[wood] an URSULINE EPIC 1 1 



Cliannel. The French were only just in time to sheer off, stand over for 

 the English coast and hug the shore there till the enemy got hull-down 

 astern. The voyage was long and stormy ; and just as the last verse of 

 the office was being sung on Trinity Sunday, an alarm of 'Ware ice! 

 brought all hands on deck to see a berg threatening the destruiction of 

 the ship. Father Vim ont even gave the general absolution. But La 

 Mère Marie never flinched for a moment. Her letters tell us how care- 

 fully she arranged her dress, " so that it might befit her modesty when 

 the end came;'' and other witnesses relate how, with one arm round 

 Madame de la Peltrie, she stood foremost to face apparent doom. At the 

 last moment the vessel veered just enough to graze past the berg. 



On the 1st of August the nuns were rowed up from the Island of 

 Orleans in the Governor's barge, and landed in Quebec amid the acclam- 

 ations of the whole assembled colony. 



III. 



The landing of La Mère Marie de l'Incarnation was indeed an event 

 of deep national importance. She is unquestionably one of the five 

 founders of New France ; and her fame with posterity is quite as secure 

 as that of Champlain, Laval, Frontenac or Talon. The little band of 

 colonists could not foresee this ; but they recognized her at once as their 

 fellow-pioneer, the leader of the first religieuses to answer the call of their 

 new, wild, far-off home. Canadians were then in dire need of men, 

 money and material from the Mère-Patrie to safeguard their country's 

 infant life against stark, constricting circumstances. Yet they freely 

 gave a heartfelt welcome to a woman who brought no other wealth than 

 that which is the only inheritance of the saints on earth. Their hopeful 

 faith in her was amply justified by history, both before and since her 

 time. For, besides being one of the five founders of New France, she 

 was the third of three great nuns, whom the three great Latin races 

 brought forth in the service of the Church of Eome, at three most criti^cal 

 epochs. All three had a close affbaity of devotion; but this was made 

 effectual in the widest diversity of environment. The Italian, St. Cath- 

 erine of Siena, was the last of the really medi£eval saints ; the Spaniard, 

 St. Theresa, was the first great woman leader against the Eeformaltion; 

 while in La Mère Marie colonial France found the Moses and Joshua 

 of what proved to be the Promised Land of Canada. 



St. Catherine of Siena is one of the most intimately human and 

 intensely sympathetic of all the saints. She was all things good to 

 every man and woman she could influence; and no one that met her 

 could fail to be influenced by her magnetic moral genius. Her letters 



