16 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



formal work, and that her letters are rather documents than history. 

 And it must be admitted that lier writings are not, and never will be, 

 French classics, as St. Catherine's are Italian classics to a certain extent, 

 and St, Theresa's are Spanish classics altogether. They are just a little 

 like very good dispatches, and by just so much they miss the saving 

 grace of a native style. They were generally written under great pres- 

 sure of time, amid many distractions, and partly as reports. So their 

 very nature prevents vivid presentation, and keeps them on the lower 

 literary level of description. The spiritual passages are always excellent; 

 but here the lack of a sustained context and of the trained instinct for 

 the one inevitable w^ord combine to prevent the expression from doing 

 full justice to the ideas. The saint, in fact, was greater than the author. 

 It is her life, rather than her letters, that is the important point 

 even to-day. And this was of still more importance at the time she came 

 to Canada. For she came as the inheritor of a great tradition, as the 

 third of a trio of nuns who played a great interdependent part in the 

 histoiy of their Church, as the foundress of the first convent, as the first 

 educator of Canadian girls, and as the first white woman to evangelize 

 the Indians. And what heightened the importance of all this was that 

 the French-Canadians were then, as they are now, by tradition, training 

 and consent^ the most Eoman Catholic community in the world. She 

 had no dire troubles witliin the Church to strain her heart to death, as 

 St. Catherine had; no challenging Protestants to confute, like St 

 Theresa. Her spiritual warfare was the universal one against the powers 

 of evil, and her earthly work was against savagery and the forces of 

 nature. In both she was prepared to acquit herself excellently well. 

 And her landing at Quebec was indeed an event of profound significance. 



IV. 



Quebec was then but a tiny outpost on the edge of an unknown, 

 illimitable wilderness. It had been in precarious existence for only some 

 thirty years. Its founder, the staunch and pious Champlain, had died 

 a little over three years before, leaving it with barely a hundred inhabi- 

 tants. It had only three small public buildings. Fort St. Louis, the 

 store-house of the Cent Associés, and the parish church of Notre Dame 

 de la Eecouvrance, from whose belfry he caused the angelus to be rung 

 three times a day — a custom still religiously observed in Quebec, Beyond 

 this one narrow foothold of France, on the mighty river which came from 

 no one knew what vast inland wilds, Canada was little but a name. 

 Only ten years before La Mère Marie arrived, the Kirkes had taken 

 Quebec without a blow ; because they had a handful of men to serve the 



