NEW TRIALS.--MADAMS BE LA PELTRIE IN MONTREAL.--ACTIVE LIFE OF THE MOTHER
OF THE INCARNATION.--FIRST ELECTIONS.--REMOVAL TO THE NEW MONASTERY.--
RETURN OF MADAME DE LA PELTRIE.
While the Mother of the Incarnation was thus spending her days in the
practice of the heroic charity and austere penance which possessed equal
attractions for her, pursuing the work of zeal which of all others she
loved best, and living in the heart of what was, perhaps the most fervent
portion of God's Church in those days, it would appear to us as if,
though still on earth, she had partially anticipated heaven; but heaven,
even on earth was not to be yet, for the measure of her merits, and,
therefore, of her sufferings, was not filled up. As we have already more
than once remarked, the Almighty had called her to a sublime degree of
purity of soul; to the end of life, therefore, He would furnish her with
opportunities of advancing in the virtue which here below can never
attain its last perfection, some alloy of the love of self mingling to
the end with the love of God, even in the holiest. As the virtue is one
which thrives best under the cross, He would re-conduct her to her well-
known place on Calvary, and subject her once more to the salutary action
of interior tribulation. She felt again as if suddenly deprived of all
the Divine gifts and favours, and reduced to the very extreme of
spiritual indigence. Her natural talents and capabilities seemed
paralysed; desolation overwhelmed her, temptations to anger, antipathy
and even despair pressed on her. The last, especially, became so
importunate, that she seemed to herself sometimes on the very brink of
the dread abyss, and might have echoed the words of the Psalmist, "The
sorrows of death have compassed me, and the perils of hell have found me"
(Ps. cxiv. 3). Not only had the Almighty apparently withdrawn His gifts,
but, hardest of all to bear, He had concealed Himself. Now and again a
ray of heavenly consolation beamed on her afflicted soul, but, like the
lightning's flash on the angry sky, it illumined for a moment, only to be
followed by deeper darkness. To her internal agonies were added external
trials of various kinds, including most painful contradictions and
humiliations. Support from creatures there was none, and even the
sympathy of friendship was denied her. She seemed to have lost confidence
in her holiest advisers, while, by the permission of God, she herself
became to others a subject of temptations to aversion. Oppressed with the
sense of her utter unworthiness, and brought down to the lowest depth of
interior abjection, she dared scarcely look at or address her Sisters.
She was alone in her agony, like the Divine Sufferer in the garden, and,
in the spirit of utter annihilation of self, and entire abandonment to
God, her desolate heart re-echoed the sublime cry of His agony, "Father,
not my will but Thine be done."
It is her own teaching, that the nearer the soul approaches to God, the
more distinctly also she discerns her sinfulness and misery; the more
clearly she sees the many hitherto unsuspected windings and lurking-
places of corrupt nature; the better, consequently, she understands how
numerous still are the impediments which must be removed before she can
fully and freely expand her wings and take her flight to her Lord. Of
this truth she had now renewed personal experience. In the high degree of
Divine union to which she had attained, she saw her imperfections in a
clearer light than ever, and the view filled her with confusion and
compunction. That by the help of Divine grace, she had through life been
preserved from every sin of deliberation, was the opinion of competent
judges, well acquainted with her soul's history. The imperfections which
she so bitterly deplored were, then, only an occasional infidelity to the
grace which had called her from early years to perfect detachment from
creatures and from self, or, at most, they were but the faults of
frailty, ignorance, surprise and inadvertence, from which even the saints
are not exempt in this life; but, viewed as they now were in their closer
contrast with the sanctity of God, they assumed a more serious aspect
than ever before. Her habitual horror of the very slightest faults was
intensified; her ordinary almost incredible care to avoid them,
increased. Inflamed with a holy zeal for the vindication of the rights of
Divine justice, as well with an insatiable ardour for the triumph of
God's pure love in her soul, she humbly bowed beneath the hand that
crucified her, confessing herself deserving of all chastisement, and,
praying that the last remnant of the love of self might be exterminated
from her heart at any cost of suffering and humiliation. 'O merciful
Lord!' she cried, send me a thousand torments, and as many deaths as I
respirations, rather than permit that I should offend Thee.' Looking on
her slow interior martyrdom as the instrument in God's hand for the
purification of her soul, she would not have exchanged its pangs for
imaginable joys united. Greatly as her trials on this occasion must have
promoted her personal sanctification, a second important result was
involved in them. In the generosity of her charity, she had offered
herself to suffer for the sins of two persons whose conversion she most
ardently desired; while, therefore, the Almighty 'proved her as gold in
the furnace, that she might found worthy of Himself' He at the same time
'received her as a victim of a holocaust', that through her sufferings
other souls might be made worthy of Him too (Wisdom iii. 5,6). But if He
accepted the oblation, and rewarded the sacrifice, it was not until the
victim had been entirely immolated.
As if to crown the tribulations of the Venerable Mother, it was while her
interior trials were at their height, that Madame de la Peltrie, the main
pillar of the Ursuline foundation, resolved to remove to Montreal, where
a new settlement was about to be established as a check to the incursions
of the Iroquois. Monsieur de Maisonneuve, the destined founder, was
accompanied by a troop of colonists, brave and chivalrous as himself;
also by Mademoiselle Mance, whose particular mission was to open a
convent of Hospital Sisters at Ville Marie, as the projected city was to
be called. The season being too far advanced for the commencement of
operations, the party passed the winter at Sillery, where Madame de la
Peltrie made acquaintance with Mademoiselle Mance. The intended
foundation naturally formed an ordinary topic of conversation during the
long evenings, and so strongly was Madame de la Peltrie's interest in it
excited, that in the end, she resolved to give it her personal co-
operation. Not being bound to the Ursulines by vow or formal engagement
of any kind, she was of course at perfect liberty to withdraw from them,
but the parting from one so dear was very painful to all, especially the
much tried Mother. The amiable Foundress had gained the affection and
esteem both of the Sisters and the pupils, cheerfully sharing the labours
and privations of the one, and devoting herself in the self-sacrificing
spirit of true charity to the care of the others: all loved and regretted
her, nevertheless she departed, impelled by the desire to accomplish what
she considered a more useful work. In her zeal for souls, she would have
flown, not merely to Montreal, but to the world's end, and when it
appeared to her that by going, she could extend her sphere of good, and
thereby more largely promote the glory of God, no hesitation was
admitted. She was accompanied by Charlotte Barré. On the 17th of May,
1642, the colonists landed on the Isle of Montreal.
Besides the trial to their feelings, the separation from their Foundress
was a source of serious pecuniary embarrassment to the Ursulines. If
before, they had been poor, they were now reduced to absolute
destitution. Madame de la Peltrie having found it necessary to remove her
furniture, they retained only a few articles which they had brought from
France, among the rest, three beds for their fourteen pupils. "The
children have to sleep on boards," wrote the Mother of the Incarnation;
"we do what we can to soften the hard couches, and as a substitute for
bed clothes, we borrow skins from the stores, the only alternative left
us in our poverty." But it was not the extreme indigence around her that
afflicted the Venerable Mother; the example of her Lord and Saviour had
on the contrary rendered this precious in her eyes and dear to her heart
If her soul was rent, it was chiefly by the dread of having to dismiss
her beloved pupils back to their native wilds. In one single year, fifty
Indian children had been taught, and more than seven hundred adults of
both sexes had received spiritual and corporal aid. Was this magnificent
harvest to be thus prematurely blighted?
Monsieur de Bernières had formally announced the necessity of dismissing
the pupils and discontinuing the new building, adding, that if Madame de
la Peltrie persisted in her present intention, the Sisters would have no
alternative but to return to France, unless indeed some other charitable
person would undertake the responsibility of providing for them. But
gloomy as were the prospects of the little community, the Mother of the
Incarnation never wavered in her trust in God. She resolved to retain her
scholars, to distribute her accustomed alms, and to continue the
building, writing as usual to Monsieur de Bernières for supplies for the
house, and inclosing him the bills for the workmen's wages. Who that
witnessed her calm, brave fortitude, could have suspected how immensely
the weight of the visible cross was aggravated by that of the invisible?
Yet it is certain that the external was but a faint image of the
internal. Still, beneath their united pressure, she discharged her
multiplied exterior duties with a punctuality, an energy and a presence
of mind which proved the extent of her disengagement from self, while by
her exactitude to the least of the conventual observances, she continued
to sustain her claim to the title of a living rule. Acting on her own
maxim, that fidelity in small things is the guardian of fidelity in
greater, she knew no distinction between lesser and more important
regulations; in her view, all were of equal consequence. She took her
share of the menial duties, which for the first years weighed heavily on
the community in consequence of their having no lay Sisters. No
indisposition or infirmity, no pressure of business or excess of fatigue
could induce her to deviate in one iota from the practices of common
life. Ever active and indefatigable, she might be seen, now teaching and
tending her dear Indian children, now directing the building of the new
convent, now superintending the domestic details of the monastery, and
all the time fulfilling to the least particular the duties of her
responsible office as Superior. She was the last to retire to rest at
night, the first to appear in the morning, and ever to be found either in
communion with God, or engaged in the active occupations of her charge.
It was at this period that she commenced correspondence with several
religious communities, and numerous pious seculars in France, in order to
engage their interest for the Indians. The number of her letters is
something wonderful, especially during her first twelve years in Canada,
and the alms which she thus procured, supplied the most pressing wants of
the institution. "This is but my second letter," she says in one place,
"since the arrival of the ships; they leave in a fortnight, and I have to
answer two hundred." In another, she remarks, "My hand is so tired that I
can scarcely hold the pen, but so it is that we must pass our time, while
waiting for the eternity which will never pass." The words, "Short
labour, eternal rest," formed her ordinary motto. Besides her letters on
business to persons of all conditions, she maintained a constant
correspondence with her son and her niece from the time of their joining,
the one the Benedictine, and the other the Ursuline Order. These last,
like all her spiritual letters, are replete with solid maxims of
practical piety, and manifest a knowledge of the secrets of the interior
life which could have been acquired only in her close and habitual
communications with God. While going through this almost incredible
amount of work, she never lost her calm self-possession and firm control
over natural feeling. More than twenty times in one morning, it has
happened her to be interrupted at an occupation, and never by look or
word was she known to betray annoyance or impatience.
The first elections at the Quebec Convent took place on the 12th of June,
1642, when the Mother of the Incarnation resumed the burden which for the
previous three years she had borne by the appointment of the Archbishop
of Tours. On the twenty-first of the following November, the feast of the
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, the little community bade adieu to
the miserable dwelling which had sheltered them for three years, and
become endeared as the scene of their first labours and their first
successes in Canada. The new building was in so unfinished a state as to
be barely habitable; consequently the first winter was one of extreme
suffering from cold. Stoves were a luxury unknown for many a year, and to
preserve themselves from being frozen at night, the poor Mothers had to
sleep in something like wooden chests. Notwithstanding its many
inconveniences, the new convent excited the unbounded admiration of the
Indians, especially the children, who were overjoyed at the prospect of
inhabiting so splendid a "Cabin."
After the Venerable Mother had borne her weight of mental anguish for
three years, the Almighty was pleased to alleviate it, propitiated as it
would seem by a new self-imposed and very heroic act of humiliation.
Externally too, prospects brightened. After spending eighteen months in
Montreal, Madame de la Peltrie resolved to return to Quebec. Her zeal for
the conversion of the savages urging her to attempt even impossibilities,
she had for a time entertained serious thoughts of penetrating to the
country of the yet pagan Hurons, but a Jesuit Father just returned from
those missions, dissuaded her from an undertaking so far above her
strength. In compensation, she provided for the permanent support of an
additional missions in that district. While at Montreal, she wrote to the
Mother of the Incarnation to explain that her great inducement in going
there, had been the hope of establishing a convent of Ursulines in the
town, a new proof that her holy ardour for the salvation of souls was
worthy of all praise. During this visit, she stood sponsor at the
baptismal font for an Algonquin Chief.
It is easier to imagine than to describe the joy with which her return
was greeted by the Sisters, the pupils, and most of all, the Mother on
whom had fallen the heaviest portion of the burden entailed by her
absence. Now, no future parting need be dreaded. To the last breath of
life she would cling to the friends whose difficulties and troubles she
had so generously shared from the first, and among the most precious of
her legacies to the Ursulines would be ranked the example of her zeal,
her charity, her humility, and her admirable self-abnegation. Without
assuming the obligations of a religious, she conformed in all respects to
the rule and discipline of the house, and so remarkable was her
punctuality, that the signal for regular observance was never given with
greater exactitude, than when it happened to be her turn to ring the
bell.