The missioners spent their first night in Canada at the Isle of Orleans, which they reached on the evening of the 31st of July. As they landed, the sun had just set in all the splendour which his setting is wont to wear in Canada. The sky was literally glowing with gorgeous colours of every hue, intermingled with ethereal gold, as if in descending to his rest, the mighty monarch had left a fold of his mantle of glory floating on the western heavens, to symbolize that brighter mantle of celestial light which soon would envelop the benighted race whom those devoted missioners had come so far to seek and to help to save. The island was uninhabited, so three wigwams were constructed in Indian fashion, one for the Nuns, one for the Jesuits and a third for the sailors. Unable to contain their holy joy, the Sisters entoned a canticle of thanksgiving, and for the first time since their creation, those venerable woods re- echoed with songs of praise to the one true God and His adorable Incarnate Son.
On the following day, August the 1st, 1639, the missioners reached Quebec. Their first act on landing was to kneel and reverently press their lips to the soil of the adopted country which was to be to them thenceforth in place of home and fatherland. They were received with the greatest enthusiasm. The moment they stepped on shore, a salute was fired from Fort St. Louis. They were met at the landing-place by the whole population headed by the Governor-General, Monsieur de Montmagny, and the Jesuit Fathers of the colony, and after mutual salutations, were escorted to the church, where the holy Sacrifice was offered with all the solemnity that circumstances permitted, the ceremony concluding with the Te Deum. After having been hospitably entertained by the Governor, the Sisters of the two communities proceeded to their destined dwellings. As a mark of the general joy, the day was inscribed in the red letter calendar and work totally suspended.
The next day, the Jesuits conducted the Sisters to the mission at Sillery, already noticed in the introductory chapter as formed on the model of the Reductions of Paraguay. It would need a skilful artist to paint that beautiful scene; on the one hand, the heavenly joy of the Mother of the Incarnation and her companions, at sight of the Indian children, for whose spiritual and temporal welfare their hearts had so long yearned with more than mother's love; on the other, the amazement of the little ones at finding themselves the objects of so much unwonted solicitude. Utterly bewildered, they at first received the Sisters' caresses with the characteristic caution and reserve of their nation, but the language of kindness is easily understood, and very soon the children had rightly interpreted their visitors' affectionate advances. Attracted by their gentleness, their affability, their unmistakable disinterestedness, they followed them step by step through the hamlet, gaining confidence every moment. With the whole savage population for escort, the Sisters proceeded to the little church, which was the chief ornament, as well as the great treasure of the village, and there the Indians all joined in a hymn which the Jesuit Fathers had composed for them in their own language. The strain was simple, the temple humble, the congregation illiterate and poorly clad, yet who shall say that colonnaded aisle or fretted dome of proud cathedral ever resounded with music sweeter in the ear of heaven, than was that unpretending hymn of the despised Indians! Who would not envy the emotions of the Venerable Mother and her fervent Sisters, as they knelt in the lowly church among the poor savages in the hamlet of Sillery! This visit over, the Ursulines and Hospitaliers separated, each community repairing to its appointed home. The Ursulines were located in the Lower Town, at the foot of the mountain road, not far from the spot occupied later by the Church of Our Lady of Victories. The Hospital Sisters were lodged near Fort St. Louis.
The abode assigned to the Ursulines until a monastery could be built for them, contained only two apartments, the larger of which, sixteen feet square, served at once as choir, parlour, refectory and common dormitory; the second was reserved for the school-room. A little shed near the house was fitted up as a chapel, and although so very poor as forcibly to recall the stable of Bethlehem, it was precious to them beyond words to tell, for there the adorable Sacrifice was henceforth daily offered, and there too at all times dwelt quite close to them in the Sacrament of His love, the Divine Spouse for whose sake they had renounced themselves and all things here below. A wooden palisade round the dwelling supplied the place of cloister walls. In this most miserable abode they spent three years, amidst unimaginable privations and inconveniences, exposed to extreme cold in winter, and overpowering heat in summer; breathing the air vitiated by a crowd of Indians, whose uncleanly habits are proverbial, and whose very clothes exhaled a sickening odour. When the children presented themselves at the school for the first time, their attire was scanty, and of the coarsest materials. They wore a mass of tangled hair, guiltless since first it began to grow, of all acquaintance with scissors, brush or comb, and they were covered all over with a greasy substance, which to judge from the care employed in laying it on, must have been deemed an indispensable finishing touch to the juvenile Indian's toilet. To bring that untidy hair into order, and to remove that personal adornment, unsightly in appearance, as unattractive in aroma, became a question of privilege. The Foundress claimed it as her right, because as she said, she was fit for nothing else, but others thought themselves entitled to the honour too, so finally a compromise was agreed on, and all had their turn. The children's uncivilized ways must no doubt have at first occasioned many a mortification to the Sisters; for instance, the Mother of the Incarnation tells us that they daily found some disgusting mixture in their food, a bunch of hair, a handful of cinders, or even an old shoe being no uncommon addition to the ordinary ingredients, yet so completely did grace triumph over nature in these Christian heroines, that unsavoury as was the seasoning of their soup, and countless as were the discomforts of their position, they enjoyed indescribable happiness in their poverty, and preferred their humble lodging with its uncouth inmates, to the grandest mansion without them. Their dwelling, they called the "Louvre", and in their poor pupils, the eye of faith enabled them to discern ornaments more costly, more precious and more prized than all the splendour which art can devise and wealth purchase for the embellishment of regal palaces, for what is the value of a palace, compared with that of a soul?
CHAPTER II.
OPENING OF SCHOOLS.—MODIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONS.—COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW MONASTERY.
The Mother of the Incarnation at once recognised in her adopted country, that which had been represented to her in her prophetic vision: the lofty mountains, the vast forests, the boundless plains, the general aspect and the minute details, all were the same, except that the mist was less heavy. She was in the land to which God Himself had called her, as in the olden days He had called the patriarch to the land of promise, and in her sacrifice, as in that of Abraham, a great result was involved; to her obedience, as to his, a magnificent reward was attached. Not only was she to bring a blessing to Canada in her own person, elevating it by her lessons and embalming it with her virtues; she was moreover to found a community of Ursulines, who inheriting her spirit, would perpetuate her labours and immortalize her zeal. She was to erect an edifice to the Lord, in which His name should be taught and His praises sung, not for the years of her own life only, but through ages to come, and by generations yet unborn. She was to inaugurate the work of education, for which her natural capabilities so eminently fitted her, and which under God was to be the efficient instrument in her own hands for the present improvement of the colony; in those of her future spiritual children for the development of the work so happily begun. That work was very great, but it must be owned too that its instrument was very perfect.
Without delay the little community entered on its special function, the instruction of youth, opening schools on a limited scale both for Indians and French. Before they could begin to teach the former, it was of course necessary to learn their languages. In order the more readily to accomplish the difficult task, they agreed to divide the study, the Mothers of the Incarnation and Cecilia of the Cross applying themselves to the Algonquin, the Mother St. Joseph to the Huron, and under the direction of Father le Jeune, so rapid was their progress, that in two months they were judged capable of catechising their young charge. Later in life, the Venerable Mother learned the Huron.
The charity and fortitude of the Mothers was very soon put to a severe test. Towards the end of August, the small-pox broke out among the savages, with whom it is usually fatal. After spreading with frightful rapidity through the hamlet of Sillery, it showed itself at the Ursuline Convent in Quebec, which was soon transformed into an hospital. Some of the children contracted the disease three different times, and four died of it. Through the protection of heaven, their devoted nurses escaped under circumstances which rendered their preservation almost miraculous. Night and day they watched their beloved patients, inhaling only the plague-tainted air of the small, overcrowded room, and having continually to step across the infected beds, which for want of space were laid closely together along the floor. During the six months which the malady lasted, these heroines of charity seemed to vie with each other in the performance of the most bumbling and revolting offices, the Foundress setting the example of self-abnegation and devotedness. Their sole apprehension all through, was lest the panic-stricken savages might remove their children from the monastery, and thus deprive them of the spiritual blessings in store, an idea being prevalent among the unconverted Indians, that the small-pox was a consequence of receiving baptism, and of associating with the French. Fortunately the fear proved groundless, for the little ones were afterwards confided in larger numbers than ever, to the care of their tender, self-sacrificing Ursuline mothers. When at last the contagion disappeared, the wardrobe of the charitable Sisters was found not to have been the least of the sufferers in the cause, every available article of clothing having been converted into bandages for the sores of the poor patients.
The accounts from Canada might naturally have been expected rather to check than to encourage vocations for the Ursuline mission, but on the contrary, each letter from the Mother of the Incarnation to her Sisters of Paris and Tours, served only to stimulate a holy emulation to share in her sacrifices. "To enter," she says, "into the true spirit of a missioner to Canada, the soul must die to all things created; on this point, the Almighty Master is inexorable. Interior death is no doubt the sure road to life in God, but who can describe what it costs nature thus to die!" Notwithstanding the Venerable Mother's forewarnings, the Mother Superior of the Paris convent prevailed on the Archbishop to allow two of the Sisters to follow their call to Canada. The privileged two were the Mother St. Athanasius and St. Clare, who in the world had borne the names of Margaret de Flécelles and Anne le Bugle. On the 7th of July, 1640, they landed at Quebec to the great joy of their expectant Sisters. This addition to the original number necessitated the immediate building of a monastery, which want of means had hitherto retarded.