests when he dreamed that he
had murdered his wife. This meant that murder
her he must. It was inconvenient that she was
at the time a matter of ninety leagues away, in
a village outside of Montreal; but a duty so
imperative took no count of distance. The hus-
band covered those leagues, growing more and
more indignant, no doubt, and more and more
murderously inclined, with every weary mile;
reached the village, and smashed his way into
the hut where the woman was hiding. The fright-
ened creature climbed into the loft, leaped
through a hole to the ground, and ran to the
nearest neighbor for protection. "Dreams have
254 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
great credit here," is the nun's composed com-
ment upon the incident.
The year 1670 was a significant one in the
history of New France. The winter was excep-
tionally long and severe. "In the thirty-one years
we have been in Quebec," wrote Mere Marie,
"we have never before known such cold. All
our pipes were frozen hard, and the absence of
water gave us plenty of exercise. We tried at
first to melt the snow, hoping that this would
suffice at least for our live stock. But the supply
proved inadequate, and there was nothing for
it but to have the oxen drag all we used from
the river. The poor beasts were nearly ruined
going up and down the steep and icy hill. Now
in June the snow still covers our garden, and
many of our trees are dead. The whole country
has suffered greatly. The hospital nuns are es-
pecially to be pitied, for they have lost one of
the finest orchards in the land."
This was the first winter that La Salle spent
in the inclement wilderness. This was the winter
that Louis Joliet and the two Sulpicians, Pere
Galinee and Pere Dollier de Casson who al-
ways came in for adventures lived in a trap-
per's hut on Lake Erie, hidden by snowdrifts
from the world. This was the year recorded in
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 255
the Histoire de la Colonie Franqaise as pregnant
with promise for the future. The Iroquois who
came in ever-increasing numbers to trade in
Montreal had described two mighty rivers
which they often confused with each other. One
they called Ohio, which meant beautiful, and
the other Mississippi, which meant great. It
was the hope of reaching these rivers, and dis-
covering through them a route to the Orient,
which induced La Salle to abandon a profitable
seigneury, and become a great explorer. In the
same year, 1670, this interesting note appears
in the Relations: "We" (the Jesuits) "have re-
solved to send an expedition to assure ourselves
of the truth regarding the generally accepted
belief that by means of the river called Messipi
or Missisipi we may reach the sea of Japan,
and facilitate commerce with the east."
La Salle's party was organized on a large and
imposing scale. " So greatly did M. de Courcelles
have at heart the success of this expedition,"
writes Abbe Faillon, "that to insure its safety
and lend it importance he permitted soldiers to
leave their companies, and join the ranks of the
adventurers." They set out with high hopes;
and Talon's secretary, M. Patoulet, made this
formal announcement of their departure: "M.
256 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
La Salle and M. Dollier de Casson, accompanied
by a number of brave and hardy men, have left
New France with the design of discovering a
waterway which will enable us to reach Japan
and China. The enterprise is difficult, the result
doubtful. God grant it the hoped-for success.
There is one good thing to be said : His Majesty
the King has not been called upon to pay the
expenses of an undertaking which may come to
naught."
Chapter XV
THE CHANGING SCENE
IN THE autumn of 1671 Mme. de la Peltrie died
of pleurisy. Hers had been an interesting and in
many respects a noble career, full of sharp con-
trasts, and upheld by a high sustaining purpose.
A brilliant, impetuous, ardent woman, fertile in
expedients, she had carried her point against
heavy odds when she resolved to devote herself
and her fortune to the Canadian missions. She
had been a true and tried friend to the Ursulines
who knew her worth, and to their Indian pro-
tegees who mourned her deeply. She had not
only kept faith to the end, but she had preserved
to the end a large measure of her early enthu-
siasm. If she lacked the serenity and the il-
lumined common sense of Mere Marie, she was
none the less a very gallant lady, and Quebec
was left the duller, as well as the poorer, for
her loss.
Her reluctant suitor and loyal friend, M. de
Bernieres, had died in 1660. His last years had
been spent in the seclusion of the Hermitage, a
retreat which he had established at Caen for
257
MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
devout laymen who wished to live in peace,
unvexed by the problems of the world, or by
women who made the world so problematic.
Here he was surrounded by a group of young
men, among whom at one time was Laval. Here
he defied his growing blindness by dictating sev-
eral religious books, all deeply tinged with mys-
ticism, and with that pleasant but fruitless
quietism then rife in Spain and France. One of
them, L'Interieur Chretien, went through many
editions. Its author had traveled far since those
stirring and harassing days when he helped to
dupe M. de Chauvigny, and establish the Ursu-
lines in Quebec. His nephew, Pere Henri de
Bernieres, administered the last rites of the
Church to Mme. de la Peltrie; and Pere Dablon,
writing for the Relations, exhausts himself in
pious rhapsodies over her saintly life and death.
It is the fault of such commentators that we fail
to glimpse the real woman behind this torrent
of laudation.
That there was a very real woman, vital to
her finger tips, and possessed of the resource-
fulness as well as of the inconsistencies of her sex,
no one can doubt who reads her record, or looks
upon her portrait. The daughter who outwitted
her father, the widow who pressed into her serv-
THE CHANGING SCENE 259
ice a man of influence and authority, the en-
thusiast who stood ready to sacrifice the pleas-
ures of a very pleasant world, the inspired leader
who chose Mere Marie out of a convent full of
nuns to do the work for which she was so emi-
nently fitted, the sanguine, devoted, willful fon-
datrice, who was so uncertain yet so profoundly
reliable hers was a character worthy of some-
thing better than an indiscriminate and edifying
eulogy.
Abbe Casgrain, who deals habitually in su-
perlatives, is no more enlightening than is Pere
Dablon. He does devote some pages to Mme. de
la Peltrie's personal charm, to her good looks
and winning manners; but for the rest he takes
cognizance of nothing that is not supernaturally
perfect. She must have been very lovely in
youth, for her portrait painted in middle age is
full of life and espiegkrie. The face is round, the
forehead broad, the eyes are bright and glanc-
ing, the lips full and sweet. The semi-religious
costume is dignified and very picturesque. The
hands are folded decorously as though in prayer;
but the side-long look beneath the narrowed lids
is faintly amused, and the mouth is ready to
smile. It is said of Saint Catherine of Siena, who
Heaven knows had plenty to depress her, that
260 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
she was " always jocund and of a happy spirit."
Mme. de la Peltrie was plainly of a happy spirit;
an impulsive, gay-tempered creature, immacu-
lately free from the ostentation of wealth, and
generously interested in all that went on about
her.
Why such a woman should have habitually
alluded to herself as the most depraved of sinners
might puzzle a biographer, did we not recognize
a custom common among pious mortals whose
sins are not worth considering. The higher a
soul advances in grace, the clearer must be its
consciousness of imperfection, the wider grows
the gulf between aspiration and fulfillment. This
was what made Laval say with his last breath:
"They were saints. I am a sinner." This was
what forced from the dying Saint Theresa the
reiterated plea: "Remember, Lord, I am a daugh-
ter of Thy church." But self-accusation may be
a mere/tffcm de parkr. When Mme. de la Peltrie
denounced herself as a vile and abject wretch,
or as the most unworthy creature in the world,
she knew that she was nothing of the sort. She
was not practising humility, she was not yielding
to vanity. She was repeating a formula of old
and good standing. It had no significance what-
ever.
THE CHANGING SCENE 261
When we pass from words which are the
daughters of earth to deeds which are the sons
of Heaven, this lady, who was neither saint nor
sinner, leaps into vivid life. The evidence of her
contemporaries is clear and convincing. Of all
the group of women who sailed for Quebec in
1639 she alone had left a life of luxury, she
alone had come straight from the ways of wealth
to the ways of poverty, from pleasant idleness
to hard, unlovely work. All agree that she did
this work, not in the spirit of sacrifice, but with
eager interest and desire; and not for a few
months, but for many years. Happily she was
too well-born, too sure of herself and of her
lineage, to think any kind of labor degrading.
She did not have to make acts of humility where
she saw nothing humiliating. She scrubbed the
floors, the pots and kettles, and the Indian chil-
dren with equal vigor and thoroughness. Her
perfect health defied cold, fatigue, and sagamite
for thirty-two years.
Mme. de la Peltrie's supreme accomplishment
was sewing. With skillful fingers she fashioned
endless garments for the little savages; and,
once they had been taught to keep themselves
tolerably clean, she took delight in making their
dresses neat and well fitting. Apart from the
262 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
invaluable income which she brought to the con-
vent, she was of great service, and always an
agreeable and well-bred companion. When she
took the bit between her teeth, and fled to
harder and more exciting conditions in Montreal,
Mere Marie never lost confidence in her return.
When she tried to take the bit between her teeth,
and fly to the well-nigh unbearable conditions
of a mission outpost, the missionaries with equal
confidence turned her back to Quebec. As the
years passed over her head, these restless im-
pulses no longer stirred her heart. The impetuous
spirit was sobered, the keen mind grew tranquil
and perhaps a little torpid, and Madame la
Fondatrice became "la douce et pieuse dame"
whom Laval commended, and for whom Talon
had a just regard.
One curious bequest she made on her death-
bed, and she made it apparently at the request
of the Jesuits, which seems more curious still.
She directed that her heart should be taken from
her body, enclosed iri a plain, unpolished wooden
box, and buried beneath the altar step of the
Jesuit church, in fulfillment of a promise made
to the priests. Her wishes were reverently car-
ried out. When her remains were laid to rest in
the choir of the convent chapel, her heart was
THE CHANGING SCENE 263
interred under the step of the high altar in the
church of Notre Dame des Anges. The painting
that hung above this altar, the silver lamp that
swung before it, had been her gifts. She had now,
in all reverence and simplicity, added a third.
It must be remembered that in the Seven-
teenth Century the heart had not been degraded
to the important but strictly utilitarian office it
holds to-day. Much romance was still attached
to it, and the custom of disposing of it in an
elaborate and troublesome fashion had the sanc-
tion of age and authority. The far-traveled heart
of the Bruce, which never reached its destina-
tion, is the most notable case in point. Another
is the heart of that superb soldier, Bertrand du
Guesclin. A third is King Edward the First,
who directed that his heart should be sent to
the Holy Land under the care of one hundred
knights, who were to guard it on the way and
remain in Palestine, fighting, if need be, for a
year. His unworthy son found this behest to
be difficult of fulfillment, so decided to ignore it
altogether. He buried his sire intact in West-
minster Abbey, forgot his example as quickly as
he had forgotten his command, and went head-
long to disaster.
Mme. de la Peltrie's death was a grievous
264 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
blow to Mere Marie. It broke the last link with
France, and with those bygone days now ob-
scured by three decades of hard Canadian life.
The mere sight of this early associate must have
recalled the lost loveliness of Tours. The mere
sound of her voice must have brought back the
polished utterances of Touraine and Alencon.
Mme. de la Peltrie was moreover a highly edu-
cated woman according to the standards of her
day; and a knowledge of the world had taught
her much. Who among the younger nuns, or
among acquaintances in Quebec, could fill her
place? Charlevoix is right when he says that
mutual interests and common experiences had
bound together these two disparate souls. When
Mere Marie watched by the bedside of her dying
friend, she must have called to mind that event-
ful day in the convent of Tours when the charm-
ing young widow (or was she a wife ?) came to
choose a superior for the Canadian mission. She
remembered no doubt the ecstatic hope with
which the nuns had regarded a visitor who bore
such a gift in her hands; the assurance of her
own soul that she would be chosen, the throb-
bing of her heart when Mere Francoise de Saint
Bernard told her that she was free to go. Half
a lifetime had sped by since then. She was
THE CHANGING SCENE 265
older than Mme. de la Peltrie, and the years
were crumbling beneath her. It was not a part-
ing of the ways. They were nearing the goal to-
gether.
Nothing so accentuates the flight of time as
changing conditions. Tours in 1671 was prob-
ably the same Tours that Mere Marie had left
in 1639; but Quebec was not recognizable as the
rude little town which had welcomed her so
warmly, and housed her so indifferently, thirty-
two years before. Even the half-dozen years of
Talon's administration had witnessed great re-
sults; but Talon was admirably fitted to alter
the face of the earth. No grass grew under his
feet, no air became stagnant about him. He was
essentially a bureaucrat, a man to deal with men.
An alert and practical intelligence sped him on
his way, a trained discernment took careful
count of obstacles. Overshadowed by the greater
figure of Frontenac, he has been somewhat neg-
lected by the historians of New France; yet
turn where we will we see his hand at work.
Tenacious and indefatigable, he lost sight of
nothing that could advance the prosperity of
the land.
Such a man knew well that the Company of
the West Indies was stifling Canadian trade, and
266 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
he probably suspected that it was headed for
bankruptcy; but in this regard he was powerless.
The theory of monopolies was deeply rooted in
the hearts of kings; and the only relief that
Talon could devise (a good measure as far as it
went) was to manufacture more, and buy less in
France. If his dream, like the dream of Cham-
plain, was to conquer the frozen North, he un-
derstood the greater possibilities offered by the
West and South. There ran the great unknown
river, for the discovery of which he paved the
way; there lay buried the mineral wealth he
coveted (among his gifts to Colbert was a lump
of pure copper which came from the shore of
Lake Superior); and there were the English,
strong and unfriendly, the enemies of France in
the Old World, and her rivals in the New.
Talon was not by nature a pacifist, but he
knew that quarreling was a waste of time and
strength. Canada had to check the hostility of
Indians, and to conquer the hostility of Nature.
Her hands were full, and she needed more than
did other colonies the strength that lies in union.
There was no love lost between the governor
and the intendant, which was natural when
their authority overlapped. Courcelles held the
higher office; but Talon was styled Intend-
THE CHANGING SCENE 267
ant General of Justice, Police, and Finance in
New France, which covered a good deal of
ground. Courcelles said that Talon ignored him,
and Talon said that Courcelles condescended to
him. Both men were probably right; but neither
permitted his personal rancor to affect their pub-
lic intercourse, or to interfere with their mutual
labors.
Again it was natural that Talon, as a Gallican,
should have been opposed to the authority of
Laval, and to the overwhelming influence of the
Jesuits; t>ut he knew the value of both. For Laval
he had a reluctant admiration. A nobly born
churchman who upheld the dignity of his office
and ruled his flock austerely, yet who made his
round of duties on snowshoes, or kneeling for
hours in a canoe; such a man was a colonist
after the intendant's own heart prelate and
pioneer. As for the Jesuits, he made good use of
them. He believed them to be better acquainted
with the savages than were other habitants, and
more sincerely their friends. Therefore he com-
missioned them to send him reports from outly-
ing posts, to keep him informed as to the temper
of the tribes, their movements, and the volume
of trade to be expected from them.
The advancement of New France under
268 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
Talon's stimulating care is faithfully recorded in
Mere Marie's letters to her son. Mr. James
Douglas, in his scholarly study of Seventeenth
Century Quebec, says that these letters are
"more valuable as sources of contemporary his-
tory than are even the Jesuit Relations. They
describe simply but graphically all that occurred
in the community. They were not meant to
edify the devout, or to move the charitably dis-
posed." This is a great point in their favor. Mere
Marie was a paragon of beggars; but she did not
beg from her son because he was a monk and
had no money. For the same reason there was
no call to edify. She does indeed ask his prayers
that she may become "a holocaust on the altar
of God's glory in whatever fashion He deems
best"; but for the most part her letters deal
with her surroundings rather than with herself.
There is something pleasantly ironical in the
relations between this mother and this son. She
had left him in his boyhood, and had not seen
him since his twenty-second year. He had be-
come, after a somewhat turbulent youth, a satis-
factory and fairly scholastic Benedictine of the
Congregation of St. Maur, and was of sufficient
distinction to have his life written, printed, read,
and forgotten. When she was old and he was
THE CHANGING SCENE 269
middle-aged, many letters passed between them.
He afforded a natural outlet for the human part
of her which had been steadfastly repressed.
What he wrote about we do not know; but it is
evident that the correspondence was an abid-
ing interest in his life; for if her letters were
delayed by a pressure of work, or by irregular
transportation, he sent anxious queries and pro-
tests, to which she replied soothingly as a mother
would, and with many promises of amendment.
If Quebec forms the background of Mere
Marie's letters to Dom Claude Martin, she has
also much to say concerning the missions and
the missionaries. She writes about the experi-
ences of Pere Pierron among the Iroquois, who
practised hospitality and grew excellent pump-
kins, but were exceedingly hard to convert. She
was well acquainted with Pere Dollier de Cas-
son, that picturesque giant of a priest who had
been a cavalry officer under Turenne, who was
the most popular chaplain in New France, and
who, being rudely interrupted by an Indian
when he was at prayer, knocked the intruder
down without rising from his knees, or inter-
rupting his devotions. She describes admirably
the comet of 1668, "shaped like a lance, of an
angry red color, and with a tail so long that
270 M&RE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
it was lost in space." And now and then she
sends her son an Indian curio like the drum of
a medicine man.
It was the changing aspect of her adopted
country which filled Mere Marie's mind during
the last years of her life. She sensed the im-
portance of the new day, but she knew that her
night was at hand. Maisonneuve, who should
have died where he had lived so valiantly, had
been recalled to France. Talon was soon to go.
She at least was left to end her days in the scene
of her activities. There stood the strong gray
walls of her convent, there lay her garden walks,
her cultivated land. There too were her young
nuns, her French pupils, and the long, orderly
file of little savages. When she went home she
would take her wages in her hand. She looked
at the fast-growing town about her, and felt
that she had been part of its growth. She looked
at the widening river, and remembered the
words in which it had been described to her:
"beautiful as the Seine, rapid as the Rhone,
and deep as the sea." She thought of that other
and still greater river for which search was being
made. Anchored fast, her mind flew far afield.
Her keen curiosity was unmarred by personal
restlessness, or by personal desires. She was
THE CHANGING SCENE 271
where she was by the will of God. Did she per-
chance read Thomas a Kempis, and learn from
him the value of quiescence: "What canst thou
see anywhere that thou dost not see here? Be-
hold the heavens, the earth, and the elements.
Out of these are all things made."
Chapter XVI
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE
THE image of Mere Marie which lingered long
in the mind and heart of Quebec was that of a
tall, sedate, comely woman sitting under a giant
ash tree in the convent court, and instructing
a little group of Indian, or perhaps of French,
children. It is a pity there is no portrait of her
extant. To know how she looked would help us
to interpret her character. Mme. de la Peltrie's
portrait is very revealing. So too is Talon's with
its debonair beauty, its fire and foppishness, its
gayety and resolution. The Sieur de Sillery's,
on the other hand, is the embodiment of asceti-
cism, modified by a meticulous air of breeding.
Even Marguerite Bourgeoys has come down to
us in a sketch as charming as it is characteristic.
Her sidelong glance is less intimate and smiling
than Mme. de la Peltrie's, her nose is middle
class, her mouth firm and well cut. Her dress,
with its carelessly tied hood, its pointed collar,
its cross worn as an ornament, is a triumph of
artistic simplicity.
But of Mere Marie we have nothing that is
272
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 273
authentic. After her death, Courcelles com-
missioned a local artist to make a sketch of her
wasted face; but even that was lost in the second
fire of 1686. The pictures which commonly
accompany her biographies are confessedly
"drawn from imagination." One of them might
be called "Portrait of a Nun," and the other
" Portrait of a Nun at Prayer." No real woman
ever looked like either. We have the assurance
of Charlevoix who never saw her that her
features were regular, but of a masculine cast
which suited her grave manner and unusual
height, that her voice was agreeable and her
carriage dignified. He adds that her constitution
was good (it needed to be), and that, while her
manner inspired respect, no one was ever em-
barrassed in her presence.
The seventeen months that followed Mme. de
la Peltrie's death were the least eventful that
Mere Marie ever spent in Quebec. Peace reigned,
the colony grew slowly, and Frontenac had not
yet crossed the sea. In her convent all went well.
If, as she wrote a year before her death, they
were richer in spiritual than in temporal wealth,
that was as it should be. Her own words vouch
for it: "To be stripped of possessions, and of the
desire for possessions, is a lovely thing. A dis-
274 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
embarrassed heart is happy." Nevertheless there
was no dearth of food, or fuel, or clothing, or
candles for the altar, or of alms for the savage
poor, who were now infrequent visitors. Mere
Marie alone remembered the days when hungry
Indians emptied the pot of sagamite, and the
nuns went supperless to bed.
The health and vigor of this model pioneer
were unfailing until her seventy-first year. Then
they broke, and the activity, though not the
usefulness, of her life was over. For months
before she died her sufferings were augmented
by the ruthless remedies of her day. Charlevoix,
who goes into minute details without making
clear the nature of her disease, tells us that the
abscesses in her side were burned deeply with
caustic. She bore her pain quietly, attended to
the business of the convent as long as she could,
suffered her chamber to be crowded with visitors
(dying was not then considered a private affair),
and, when the end drew near, bade farewell to
her pupils, both French and Indians, and to her
sorrowing nuns. It is said that the joy she felt
in dying illumined her dead face, and it was little
wonder. Her work was done, her hurts were
healed, and home was close at last. She looked
so supremely happy lying dead on her narrow
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 275
couch that the mourners dried their tears and
rejoiced. It was no occasion for grief.
Quebec gave its much revered nun an august
funeral. All the notables attended it, and Pere
Lalemant made the indispensable oration. No
business was done that day. Men called to mind
the dead woman's life: her coming, the enthusi-
asm with which she had been received, and her
long years of labor. They said to one another
that a chapter of history was closed; and that if
her work survived her, it would be because of
the spirit she had infused into her fellow workers.
That the nuns felt for her affection as well as
deference does not admit of a doubt. "That
tenderness in austerity, and that austerity in
tenderness," which Baron von Hugel says is
the "very genius of Christianity," were mani-
fest in all she said and did. Her habitual silence
was neither sad nor repellent. Her unalterable
evenness of temper was but the reflection of her
undisturbed serenity of soul.
Francis Parkman, while admitting Mere
Marie's intelligence, and her supreme executive
ability, accuses her of "an enormous spiritual
pride." It is a grave accusation, and one as diffi-
cult to refute as to prove. Spiritual pride is
doubtless visible to the eyes of God as are all
276 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
our other sins; but it is a trifle hard for us to
distinguish it by the light of ordinary evidence.
Perhaps the old counsel, "If we would really
know our hearts, let us impartially review our
actions," is as good a rule as we can find; and,
judging by her actions, Mere Marie's spiritual
life was sound to the core. Saint Gregory says
that humility of soul is the mystic's safeguard.
Mere Marie was at all times a mystic; therefore
it behooved her to be humble. Parkman had the
profound distaste for mysticism that was charac-
teristic of his generation. He pronounced it
"insane," which is a satisfactory definition of
any phenomenon of which we disapprove.
Charlevoix, dealing with this enigmatic but
supremely important phase of Mere Marie's life,
is both intelligible and reasonable. He quotes
the rule laid down by the fathers of the Church,
which says very simply that the faithful may
(note there is no "must") believe that the secret
elevation of the soul is by the grace of Heaven,
provided that the mystic's life corresponds in
the eyes of men with such a grace, and that there
is no sign of self-esteem or of mental weakness.
This is the common language of theologians.
"The human soul has a natural capacity, but
no exigency, and no positive ability, to reach God
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 277
otherwise than by analogical knowledge. But
God permits some souls to feel his sensible
presence which is mystical contemplation. In
such an act there is no annihilation or absorption
of the creature into God; but God becomes
intimately present in the created mind."
The danger of such individual experience is the
tendency of the devout soul to become a law to
itself. This is why Saint Theresa warned her
nuns that they must never allow the illumination
of prayer to decide for them anything concerning
their duties, work, responsibilities, or routine.
The rule of the order was the rule for them and
for her. Once when she was frying fish for the
convent dinner a sudden ecstasy of contem-
plation wrapped her round. Its sweetness was
overwhelming, but it did not distract her at-
tention from the matter in hand. Her business
was to fry the fish, and she fried it.
Charlevoix says that while there is certainly
no obligation to believe that Mere Marie's mysti-
cism was a genuine and a holy thing, such a be-
lief is reasonable because there is no discordant
note in her life or in her writings. "All was
seemly in her behavior, all was sane in her
advice." "To the fervor of the mystic," com-
ments a recent historian, " she joined that strong
278 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
sense of the actual which marked Odo of Cluny,
and Bernard of Clairvaux." This was evidenced
in the discipline of her convent, in the hold she
had upon the rulers of Quebec, in the unfailing
success with which she carried through every
measure she undertook, in the temporal as well
as in the spiritual wisdom of her axioms and her
rules. There was in her a solidity of judgment,
a clear and practical intelligence. If she habitu-
ally contemplated the heavens, she walked the
earth with firm and sure steps. Moreover, she
had a great and salutary regard for the judgment
of others, and this is always a safeguard. Wisdom
would not die with her, and she knew it.
There was no radical change in Mere Marie
during the long years of her cloistered life. She
met altered circumstances with altered efforts,
and sometimes with an altered point of view.
Her horizon widened, and her interests widened
with it. Her responsibilities grew heavier, and
her administrative ability grew stronger with
experience. But from first to last she never lost
the supreme quality of the mystic a sense of
personal relation with God. Parkman, who was
much displeased with her life in Tours, and much
pleased with her life in Quebec, came to the
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 279
conclusion that she was a reformed character,
and amiably commended her reformation.
"Marie de I'lncarnation, no longer lost in the
vagaries of an insane mysticism, but engaged
in the duties of Christian charity and the re-
sponsibilities of an arduous post, displayed an
ability, a fortitude, and an earnestness which
command respect and admiration. Her mental
intoxication had ceased, or recurred only at
intervals; and false excitements no longer sus-
tained her."
It is hard to think of anybody less sustained
by excitements false or real than this balanced
and decorous woman, who from early youth
manifested the same traits that distinguished
her later years. There were no doubt alternations
of light and shadow in her spiritual as well as
in her temporal life, moments of joy and mo-
ments of depression. Mutability is the order
of existence. But at all times and under all
circumstances she was self-controlled, of a still
and grave demeanor, and endowed with a
capacity for affairs. A poor young widow who
was so useful in the conduct of business that her
relatives deplored and resented the loss of her
services, must have been as good a supervisor
280 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
at thirty as at sixty. If there dwelt any illusions
in her soul, they certainly were not fostered by
idleness.
Mere Marie's letters begin with her life in
New France. Before that time her compositions
were purely religious, and were written either for
the use of her novices in Tours, or at the sug-
gestion of her confessor, who seems to have
considered that the best way to clarify thoughts
and impressions was to set them down in the
lucidity of words. But when transplanted to
Quebec, letter writing became an important part
of her daily duties. How was she to raise money
for her convent, her school, her little savages,
her needy pensioners, save by enlisting the
sympathies of the wealthy and distinguished?
In later years, when begging was no longer im-
perative, she kept on writing about her adopted
country because the keenness of her own interest
found delight in awakening and gratifying the
interest of others. There is something inspiriting
in this animated concern for all that went on
about her, and there is enlightenment in her
carefully considered verdicts.
Take, for example, her final tribute to Argen-
son. Mere Marie was well aware on what grounds
he and Laval had fallen out so bitterly. Her
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 281
sympathy as a friend and her loyalty as a nun
were enlisted on the prelate's side; but nothing
could blind her to the courage and capacity of
the governor. When this courage and this ca-
pacity were questioned in the dark days of
Indian warfare, she championed him against all
criticism. When he was recalled to France, she
wrote these well-considered words in his behalf:
"M. Argenson had much to bear from dis-
contents who censured him for refusing to risk
an attack upon Quebec by withdrawing its
garrison for active fighting. He saw himself
powerless to protect the length and breadth of
New France with the scanty forces at his com-
mand, and he could not leave the towns at the
mercy of the Iroquois. He was compelled to make
all decisions for himself, as he stood in need of
wise and loyal counsellors. He was of a generous
mind, and singularly patient under criticism.
He came often to the convent, and never let
pass an opportunity of doing us a kindness. We
talked much about public affairs. His successor,
M. d'Avaugour, says frankly that he cannot
understand how the country has been so well
looked after with a meagre income and an in-
adequate army."
The rules prescribed by Mere Marie for her
282 MfiRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
nuns were moderate, her counsels prudent and
kind. She discountenanced self-imposed asceti-
cism, having need of healthy workers, and rightly
considering that the climate of Quebec, the
poverty of the convent, and the restricted food
supply provided all the austerity of which they
stood in need. The business of keeping warm in
winter time was one of supreme importance. If
the braziers failed to affect the frozen chapel air,
the nuns said their prayers in the community
room or in bed. But if forced to endure cold, they
were expected to endure it uncomplainingly, and
as a matter of course. They were not the only
people shivering in New France.
The one approach to impatience noticeable in
Mere Marie's writings is her distaste for great
talkers. Habitually silent, she forgot that many
excellent and useful people are habitually talk-
ative, and that allowance must be made for this
harmless and not altogether unnatural idiosyn-
crasy. Even edifying speech wearied her if it
lasted long. "Too many words are fatal to re-
ligious devotion," she wrote. "The heart and
the mouth do not open simultaneously." A
bustling haste was also little to her liking: "Our
hurry to be done with one thing so as to begin
another means the ruin of both." Inevitably she
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 283
was drawn to contemplation as the purest form
of prayer: "It is said that contemplation is idle-
ness, and in a fashion this is true; but it is idle-
ness alive to every impression of divine grace.
The highest life consists of spiritual nearness to
God and the active practice of duty." One is
reminded of Joubert: " Fivre, c'est Denser et
sentir son ame." To find time for this ennobling
leisure as well as for hard systematized work is
to leave nothing unenjoyed or undone.
Mere Marie was fundamentally humorless.
There is an occasional caustic quality in her
writings which relieves their intense seriousness.
Her advice to her nuns, to "Bear with man for
the sake of God," covers a great deal of ground.
Her comment upon an invoice of marriageable
girls, that they were "mixed goods," "une
marchandise melee," was as near an approach to
humor as her letters can show. Of Saint Theresa's
daring wit, of the flashing speech, keen as a blade,
which distinguished Saint Basil of Cappadocia
and Saint Thomas Aquinas, there is no vestige,
nothing to indicate that they would have even
carried a message to her mind. Her language,
always unadorned, seems now and then preter-
naturally calm, considering the things she has
to tell. She notes the death of the Mohegan
284 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
captive who gave warning of the threatened
invasion of the Iroquois in words so matter of
fact, " after disposing of him in the usual way,
that is by burning," that the baldness of the
statement lends an added horror to the deed. It
must be remembered that burning a prisoner of
war was in the nature of a compromise on the
part of the Algonquins. They could not under-
stand the squeamishness with which the mission-
aries regarded the old and respected custom of
prolonged torture; but they had substituted the
stake as a comparatively merciful measure.
If Mere Marie's letters lack the lightness of
touch which would have made them as delightful
as they are informative, they are often couched
in very engaging language. She writes to the
superior of the Ursulines at Dijon, suggesting
that, as they have but little money to spare, they
might be all the more generous with their
prayers: "It would be a deed well worthy of
your piety to try with the help of your religious
to gain a hearing from God, that He may be
kindly disposed to the poor savages of New
France." A gentle and irresistible petition.
Charlevoix tells two characteristic stories of
Mere Marie when she was still Mme. Martin,
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 285
attending to her brother-in-law's business, and
filling her scanty leisure with works of charity.
A poor little shopkeeper of Tours had been
accused of dishonesty. Everybody save the
young widow believed him guilty; and when she
pleaded for him, and proclaimed her belief in his
innocence, the judge reprimanded her for risking
her fair name and the respect in which she was
held by such ill-advised partisanship. Neverthe-
less the man was later on cleared of the charge;
and so deep was the impression made by her
courageous stand that humble folk, who rightly
fear the law, looked upon her as their champion
against injustice.
The other tale is of a woman, also belonging
to the lower class, whose son had committed an
unnamed crime, and who was wrought up to such
a pitch of sorrow and rage that she passed from
one convulsion of fury into another. Mme. Mar-
tin, who had been called in by the frightened
neighbors, tried in vain to quiet her with kind
and gentle words. The wretched mother, past all
control, heard nothing, saw nothing, but shrieked
and tore at herself and at her clothing like the
mad creature that she was. Then the visitor
suddenly flung out her strong arms and clasped
286 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
the swaying woman to her breast. Close, close
she held her until the beat of her own heart,
steady as a pendulum, quieted the throbbing
heart pressed close to it. The firm will imposed
itself upon the infirm will. The frantic sufferer
grew silent, passive, and pitiful. The hour of
dementia was over.
It is inevitable that commentators on Mere
Marie's life should compare her to that great
mystic and great executrix, Saint Theresa.
Pere Emery, author of L'Esprit de Sainte
Therese, has gone out of his way to indicate the
resemblance; and Bossuet unhesitatingly alludes
to the Ursuline nun as the "Theresa of the
North." The comparison is, nevertheless, in
kind, not in degree. Saint Theresa is one of the
high lights of hagiography. Her field was wider
than Mere Marie's, her task harder, her mind
keener, her personality more magnetic. She has
stamped herself upon the history of her church.
The work of reformation was her work. She did
not destroy what she undertook to reform, which
is always an easy thing to do. She preserved it,
bettered and purified, which is exceedingly
difficult. Her figure attracts and holds attention
because of her vivifying and cleansing blithe-
ness of spirit. She possessed the quality of dis-
MYSTIC AND EXECUTIVE 287
tinction which Matthew Arnold says "corrects
the world's blunders, and fixes the world's
ideals."
One may be a great poet without nearing
Shakespeare, and a great statesman without
rivaling Pitt. Mere Marie resembled Saint
Theresa inasmuch as her piety was equalled
by her capacity for work. She had the same
talent for administration, albeit it was exercised
within narrower bounds. Her outward life was
normal, and was regulated by the rules of her
order. Her inner life, noble and sustained, bore
fruit in her steadfast perseverance, and in her
cheerful acceptance of circumstance. She had
one advantage over her prototype. She was a
pioneer. She had risked what in her day was the
great adventure, and she had a chance to impose
her personality upon a new country and a savage
people. Character is the great force in human
affairs, and her reliability made her a guide in
doubt and a bulwark in difficulties. What Ana-
tole France calls "la douceur imperieuse des
sainfes" was the weapon with which she fought
her battles, established her authority, and be-
came a living principle in the keen, hard, vivid,
friendly, and dangerous life of New France.
Chapter XVII
THE HERITAGE
ON THE spot where Mere Marie lived and died
stands the Ursuline convent of to-day, an amaz-
ing group of buildings which, with its gardens,
covers seven acres of ground in the heart of
Quebec, and can be properly seen only from an
airplane. Six hundred people sit down daily to
dinner where once the pot of sagamite held the
rations for nuns and savages. Secular residences
of every kind hem in the school, the cloister, the
convent chapel, the quiet walks. No one passing
the inconspicuous gateway on a little crooked
street would dream that here was a village set
apart from the city which encircles it. Throngs
of schoolgirls coming and going with much
chatter and a brave array of books seem its only
link with the world outside its doors.
Yet the place has one historic association
which draws many visitors to this oldest convent
school in North America; for here, when Quebec
was won for England on the Plains of Abraham,
was buried the Marquis de Montcalm, lost
leader of a lost cause. The battle, so decisive in
288
THE HERITAGE 289
its results, was little more than a skirmish; but
the landing of the British troops and the scaling
of the cliff steeper in 1759 than it is now were
triumphs of strategic warfare, and the death of
both commanders supplies the sombre note of
tragedy. Wolfe, indeed, fell in the hour of victory.
Like Dundee, he heard the exulting shout which
told him that he could afford to die because his
work was done. Montcalm fell in the hour of
defeat, knowing that with him perished the hope
of France. He thanked God that his end was
near, and that he could not see Quebec pass into
English hands. Before he was cold it had changed
masters. Brigadier Senezergues, the second in
command, lay mortally wounded. Vaudreuil, the
governor, was valueless as a leader. In the terror
and confusion of that night an old servant of the
Ursulines made a rough box of pine boards, and
carried Montcalm's body to the convent. A shell
had burst under the flooring of the chapel, mak-
ing a shallow grave in which it was hastily
interred. A little group of French officers stood
sadly by. The populace wept in the streets. A
new order reigned.
Wolfe's body was taken on board a man-of-
war, the Royal William, and carried to England
for burial. The tiny bay where he landed his
290 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
troops has ever since been called Wolfe's Cove.
The shaft raised to commemorate his deed bears
a brief and noble inscription: "Here died Wolfe
victorious." By way of contrast, a marble head-
stone erected over the grave of Montcalm on the
hundredth anniversary of his death has a Latin
epitaph composed by the French Academy of
Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and containing
one hundred and ninety-two words a triumph
of verbosity. His skull was exhumed in 1831.
It rests in a glass case in the visitors' chapel,
and on the wall Lord Aylmer placed an oval
tablet inscribed :
"Honneur a Montcalm!
La Destin en lui derobant la Victoire
L'a recompense par une Mori glorieusc"
Finally, the monument which stands in the
Governor's Garden overlooking Dufferin Terrace
honors both leaders, and tells its tale in three
compact Latin lines:
"Mortem Virtus Communem-
Famam Histories;
Monumentum Posteritas Dedit"
Quebec has no mind to have this page of her
history forgotten.
THE HERITAGE 291
After the British occupation the English
governor, Murray, made the convent his head-
quarters, and kept the nuns hard at work looking
after his sick and wounded soldiers who could
not be accommodated in the hospital. The new
officials were as friendly to the institution as the
old ones had been; and it is worthy of note that
the first superior elected under the British rule
was Esther Wheelwright, who had been captured
by the Abenakis when she was a child of eight
or ten playing on Wells Beach, near the old town
of Wells in Maine. After some years of savage
life she was bought or begged from the Indians by
the Jesuit missionary, Pere Bigot, and brought
to Quebec. The governor, Vaudreuil, received
her as a ward, and placed her in the convent
school, where in due time she became a nun and
head of the house. There was always this natural
affinity between adventure and the Ursulines.
In what other convent could little girls have had
the felicity of being taught and scolded by a
religious who had enjoyed such terrifying experi-
ences ?
This being the case, it seems doubly strange
that the Ursulines of Quebec should still be
cloistered nuns. It is said that Cardinal Begin
proposed in 1919 that they should follow the
292 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
example of other convents, leave their enclosure,
and education being now a complex and
troublesome thing learn at first hand what the
outside world could interpret. Most of the teach-
ing orders have for years past attended college
courses, the summer schools affording profitable
occupation for their holidays. The propinquity
of men students has long since ceased to disturb
them. In the natural order of things it should be
an incentive to effort. And surely the American
Ursulines who, scornful of discomfort and danger,
established the Rocky Mountain missions with
a dozen flourishing centres, and penetrated to
Alaska when that bleak territory was purchased
from Russia, had little need of grilles to separate
them from their kind. Saint Ursula and her
virgins were no keener to sail strange seas, and
tread the far-off regions of the world.
But in the conservative atmosphere of Quebec
a grille still seems a sacred thing, and no partition
can be too flimsy to acquire dignity and meaning
in the eyes of the enclosed nuns. To sit on one
side of a latticed wall and have a visitor sit on
the other side has for them a significance which
is lost on the mundane guest. One wonders if
Mere Marie would not have availed herself of
the cardinal's proposal, if she would not have
THE HERITAGE 293
welcomed new conditions which promised new
values. Her constitutional fearlessness always
stood her in good stead. Her sense of the actual
was too strong to permit her to confuse it with
the symbolic. A rule meant much to her. It was
a thing subject to change (otherwise there would
be no growth), but calling for implicit obedience
while it lasted (otherwise there would be no
order). A groove meant to her nothing, and less
than nothing. She had escaped from every groove
in which she had been imprisoned by circum-
stance.
If it takes seven acres of convent to carry on
the life work of Mere Marie and keep her memory
green, there stands in the lower town, across
from the tiny Church of Notre-Dame des Vic-
toires, a hostelry called the Hotel Blanchard.
The oldest part of this building is a small solidly
built house with a high-pitched roof, window
boxes, and an overhanging balcony. It looks for
all the world as if it should be facing the Seine,
with tables between it and the river holding
bread and wine and plates of black cherries
what Mr. Sinclair Lewis calls "the holy sim-
plicities of life." This is the spot where stood
the rough, strong little "Louvre " which sheltered
the Ursulines for three years. A commemorative
294 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
tablet gravely records the fact. Here Mere Marie
rested as best she could after her long voyage;
and from this point she looked out upon the
river, "not yet brutalized by quays or humili-
ated by bridges," and knew that Quebec was
beautiful. Her certainty was shared by Pere Le
Jeune and by most of her contemporaries. There
was no dissentient voice even in the town's rude
infancy. "This is an enchanted spot," she wrote
after she had surmounted the worst of her
difficulties. "The trials of life came so lovingly
that the more we are harassed by them the
sweeter is our content, and the stronger the
affection in our hearts."
"La race Canadienne a pris racine" says
Andre Siegfried; and the imperishable quality
of what was once New France is reflected most
clearly in Quebec; in the splendor of Dufferin
Terrace, studded with tourists; in the steep
steps descending into Petit Champlain and
Sous-le-Fort streets with their air of sombre
antiquity; in the moldy Quai du Roi; in Notre-
Dame des Victoires, with its battlemented altar,
and its courteous recognition of our Lady's
services in repelling the ill-mannered Phipps,
and in dispersing the fleet of Admiral Walker in
1711. "Quebec is old like old cathedrals," wrote
THE HERITAGE 295
Louis Hemon, "like Latin prayers, like venerable
relics in their reliquaries. She knows that nothing
can destroy the seed which she has planted in
the soil of America, and that the rapid revo-
lutions of the New World fail to disturb the
serenity which she bore like a stolen secret from
the land of France."
The same understanding, the same content
are evinced by M. Athanase David, Secretary
of the Province: "How clearly in the turmoil
of to-day is heard the voice of Quebec!" he
writes dispassionately. "It is not loud, but it is
listened to with attention, carrying as it does a
note of peace, an echo of the common sense
which rallies and directs mankind."
It is a pleasure to hear common sense alluded
to so kindly, the quality being somewhat out of
favor with thinkers to-day. Even Abbe Dimnet,
from whom one might expect a kinder estimate,
holds it in some contempt as but another name
for conformity. Yet Benjamin Franklin, who
stands as our best and noblest exponent of
common sense, was not precisely a conformist.
He was not a follower. He was a leader. He was
not timid. He was fearless. By the same token,
Mere Marie, toiling in her humble field, arrived
at wisdom through the exercise of that un-
296 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
flawed common sense which studied circum-
stances, measured possibilities, took chances,
and achieved results.
While the Ursuline convent has expanded from
a hovel to a domain, Laval University has also
spread itself over a vast area of Quebec. It is a
huge medley of masonry, without perceptible
plan, yet of a curious and altogether casual
picturesqueness. Its high-flung gallery com-
mands a superb view of the St. Lawrence and
the Laurentian hills. It has steep stairways,
rambling corridors, a valuable library, and a
museum containing more bad pictures with
good names attached to them than any other
collection in the world. A stone arch marking
the entrance of a narrow passage shows a mono-
gram of three letters, S. M. E. It is that of the
Seminaire des Missions Etrangeres. Laval's
little sons, their dark blue coats enlivened by
green sashes, lend color and animation to the
streets. Laval himself, the fighting bishop, has
been pronounced venerable by the Church he
served. He is en route for sainthood, though out-
stripped in the race by the eight Canadian
martyrs who were canonized in June, 1930.
The story of these eight men is familiar to all
students of American history. Parkman has
THE HERITAGE 297
borrowed it from the Relations, and told it
graphically. Mere Marie has told it. So has the
Histoire de la Colonie Frangaise en Canada. Six
of the eight were Jesuit missionaries. Pere Isaac
Jogues, who, rescued from the Iroquois and
carried safely to France, returned with freshly
healed wounds to meet his duty and his death.
Pere Jean de Brebeuf, nobly born and the brav-
est soul in the Canadian wastes. Pere Gabriel
Lalemant, who heads all Christian martyrology
as the greatest sufferer of that suffering host.
Pere Noel Chabanel, who had known no life
save that of the woods since he had finished his
studies in Toulouse, and who was but thirty-six
when he was butchered on his way to the Sault de
Ste. Marie. Pere Charles Gamier, killed by the
Iroquois at the mission of St. Joseph. He might
have escaped with half-a-dozen Huron braves
who urged him to fly with them; but he stayed
in the flaming village to give absolution to the
dying until his moment came. Pere Antoine
Daniel, who fell, pierced by arrows, at the door
of his little chapel where he had been saying
Mass.
So much for the priests. They had taken vows,
and were faithful to them. But there were two
others, strong young donnes whose business was
298 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
not the saving of souls, but the care of their
friends the missionaries for whom they laid down
their lives. One of these, Jean de Lalande, had
at least the mercy of a swift death. He was
brained by a Mohawk hatchet, and fell by the
side of Pere Jogues. But Rene Goupil, a surgeon
of Anjou and a man of parts, was cruelly muti-
lated and suffered to live for several days, during
which time he dressed the wounds of his com-
panions as well as his crushed fingers permitted.
Then an old Iroquois chief in a sudden access
of anger ordered him to be killed, and his body
was flung to the dogs and prowling foxes that
devoured it.
No study of contrasts can be sharper than that
provided by the august ceremonies of canon-
ization which proclaimed these men to be mem-
bers of the Church Triumphant, and the squalid
setting of their martyrdom. We call to mind the
vast dome of St. Peter's, the glow of color,
the glory of music, the dignified ritual and the
throngs that witnessed it; and then picture to
ourselves the foul hut where Pere Lalemant,
scorched and mangled, breathed through the
long night hours, the woods heavy with horror,
the sinister sound of Indian devilry.
And Mere Marie who knew these men, and
THE HERITAGE 299
sorrowed for them, and gloried in their glory?
She too has taken the first step toward canon-
ization, having been declared "venerable" by
Pope Pius the Eleventh in April, 1922, the two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of her death.
A solemn triduum in honor of the event was held
in the convent of Quebec. Twenty-two years
earlier Leo the Thirteenth had called a congress
of Ursulines in Rome. They came, these roving
daughters of Saint Ursula, from every corner of
the known and little-known world. Their mani-
fold experiences delighted the sagacious pontiff
who loved the unfamiliar. And one and all held
in deep reverence the name of Marie de Tin-
carnation.
Carlyle said that a well-written life is almost
as rare as a well-spent one. Mere Marie's life was
so eminently well spent that it is hard to do
justice to its goodness without losing sight of
the fact (denied, or at least ignored, by her
biographers) that she was as human as the
militant Laval, the denounced Argenson, the
diplomatic Talon. Her ecstatic piety never ob-
literated her practical qualities. She lived for
thirty-three years amid hard, primitive, and
deeply interesting conditions; and she preserved
throughout a stable harmony with both man and
300 MERE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
Nature. "The deep tones and slow vibrations
of the seasonal earth" were part of her experi-
ence, and so too were the efforts of her country-
men to build up a new civilization in the wilder-
ness. If she was shut up within four walls with
women and children for housemates, she was
in close and daily intercourse with the men who
stood responsible for the welfare of Quebec. If
the things of the spirit were permanent, change
was the order of material life.
We are all of us the children of our time. Mere
Marie believed too implicitly in tales told her
by roving Indians and coureurs de bois, and she
repeated these tales gravely in her letters. But
her credulity was no greater or more unfounded
than is that of the newspaper reader of to-day.
In New France wanderers were the news carriers.
They furnished reports, true or false, and they
were listened to readily by people who had no
other avenues of information. If their stories
must have sometimes sounded incredible, stran-
ger'things than any they had to tell were happen-
ing daily in the forests.
The habitual gravity of Mere Marie's manner,
her apparently unbroken calm, did not stand for
unconcern towards others, but for the hard-
fought conquest of self. Her spiritual consti-
THE HERITAGE 301
tution had been early braced by adversity. Her
surrender of will never implied surrender of
intelligence. " L'homme s'agite; Dieu le mene"
wrote Bossuet. Of this great truth she was well
aware; but it afforded her no excuse for inde-
termination. In her own domain she stood su-
preme and responsible. Her decisions were
supported by resources of judgment. Much of the
affection given to her was founded upon the
confidence she inspired.
Santayana says that "a certain joy and beauty
did radiate visibly from the saints." If we search
for them in Mere Marie, we shall find the beauty
expressed in order, the joy in an accomplished
purpose. Both were upheld by faith and purified
by charity, being fundamentally different from
the order and purpose of business, or law-making,
or war. "Into that great ocean to which hu-
manity ceaselessly flows," writes Mr. Edward
Martin, "we carry only spiritual values, and
such a value is the sacrifice of one's life in the
fullfilment of a great duty." Mere Marie's life
was given unreservedly to the fulfillment of a
great duty. She saw it with clear eyes, and she
was faithful to the labor it imposed, being wholly
unafraid of what the years might bring. The
closer we look at her quiet figure, the more
302 MRE MARIE OF THE URSULINES
firmly and nobly we see it etched against the
background of history:
Courage was cast about her like a dress
Of solemn comeliness;
A gathered mind and an untroubled face
Did give her dangers grace.
Index
Abenakis, Indian tribe, 291. Aquinas, Saint Thomas, scho-
lastic, 283.
Argenson, Pierre de Voyer,
vicomte d', governor of New
France, 155, 156; quarrels
with Laval, 179; 181, 192,
197; Mere Marie's tribute
to, 280, 281, 299.
Arnold, Matthew, 87, 287.
Athanase, Mere, Ursuline nun,
in.
Fish
Abraham, Plains of, 288.
Acadia, 54, 66.
Agatha, Saint, 10.
Aiguillon, Duchesse d', niece
of Cardinal Richelieu, 40, 48.
Aillebout, Louis d', governor
of New France, 131, 132,
155, 156.
Aillebout, Mme. d', 251.
Alaska, 292.
Albanel, Charles, Jesuit mis- Atticamegues, White
sionary, 206. Indians, 125.
Alencon, 38, 49, 264. Avignon, 17.
Alexander the Seventh, Pope, Avougeur, Pierre du Bois d',
184. governor of New France,
Algonquins, Indian tribe, 56, 155, 156, 181, 281.
75, 149; fear of the dead, Aylmer, Lord, 290.
162, 195, 212, 252, 284.
Amboise, 151.
Andaraque, Mohawk town,
208, 209.
Angelo, Castle of St., 5.
Anjou, 96, 298.
Annahotaha, Huron chief, 195,
196.
Anne, des Seraphins, Ursuline
nun, 128, 130.
Baillargeon, Anne, 137, 138.
Bance, Guillaume, 250.
Barre, Charlotte, 48, 77, 97,
i oo.
Basil, Saint, Bishop of Caesarea,
283.
Basle, 3, 6.
Beaufort, Lady Margaret,
niece of Henry VII, 8.
Anne of Austria, Queen regent, Beavers, the wealth of Quebec;
48, 109. numbers destroyed, 144, 145.
Anne of Brittany, 7, 19. Begin, Cardinal, 291.
303
3 o 4 INDEX
Benedictines, 24. Bruce, Robert, King of Scots,
Bermond, Francoise de, 263.
founder of Ursulines in Bruges, 5.
France, 15. Brussels, 5.
Bernard, Saint, Abbot of Clair- Bunyan, John, 253.
vaux, 278. Buteux, Jacques, missionary
Bernieres, Henri de, 173, 258. and martyr, 118, 124; killed
Bernieres, Jean Louvigny de; by Iroquois, 125.
friend and adviser of Mme.
de la Peltry, 41, 42, 43, 44, Caen, 42, 257.
47, 48, 49, 174, 257. Caesar, 176.
Bigot, Jacques, Jesuit mission- Canada, New France, 52, 54,
ary, 291. 56, 62, 96, 145, 151, 178, 179,
Birmingham, 96. 187, 205, 220, 227, 247, 266.
Blanchard, Hotel, 293. Canadian laws, 247, 248, 249.
Blois, 30. Carlyle, Thomas, 299.
Borromeo, Saint Charles, Carpaccio, Vittore, 4, 5, 6.
Cardinal Archbishop of Carrier, Jacques, mariner, 51,
Milan, 12, 13. 52, 53, 67, 95.
Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, 226, Casgrain, H. R., Abbe, biogra-
301. pher of Mere Marie, 22, 23,
Boston, 202. 38, 42, 259.
Boucher, Jean Baptiste, Jesuit Catherine of Siena, Saint, 20,
missionary, 198. 260.
Boucher, Pierre, 247. Chabanel, Noel, missionary
Boulle, Helene, wife of Cham- and martyr, 122; beatifi-
plain, 65, 66. cation, 297.
Bourdaisiere, Mme. de, 21. Champlain, Lake, 207.
Bourdon, Jean, Engineer, 157. Champlain, Samuel de,
Bourdon, Mme., 220. founder and first governor
Bourgeoys, Marguerite, pio- of New France, 2, 50, 53, 54,
neer, 164, 220, 272. 55, 56; founded Quebec, 57;
Brebeuf, Jean de, missionary discovers Lake Champlain,
and martyr, 122, 123, 124, 58; 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66,
143; beatification, 297. 67, 68, 71, 80, 93, 95, 155,
Brescia, 12, 13. 171, 266.
Brienne, Comtesse de, 48. Charles Huron convert, 120.
Brouage, 53. Charles the Eighth, 19.
INDEX
305
Charles the Fifth, Emperor,
55-
Charles the First, England, 63.
Charlevoix, Francois Xavier
de, biographer of Mere
Marie, 19, 20, 21, 23, 33, 36,
42, 58, 168, 273, 274, 276,
277.
Chasse de Sainte Ursule, 6.
Chaumont, Pierre Joseph
Marie, Jesuit missionary, 49,
1 66, 206, 207.
Chauvigny, Marie Madeleine
de, 38, 39.
Chihwatenhwa, Joseph, Huron
medicine man, 112, 113, 114,
115, 116.
China, 67.
Charivari, abolished by Laval,
1 88.
Chippewas, Indian tribe, 114.
Christmas day in Quebec, 103,
104.
Clematius, Inscription of, I.
Clovis, 172.
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, minis-
ter of France, 62, 185, 215,
220, 221, 230, 232, 244, 266.
Colby, C. W., writer, 239.
Cologne, i, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8.
Colomb, Michel, .sculptor, 19,
26.
Company of One Hundred
Associates, 56, 62, 85.
Concord, 189.
Conegliano, Cima da, painter,
7-
Conon, Prince, 2, 4.
Corneille, Pierre, 50, 186.
Cornwall, 8.
Coton, Pere, French Jesuit, 16.
Courcelles, Daniel de, Gover-
nor of New France, 182, 184,
204, 223, 228, 243, 248, 255,
264 267, 273.
Coureurs de Bois, 84, 153, 300.
Couture, Guillaume, donne,
114; adopted by Iroquois,
115; negotiates peace with
French, 117.
Cramoisy, Sebastian, Paris
publisher, 108.
Credi, Lorenzo di, painter, 7.
Cyriacus, St., Pope, 5.
Dab Ion, Claude, Jesuit mission-
ary, 166, 251, 252, 258, 259.
Daniel, Antoine, Jesuit mis-
sionary and martyr, 122;
beatification, 297.
Daulac, Adam, Sieur des Or-
meaux, 193; expedition into
Iroquois country, 195; heroic
defense, 196; death, 196;
198, 204.
Dauversiere, Jerome le Royer
de la, 96.
David, Athanase, 295.
Desenzano, II.
Dieppe, 48, 49, 54, 67.
Dimnet, Abbe, 295.
Dollier de Casson, Pere, Re-
collet missionary and ex-
plorer, 57, 225, 228, 254,
256, 269.
Donnacoma, Indian chief, 51.
306 INDEX
Douglas, James, author, 268. Follin, M., 231.
Dreams, Indian belief in, 253. Fort Orange, Dutch settlement,
Drunkenness Indians, 180. 115, 157, 201.
Dufferin Terrace, 294. Fouquet, Jean, painter, 19.
Du Lhut, Daniel, adventurer, Fournier, Jacques, 249.
153. Fox, Charles James, 237.
Dundee, John Graham, vis- France, Jacques Anatole, 287.
count Dundee (Claver- Franchetot, Mathurin, burned
house), 289. by Mohawks, 143.
Francis of Assisi, Saint, 98.
Earthquake in New France, Franoise de St. Bernard,
199, 200, 201. Mere, Ursuline nun, 28, 32,
Edgeworth, Maria, 93. 34, 264.
Edward the First, England, Franklin, Benjamin, 295.
263. Freiburg, 172.
Eels, the "manna" of New Froebel, 251.
France, 101. Frontenac, Louis de, comte de
Emery, Pere, hagiographer, Buade, governor of New
286. France, 50, 139, 155, 158,
Erie, Lake, 254. 182, 185, 186, 188, 265.
Eries, Indian tribe, 139.
Eschaux, Mgr. d', Archbishop Galinee, Rene de Brehant de,
of Tours, 45. Sulpician missionary, 254.
Etienne, Mile., 220. Gambling, passion of Indians
Eustache, Huron chief, 115. for, 237, 238.
Eve of St. John, 151. Garaktontie, Iroquois chief,
184, 240.
Faillon, Michel fitienne, Sul- Garda, Lake, n.
pician historian, 231, 255. Gamier, Charles, missionary
Fenelon, Francois de la Motte, and martyr, 122, 143; beati-
Sulpician missionary, 228. fication, 297.
Fenelon, Franfois de Salignac Garreau, Leonard, Jesuit mis-
de la Motte, archbishop of sionary; killed by Iroquois,
Cambrai, 229. 122.
Ferland, Abbe, J. B. A., 239, Gaspe Bay, 51.
240. Gatianus, Cathedral of St., 8.
Florence, 4. Gatianus, Saint, 27.
Folk-lore, Indian, 161. Gautier, Theophile, 5.
INDEX
307
George, Lake, 207.
George the Third, England,
187.
Georgian Bay, 57.
Goupil, Rene, surgeon of
Anjou, donne and martyr,
114; death, 115; beatifi-
cation, 298.
Gourmont, Remy de, French
poet, 9, 10.
Gregory the Thirteenth, Pope,
12, 15.
Grosseilliers, Medard Chouart
des, explorer, 67, 233.
Guesclin, Bertrand du, Con-
stable of France, 263.
Guyard, Anne, 25.
Guyard, Florent, father of
Mere Marie, 19.
Guyard, Marie, 18, 19, 20, 30,
34-
Hachard, Madeleine, 70, 79.
Hakluyt Society, 67.
Hatfield, Edmund, monk of
Rochester Abbey, 8.
Haye, Pere de la, Jesuit mis-
sionary, 37.
Hebert, Louis, the first seig-
neur in New France, 150.
Hemon, Louis, 295.
Henry the Fourth, France,
61.
Henry the Seventh, England,
8.
Histoire de la Colonie Fran-
caise, 220, 231, 239, 240, 255,
297.
Holy Thursday, observance of,
103.
Holy War waged against Mo-
hawks, 204, 211, 227, 251.
Honfleur, 54.
Hospital at Sillery, 107, 108.
Hudson Bay, 67.
Hiigel, Friedrich, Baron von,
29, 275.
Huns, 4.
Hurons, Indian tribe, 56, 76,
99, 114, 115, 133, 137, 145,
149; captives of Onondagans
170; 180, 195, 197, 211.
Hurons, Lake of the, 57.
Huron missions, destruction of,
122.
Hypatia, 2.
Iberville, Pierre le Moyne d',
explorer, 215.
Inglis, Lady, 78.
Iroquois, Indian tribe com-
prising five allied nations,
57, 58, 6r, 76, 95, 98, 99,
107, 108, 114, 116-119, IS 3>
125, 127, 139, 141, 142, 149,
152, 154, 158-160, 163; ask
for French settlement on
Lake Onondaga, 164-166;
women more-advanced, 168,
169, 180, 191, 193-197, 201,
203, 212, 217; fear of French,
228; 238, 251, 255, 269, 281,
284, 297.
Isle d' Orleans, 191.
Ithaca, 66.
308
INDEX
Jeanne d' Arc, 10, 20.
Jesuits, 15, 24, 44, 132, 133,
156, 165, 166, 171, 172, 176,
1 80, 185, 1 86, 223, 235, 249,
250, 251, 255, 262, 267.
Jogues, Isaac, missionary and
martyr, 106, 114, 115; ran-
somed by Dutch, 116; mur-
dered by Mohawks, 121;
beatification, 297, 298.
John, Hospital of St., Bruges, 6.
Johnson, Samuel, 29, 222.
Joliet, Louis, discoverer upper
waters Mississippi, 65, 182,
254-
Joubert, Joseph, moralist, 283.
Journal des Jesuites, 103, 219.
Julian, St., Church of, Tours,
26.
Kempis, Thomas a, 121, 271.
Kirke, David, captain and
privateer, 63.
Knox, John, 186.
Kovdula, 10, 17.
La Chine massacre, 188.
La Chine rapids, 64.
La Hontan, Armond Louis de
Delondaree de, traveller,
writer, 150, 153, 221, 222.
Lalande, Jean de, donne and
martyr; beatification, 298.
Lalemont, Jerome, head of
Canadian missions, 121, 199,
213, 285.
La Rochelle, 47, 54.
La Salle, Rene Robert Cave-
lier, sieur de, 254-256.
Latour, Bertrand, abbe de,
183.
Lauzon, Jean de, governor of
New France, 155, 156; his
son murdered by Indians,
191,
Laval de Montmorency, Fran-
cois de, Vicar Apostolic and
first Bishop of New France;
monument in Quebec, 171,
172; antecedents, 172; lands
in Quebec, 173; austerities,
174, 175; family pride, 176,
177; dispute with Queylus,
178; dispute with Argenson,
179, 181; appointed bishop
of New France, 182; edu-
cator, 183; friendly relations
with Indians, 184; quarrels
with Frontenac, 185; final
return to Canada, 187, 188;
death, 189; characteristics,
190; 223, 224, 227, 229, 239,
257, 260, 267, 280, 296, 299.
Laval University, 189, 296.
Le Jeune, Paul, head of Jesuit
missions in New France, 37,
40, 44, 58, 72-75, 78, 88, 97,
107, 109, 124, 125, 145, 146,
159, 1 60, 162, 216, 294.
Leo the Thirteenth, Pope, 299.
Lepont, Angela, Ursuline nun,
17.
Lescarbot, Marc, Chronicler,
54, 55-
Lewis, Sinclair, 293.
Loire, 18.
INDEX
309
Lombardy, 10, u.
London, 7.
Louisiana, 79.
Louis the Fourteenth, France,
62, 75, 76, 109, 178, 204, 215,
227, 244.
Louis the Thirteenth, France,
151-
Loyola, Saint Ignatius, founder
of Jesuits, 15, 157, 171.
Luitgarde, wife of Charle-
magne, 18.
Maine, 291.
Maisonneuve, Paul de Chome-
dey, sieur de, founder of
Montreal, 95-97; reaches
Montreal, 98; receives Onon-
dagans, 139; 155, 163, 194,
210, 270.
Mance, Jeanne, pioneer, 96,
98, 164.
Mareul, Lieutenant, 186.
Marie de la Nativite, nursing
sister, 244.
Marie de Saint Ignace, head
of Sillery hospital, 107.
Marie de 1' Incarnation,
founder of the Ursulines in
Quebec, 35, 36, 44-47, 49;
sails for New France, 50;
68-70, 71; reaches Quebec,
73 > 78; epidemic of smallpox,
79> 80, 81; Indian guests,
82; 83; convent built, 85; 86;
letter-writer, 87-90; 92, 95,
97> 9 8 > ioo, 110-114, 117,
119, 120, 126, 128; convent
destroyed by fire^ 129-13 8;
145-148; 149; new convent
completed, 150, 151; 157-
160, 163-165; 168; letters as
authority for history, 169;
172, 174, 175, 176; tribute
to Laval, 177; 182, 187, 188,
192, 197, 198; account of
earthquake, 199, 202, 203;
206, 207, 210, 21 1 ; friend-
ship with Tracy, 213; he
builds her a chapel, 214;
216-221, marriageable girls
placed in care of, 222-225;
227-231, 233, 234; Indian
tongues, 235; letters to her
son, 236; 238-240, 243, 247,
249, 253, 257, 262, 264, 265,
268-270, 272, 273, illness
and death, 274; character
and accomplishments, 277-
284; anecdotes of early life,
285, 286; compared to Saint
Theresa, 286, 287, 288; 295,
298; declared "venerable",
299; 3o> 3*-
Marmoutier, Abbey of, 27.
Marquette, Jacques, Jesuit
missionary; discoverer of
upper waters of Mississippi,
50, 182.
Marsolet, "la petite", 187.
Mattel, Charles, 27.
Martin, church of St., Tours,
18.
Martin, Claude, Benedictine
monk, son of Mere Marie,
26, 31, 36, 268, 269.
3io INDEX
Martin, Edward, 301. Montaigne, Michel Eyquem
Martin, Marie Guyard, 23-29, de, 54.
31, 33. Montcalm, Louis Joseph de
Martin, Monsieur, 21, 22, 40. Saint-Veran de, 288; buried
Martin, Saint of Tours, 19, 27. in Ursuline chapel, 289;
Martini, Simoni di, 7. headstone and epitaph,
Mather, Cotton, 89. 290.
Matilda, queen of Denmark, Montmagny, Charles Huoult
187. de, governor of New France,
Mazarin, Giulio, cardinal and 71, 102, 114, 117, 131, 155,
prime minister of France, 156.
109, 178. Montmorency, Falls of, 64.
Meaux, 68. Montreal, 51, 95, 97, 98, 119,
Medicis, Marie de, 16. 122, 126, 128, 139, 142, 152,
Memling, Hans, Flemish 155, 157, 163, 164, 179, 189,
painter, 6. 194, 197, 198, 201, 207, 220,
Mercier, Francois Joseph le, 231-233, 238, 248, 253, 255.
Jesuit missionary, 101, 127, Monts, Sieur de, 54-56, 65.
144, 166, 167, 219. More, Hannah, 80.
Merici, Angela de, founder of Moyne, Simon le, Jesuit mis-
the Ursuline order, n, 12. sionary, envoy to Ononda-
Mezy, Saffray de, governor of gans, 142, 143, 165.
New France, 182. Munro, William Bennett, 142,
Miamis, Indian tribe, 118. 155, 223.
Milan, 12-14, 77. Murray, James, first English
Mississippi river, 69, 182, 255. governor of Quebec, 291.
Mohawks, Iroquois tribe, 121,
143, 144, 168, 184, 191, 205, Newfoundland, 51.
206; territory invaded, 207; New France, 37, 40, 48, 57, 62,
towns deserted and de- 64, 66, 68, 72, 74, 80, 96,
stroyed, 208-210. 101, 106, 109, no, 119, 121,
Mohegans, Iroquois tribe, 191. 154, 155, 173, 177, 183, 185,
Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poque- 197, 198, 204-206, 211, 220,
lin, 186. 221; large families, 224, 225;
Moncornet, Balthazar, French 227, 229-232, 244, 247-249;
portrait painter, 67. coldest winter, 254; 256, 265,
Montagnais, Algonquin tribe, 267, 269, 280-282, 287, 294,
141. 300.
INDEX
New Orleans, 17, 69, 79.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 130.
New York state, 57.
Nordlingen, 172.
Notre-Dame de la Recouv-
rance, chapel of, built by
Champlain, 71, 74, 104.
Notre-Dame des Anges,
church of, 263.
Notre-Dame des Victoires,
church of, 293, 294.
Odo, Saint, Abbot of Cluny,
278.
Ohio, river, 255.
Olier, Jean Jacques, founder
of Seminary of St. Sulpice,
Paris, 96.
Onondaga, Lake, 164.
Onondaga, salt springs of, 143.
Onondagans, Iroquois tribe,
126, 127, 157; mission to,
1 66, 1 68; escape of mission-
aries from, 169.
Ontario, Lake, 164.
Orleans, 37, 46.
Orsola, Scuola di San, Flor-
ence, 4.
Oswego, river, 169.
Ottawa, river, 195.
Palestine, 263.
Panama Canal, 67.
Paris, 30, 43-45, 47, 48, 62, 87.
Parkman, Francis, 64, 93, 115,
118, 122, 140, 145, 155, 168,
229, 275; comments on Mere
Marie, 278, 279; 296.
Parlement de.Normandie, 43.
Passamaquoddy Bay, 54.
Patoulet, Monsieur, secretary
to Talon, 255.
Paul, Saint, 31.
Paul, Saint Vincent de, 43.
Paul the Third, Pope, 15.
Peltrie, Charles de Grivel de la,
39 '. 4 -
Peltrie, Marie Madeleine de
Chauvigny de la, 40-43, 45,
48, 49, 68, 71-75, 77, 85, 89,
91, 92, 95-97; goes to Mon-
treal, 98, 100; returns to
Quebec, 128; 131, 136, 137,
146, 148, 149, 164, 173, 174,
201, 213; death, 257, 258;
character and personality,
259, 262-265; 272, 273.
Penn, William, 20.
Perron, Pere du, Jesuit mis-
sionary, 253.
Petraea, 173.
Phipps, Sir William, 189,
294.
Picardy, 52.
Picquart, Mme., captured by
Indians, 191.
Picts, 8.
Pierron, Jean, Jesuit mission-
ary, 269.
Piraube, Sieur Martial, 102.
Pius the Eleventh, Pope, 299.
Pius the Seventh, Pope, 15.
Polo, Marco, 118.
Poncet, Joseph Antoine, Jesuit
missionary, prisoner of Mo-
hawks, 143, 144.
312
INDEX
Pons, 54.
Pontgrave, mariner, 54, 56.
Privateers, 63.
Puiseaux, Monsieur, 96.
Puys, Zachary du, French
soldier, 166.
Quebec, 16, 37, 41, 43-47,
49-Si. 56, 57, 60, 62-69, 7i-
73. 76, 77, 79> 81, 84, 85, 87,
95> 96, 99> 1 06, 107, 1 10, 114,
116, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129,
134-136, 138, 144-146, 148,
I53-I55> i57> i6o> 164, 169,
172, 174, 175, 177-182, 184-
189, 191, 197, 199-201, 206,
210, 211, 213, 215, 217, 2l8,
220, 222, 224; prosperity,
229^233; 237, 239, 247, 249,
251, 254, 257, 258, 261, 262,
264, 265, 268, 269, 272, 273,
275, 278, 280-282, 288-292;
beauty and character, 294-
296; 299, 300.
Queylus, Gabriel, Abbe de,
Sulpician, vicar-general of
New France, 177, 178.
Quimper, 219.
Radisson, Pierre Esprit, ex-
plorer, 67, 233.
Ragueneau, Paul, Jesuit mis-
sionary, 112, 133, 148.
Regnaut, Christophe, donne,
124.
Relations, Jesuit, 37, 58, 89,
102, 108, no, 112, 115, 123,
125, 135, 140, 141* 198, 199.
239> 255, 258,
Renee de la Nativite, Ursuline
nun, 219.
Rennes, 36, 37, 106.
Retz, Cardinal de, Archbishop
of Paris, 1 6.
Rhone, river, 270.
Richardie, Armand de la,
Jesuit missionary, 145.
Richelieu, Cardinal, 61, 68,
109.
Riviere, Poncet de la, Jesuit
missionary, 45, 49.
Roberval, Sieur de, 52.
Rome, 3, 5, 6, 8, 142, 178.
Rouen, 43, 54, 171, 177, 178.
Sagamite, porridge of Indian
maize, 81.
Saguenay River, 80.
Saint Bernard, Marie de, 46.
Sainte Beuve, Mme. de,
founder of Ursuline convent
in Paris, 16.
Saint . Ignace, Catherine de,
Ursuline nun, 48.
Saint Joseph, Marie de, Ursu-
line nun, 46, 47, 92, in;
death, 135; legends con-
nected with, 137, 138.
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouv-
roy de, chronicler, 185.
Saint Vallier, Jean Baptiste
de, Bishop of New France,
185, 1 86.
Salieres, Henri de Chapelis,
sieur de, Colonel ofCarignan-
Salieres regiment; reaches
Quebec, 206; 209, 218.
INDEX
Sand, George, Madame Dude-
vant, 80.
Santayana, George, 106, 301.
Sault St. Louis, 195.
Seigneuries, land grants, 150.
Seigneurs of New France, 245.
Seine, river, 270, 293.
Senecas, Iroquois tribe, 195.
Senezergues, Brigadier, 289.
Shakespeare, William, 287.
Sheridan, Philip Henry, 210.
Siberia, 89.
Siegfried, Andre, 294.
Sillery, Chevalier Noel Bru-
lard de, 72, 272.
Sillery, mission outpost of
Quebec, 72, 73, 85, 96, 107,
117, 125, 131, 133.
Smallpox, ravages of, Quebec,
76,77,78.
Socoquiois, Indian tribe, 107.
Sonnontouan, Iroquois chief,
murdered, 247-249.
St. Anne de Beaupre, shrine,
184.
St. Anne, trading station, 191.
St. Charles, river, 52.
St. Germain-en-Laye, treaty
of, 63.
St. Ignace, Huron mission,
122, 123.
St. Jean, Huron mission, 122.
St. Joachim, agricultural
school, 183, 187, 189.
St. Joseph, Huron mission,
122, 297.
St. Lawrence River, 51, 54, 96,
IOI, 169, 201, 296.
St. Malo, 51, 53, 54.
St. Peter's cathedral, 298.
St. Severin, church in Cologne,
7- e
Sulpicians, 178, 185.
Superior, Lake, 266.
Suite, Benjamin, historian, 239.
Suze, Treaty of, 63.
Tadoussac, trading post, 125,
201.
Taiearoux, Huron chief, 133.
Talon, Jean Baptiste, Intend-
ant of New France, 182, 204,
215, 219, 223, 227, 230-232,
243, 249, 251, 255; great
executive qualities, 265-267;
270; portrait, 272; 299.
Teungktoo, Lake, 163.
Theonotus, King of Brittany,
2, 8.
Theresa of Avila, Saint, 15,
20, 28, 83, 90, 97, 277, 283,
286, 287.
Therese, Huron girl captured
by Iroquois, 112-117, 260.
Thomas of Villeneuve, Saint,
187.
Three Rivers, trading station,
63, 114, 122, 125, 126, 201,
233-
Tobacco, 59.
Toulouse, 297.
Touraine, 18, 80, 87, 92, 239,
264.
Tours, 18, 19, 25-28, 31, 36,
37,44, 45, 47, 92, no, 137,
241, 264, 265, 278, 285.
INDEX
Tracy, Alexandra de Prouville,
Marquis de, 184, 199;
reached Quebec, 205, 206;
attacks Mohawk strong-
holds, 208-210; returned to
Quebec; 211-214; 218, 230,
233, 241, 247.
Troche, M. de la, 46, 47.
Troyes, 164.
Turenne, Henri de la Tour
d' Auvergne, Marshal of.
France, 269.
"Ulysses," Tennyson's, 66.
Ursula, church of St., I, 4.
Ursula, Saint, I, 2, 5, 7-10, 13,
16,292,299.
Ursuline, convent, completed,
83; burned, 128; new con-
vent built, 149; 158; occu-
pied by troops, 192; convent
to-day, 288, 296.
Ursulines, religious order,
founded in Brescia, I, 12-16,
28, 31, 34, 44, 69, 70, 77-79,
85, 86, 92, 95, 97, 103, 109-
iii, 116, 117, 126, 131, 133,
i35 I57 i6o l6 4 i66 187,
217, 222, 239, 243, 2SI, 257,
258, 284, 291; missions in
Alaska, 292, 293; Congress
called in Rome, 299.
Valenciennes, 17.
Vaubougon, M. de Chauvigny,
Seigneur de, 38, 39, 42, 43,
45 258.
Vaudreuil, Philippe de Rigault,
Marquis de, 289, 291.
Vecchio, Palma, 6.
Venice, 4.
Vignal, Antoine, chaplain of
Ursuline convent, 134.
Ville Marie de Mont Royal,
early name of Montreal,
96, 98.
Vimont, Barthelemy, Jesuit
missionary, 75, 90, 97, 101,
no, 129, 140, 141, 158, 216.
Viviani, Rene, 190.
Walker, SirHovenden, admiral,
294.
Walpole, Horace, 80.
Wampum, 212; made by Ursu-
lines, 240.
Wandalbert of Prum, his-
torian, 2.
Wells, Maine, 291.
Wells Beach, 291.
West Indies, commerce with,
232.
West Indies, Company of, 265.
Wheelwright, Esther, superior
of Ursulines, 291.
Wolfe, James, English com-
mander; death, 289, monu-
ment, 290.
Wolfe's Cove, 290.
Wordsworth, William, 80.
Wynkyn de Worde, printer, 8.
Xavier, Saint Francis, 157,
176.
Yuste, Monastery of St., 55.
111
4*705"
17 i
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