19 (J VILLEMARIE DE MONTREAL. [1640. 



priests, and two convents for the nuns. Meanwhile, 

 Olier was toiling at Vaughard, on the outskirts of 

 Paris, to inaugurate the seminary of priests, and 

 Dauversiere at La Fleche, to form the community 

 of hospital, nuns. How the school nuns were 

 provided for we shall see hereafter. The colony, 

 it will be observed, was for the convents, not the 

 convents for the colony. 



The Associates needed a soldier-governor to take 

 charge of their forty men ; and, directed as they 

 supposed by Providence, they found one wholly to 

 theii' mind. This was Paul de Chomedey, Sieur 

 de Maisonneuve, a devout and valiant gentleman, 

 who in long service among the heretics of Holland 

 had kept his faith intact, and had held himself 

 resolutely aloof from the license that surrounded 

 him. He loved his profession of arms, and wished 

 to consecrate his sword to the Church. Past all 

 comparison, he is the manliest figure that appears 

 in this group of zealots. The piety of the design, 

 the mhacles that inspked it, the adventure and the 

 peril, all combined to charm him ; and he eagerly 

 embraced the enterprise. His father opposed his 

 purpose ; but he met him with a text of St. Mark, 

 " There is no man that hath left house or brethren 

 or sisters or father for my sake, but he shall receive 

 an hundred-fold." On this the elder Maisonneuve, 

 deceived by his own worldliness, imagined that the 

 plan covered some hidden speculation, from which 

 enormous profits were expected, and therefore with- 

 di'ew his opposition.^ 



1 Faillon, La Colonie Franqaise, I. 409. 



