ckless as was her French compeer. She was a beautiful
woman, the wife of Monsieur de Pean,--who considered the surrender of
his wife to Bigot but a fair return for certain lucrative offices,--and
she did not, as it is said, though not proved, hesitate to stain her
hands with blood in order to maintain her influence over the Intendant.
At last came Nemesis; the English were at the gates of Quebec. Not all
the influence and efforts of the noble Montcalm could avert the coming
disaster, and Quebec fell. With it fell the ascendency of French ways in
"Our Lady of the Snows." After the coming of the English and the partial
amalgamation of the two races, there was a steady development of
society; but it was along normal lines and was not of a nature to call
for remark. It did not tend to any individuality of type; it produced
very charming women, but not a typical woman as differing from the
representatives of other modern races. This is said of the cities of
Canada. There were mutations of fashion and custom and thought and
conditions; but these were not individual but rather reflexes of the
universal movements of society, save that they were a little modified by
the circumstances which were imposed by natural causes upon their
progress. It is true that Canadian society was peculiar in its
preservation, in certain ways, of the lines distinguishing the Latin and
the Teuton; but these lines grew fainter and fainter, and even when most
distinctly marked held on the one side or the other nothing that was not
of European origin and method. Therefore there remains nothing to be
said of the Canadian woman of the cities. There were many individuals
doubtless worthy of mention for special graces or attributes, but they
were not typical of any peculiar culture. They represented nothing,
being but projections of English or French womanhood in its variant
aspects. With the coming of the English ends the story of Canadian women
as found in the strongholds of femininity.

Still the story is not yet completely told, for there were then and have
been ever since outlying posts of womanhood in the Dominion, where there
has been preserved a certain individuality of type. The Gallic blood
runs almost uncontaminated, giving impulse of Gallic thought and custom,
in the veins of those who are called the _habitants_ the
French-Canadians of olden type. Their very title is suggestive; it tells
of "unreconstructed" alliance to the spirit of their origin