was leading it from
victory to victory for the glory of his King, his wife, the famous Sarah
Jennings, was making a conquest at home of the affections of the
simple-minded and susceptible Queen. It is remarkable that the coronet
of this ambitious woman should now rest on the brow of an American girl,
and that a daughter of New York should reign at Blenheim Castle. At that
period France possessed the two great valleys of North America, the
Mississippi and the St. Lawrence; to capture the latter was the aim of
the expedition.

[Illustration: CHAPEL OF NOTRE-DAME-DE-LA-VICTOIRE.

COPYRIGHT.]

As the hostile fleet sailed up the St. Lawrence, a storm of great
severity burst upon the invaders. Eight of the transports were recked on
the reefs, and in the dawn of the midsummer morning the bodies of a
thousand red-coated soldiers were strewn on the sands of
_Isle-aux-OEufs_. It has been said that an old sea-dog, Jean Paradis,
refused to act as pilot, and in a fog allowed them to run straight on to
death; and also that among those who perished was one of the court
beauties who had eloped with Sir Hovenden.

The disabled vessels retreated before the artillery of the elements, and
left Bourbon's Lilied Blue to wave for half a century longer over Fort
St. Louis. This bloodless victory for the French was attributed by them
to the intervention of the Virgin, in gratitude for which this chapel
was vowed and built, as was also another on the market place, Lower
Town, Quebec. The miraculous feature of the defeated invasion was
considered certain from the fact that a recluse in the convent near the
chapel, and who was remarkable for her piety, had embroidered a prayer
to the Virgin on the flag which the Baron de Longueuil had borne from
Montreal in command of a detachment of troops.

Some of the original interior fittings of the chapel still exist, but
the bell which chimed its first call to vespers, when the great city was
a quiet, frontier hamlet, has long been silent. It is to be regretted
that from its historical character it has not been preserved from decay,
but looks as time-worn and mouldering as does the rusty cannon in the
hall of the Chateau, which was one of the guns of the ill-fated fleet,
and over which the river had flowed for almost two hundred years. Seven
of England's sovereigns had lived, reigned and died, and in France the
Royal house had fallen in the deluge of blood that flowed around the
guillotine. Quebec ha