widow at twenty-two, turned again heart and soul to the
scheme of endowing a Canadian mission. Again her father tried to
divert her mind, threatening to cut off her fortune if she did not
marry. An engagement to a young noble, who was as keen a devotee as
herself, quieted her father and averted the loss of her fortune. On
the death of her father the formal union was dissolved, and Madame de
la Peltrie proceeded to the Ursuline Convent of Tours, where the
Jesuits had already chosen a mother superior for the new institution to
be founded at Quebec--Marie of the Incarnation, a woman of some fifty
years, a widow like Madame de la Peltrie, and, like Madame de la
Peltrie, a mystic dreamer of celestial visions and divine communings
and heroic sacrifices. How much of truth, how much of self-delusion,
{73} lay in these dreams of heavenly revelation is not for the outsider
to say. It is as impossible for the practical mind to pronounce
judgment on the mystic as for the mystic to pronounce sentence on the
scientist. Both have their truths, both have their errors; and by
their fruits are they known.

[Illustration: MADAME DE LA PELTRIE (After a picture in the Ursuline
Convent, Quebec)]

May 4th, 1639, Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the Incarnation
embarked from Dieppe for Canada. In the ship were also another
Ursuline nun, three hospital sisters to found the Hotel Dieu at Quebec,
Father Vimont, superior of Quebec Jesuits, and two other priests. The
boat was like a chapel. Ship's bell tolled services. Morning prayer
and evensong were chanted from the decks, and the pilgrims firmly
believed that their vows allayed a storm. July 1st they were among the
rocking dories of the Newfoundland fishermen, and then on the 15th the
little sailboat washed and rolled to anchor inshore among the fur
traders under the heights of Tadoussac.

At sight of the somber Saguenay, the silver-flooded St. Lawrence, the
frowning mountains, the far purple hills, the primeval forests through
which the wind rushed with the sound of the sea, the fishing craft
dancing on the tide like cockle boats, the grizzled fur traders bronzed
as the crinkled oak forests where they passed their lives, the tawny,
naked savages agape at these white-skinned women come from afar, the
hearts of the {74} housed-up nuns swelled with emotions strange and
sweet,--the emotions of a new life in a new world. And when they
scrambled over the rope coils aboard a fishing s