1626-36.] MADAME DE LA PELTRIE. 169 



and a mesalliance} But her impressible and ardent 

 nature was absorbed in other objects. Religion 

 and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her 

 enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and 

 devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, 

 resisted her inclination for the cloister, and sought 

 to wean her back to the world ; but she escaped 

 from the chateau to a neighboring convent, where 

 she resolved to remain. Her father followed, car- 

 ried her home, and engaged her in a round of 

 fetes and hunting parties, in the midst of which 

 she found herself surprised into a betrothal to M. 

 de la Peltrie, a young gentleman of rank and char- 

 acter. The marriage proved a happy one, and 

 Madame de la Peltrie, with an excellent grace, bore 

 her part in the world she had wished to renounce. 

 After a union of five years, her husband died, and 

 she was left a widow and childless at the age of 

 twenty-two. She returned to the religious ardors 

 of her girlhood, again gave all her thoughts to 

 devotion and charity, and again resolved to be a 

 nun. She had heard of Canada ; and when Le 

 Jeune's first delations appeared, she read them 

 with avidity. " Alas ! " wrote the Father, " is there 

 no charitable and virtuous lady who will come to 

 this country to gather up the blood of Christ, by 

 teaching His word to the little Indian girls ? " 



1 There is a portrait of her, taken at a later period, of which a photo- 

 graph is before me. She has a semi-religious dress, hands clasped in 

 prayer, large dark eyes, a smiling and mischievous mouth, and a face 

 somewhat pretty and very coquettish. An engraving from the portrait 

 is prefixed to the " Notice Biographique de Madame de la Peltrie " in Les 

 Ursulines de Quebec, I. 348. 



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