Mme. de la Peltrie returned to the community she had helped to found, and on the 21st of November, 1642, the Ursulines took possession of their new monastery. It was not the only consolation of the venerable superior. Letters from France announced that her son, after securing a favorable position at court, had abandoned the world and entered the novitiate of the learned order of St. Benedict, where in time he became an illustrious member.
The new building was spacious, but in their poverty they still had much to suffer, especially in the long Canadian winters. Then came the overthrow of the Hurons in Upper Canada, the massacre of many holy missionaries personally known to Mother Mary, who beheld at her doors a crowd of fugitive Hurons. Their language she learned, to be able to labor for their good, if God spared the colony; for the Iroquois, intoxicated with success, now ravaged the valley of the St. Lawrence, and no one was safe even at Quebec.
While all were paralyzed by fear, and the colony in its sorest distress, fire broke out in the convent one December night toward the close of the year 1650, and before dawn naught remained but the walls. Mother Mary was the last to leave the burning structure. The whole community and their pupils were left in the snow, in their night-dresses, nothing having been saved of their clothing or stores. The Hospital Nuns received them with open arms and the whole town endeavored to meet their wants.
All was gone. There seemed no course but to return to France. Such was not, however, the decision of Mother Mary and her heroic companions. “The resolution was that, without further delay, we should rebuild on the same foundation, inasmuch as our courage had not been crushed by the weight of this disaster, and as our vocations were as strong or stronger than before, and the girls of French and of Indian origin needed our services.”
The work was begun at once, Mother Mary and the other sisters helping to clear away the ruins. A little house which Mme. de la Peltrie had erected became their temporary convent, while by loans they paid the workmen to continue the work on the new building. The work cost thirty thousand livres, and the furnishing and supplies required still more. Yet all came so wonderfully that Mother Mary of the Incarnation declared it to be a miracle and ascribed it to the special protection of the Blessed Virgin.
Soon after an Iroquois army spread terror through Canada, till a heroic band sacrificed themselves in an attack on the ferocious enemy, and by a glorious death so crippled them that the savages retired. During the panic caused by these cruel invaders the Ursulines were forced to leave their convent, which became a fortified house. Then came an earthquake which convulsed the whole country, attended by meteors that filled all with terror and alarm. Amid all these dangers Mother Mary of the Incarnation preserved unruffled her calm and serenity of soul.
One of the founders of the colony, she lived to see it develop and strengthen; children born on the soil had grown up under her guidance and become mothers of families, handing down to coming generations the solid Christian instruction imparted to them by Mother Mary of the Incarnation and her sisters in religion. Canada had grown, too, from a mere mission to an organized church with a holy bishop at its head, a seminary for the training of candidates for the priesthood, a Jesuit college, and inferior schools. Her work was well-nigh accomplished. In 1664 she felt the first symptoms of the disease which was to terminate the long death of her earthly existence and unite her for ever to her heavenly Spouse. Extenuated by austerities, labor, and vigils, she was attacked by a continued fever, accompanied by effusion of bile and violent pains which gave her no rest by night or day. Her constitution, naturally so strong and enduring, could no longer resist the inroads of the malady. She was soon at the point of death, and received the last sacraments amid the sighs and tears of her spiritual children. All Quebec was in tears, for there was scarcely a family in which she was not looked up to as a guide and mother. The continual prayers seemed to move Heaven to spare her to them for a time. But she survived only to remain on the cross in a state of continual suffering. Masses, novenas, prayers were offered for her complete recovery; but she herself offered none. Several persons, among others Bishop Laval, who visited her regularly, implored her to solicit her cure from God; but she replied that she felt utterly unable to frame such a prayer. “Of what use can an infirm old woman of sixty be? Oh! do not prolong my exile; let me go to my God.”
She did not even beg for a cessation of her pain or her state of suffering. The office of superior had been for the third time conferred upon her; from this she now asked to be relieved, as she was unable to discharge the duties incumbent on it. But when her director declined to permit this she submitted without a murmur and continued to bear the burden.
“My present condition,” she wrote to her son, “is most dear to me, because the cross is the pleasure and the delight of Jesus. I can never recover from my long malady, which has very painful and torturing consequences. But nature grows tame to suffering and becomes familiar with pain. I even feel attached to it; and I fear that my tepidity will oblige the divine goodness to deprive me of it, or at least to moderate it. Everything I take is like wormwood, and constantly brings to my mind the gall in the Passion of our Lord. This makes me love this state.”
Yet in a state which would have kept most persons prostrate on a bed she labored as unremittingly as ever. She rose the first and retired the last, attended all the duties of the community, conducted an extensive correspondence, and, when too weak to do other work, employed her time in painting or embroidery. Her existence during the eight years she spent in this state was as great a mystery as her whole mystical life had been.