186 DEVOTEES AND NUNS. [1639-42. 



a condition described by her biographers as a " de- 

 privation of all spiritual consolations." Her posi- 

 tion was a very difficult one. She herself speaks 

 of her life as a succession of crosses and humilia- 

 tions. Some of these were due to Madame de la 

 Pel trie, who, in a freak of enthusiasm, abandoned 

 her Ursulines for a time, as we shall presently see, 

 leaving them in the utmost destitution. There were 

 dissensions to be healed among them ; and money, 

 everything, in short, to be provided. Marie de 

 rincarnation, in her saddest moments, neither 

 failed in judgment nor slackened in effort. She 

 carried on a vast correspondence, embracing every 

 one in France who could aid her infant commu- 

 nity with money or influence ; she harmonized and 

 regulated it with excellent skill ; and, in the midst 

 of relentless austerities, she was loved as a mother 

 by her pupils and dependants. Catholic writers 

 extol her as a samt.^ Protestants may see in her a 

 Christian heroine, admirable, with all her follies 

 and her faults. 



The traditions of the Ursulines are full of the 

 virtues of Madame de la Peltrie, — her humility, 

 her charity, her penances, and her acts of mortifi- 

 cation. No doubt, with some little allowance, these 



1 There is a letter extant from Sister Anne de S**' Claire, an Ursuline 

 who came to Quebec in 1640, written soon after her arrival, and contain- 

 ing curious evidence that a reputation of saintship already attached to 

 Marie de ITncarnation. "AVhen I spoke to her," writes Sister Anne, 

 speaking of her first interview, " I perceived in the air a certain odor of 

 sanctit}^ which gave me the sensation of an agreeable perfume." See 

 the letter in a recent Catholic work, Les Ursulines de Quebec, I. 38, where 

 the passage is printed in Italics, as worthy the especial attention of the 

 pious reader 



