Letter 183

My dear and well-beloved son,

It’s a great privation to see a ship coming into port and bringing no letter from you. Yet I was sure you had written and I wasn’t mistaken for your letters were in the first ship that brought us the news we were to have a Bishop this year. But this ship didn’t arrive for a long time after the others. On account of this delay, the Bishop came before the news of his appointment but it was a pleasant surprise in every way. Besides the happiness of the whole country to have an Ecclesiastical Superior, it was a consolation to have a man whose personal qualities are so rare and so extraordinary to say nothing of his illustrious birth for he comes from the house of Laval. He is a man of high merit and singular virtue. I understand well what you told me about his election but let them say what they like, it is not men who have selected him. I don’t say he is a saint, that would be to say too much but I will say in truth that he lives like a saint and an apostle. He doesn’t know the meaning of human respect. He belongs to everybody and he says so freely when he meets people. A man of such strength was needed here to eradicate the slanders that were being spread and were indeed taking root. In a word his life is an example that the whole country admires. He is an intimate friend of M. de Bernières and remained with him four years as a hermit. It is not astonishing having frequented such a school that he has reached a high degree of prayer and this is what we wish him. A nephew of M. de Bernières has come with him. He is a very young gentleman who delights everybody by his modesty. He wants to give himself entirely to God in invitation of his uncle and to consecrate himself to the service of this new Church. To attain his goal he means to be ordained by the new Bishop. I told you we didn’t expect the Bishop this year so nothing was ready for his reception. We are lending him our Seminary which is at one corner of our enclosure and quite near the Parish Church. He will have the pleasure and the value of a fine garden and so that we may be housed according to Canon Law he has a new enclosure wall built. We will be inconvenienced because we will have to house the seminarians in our rooms but he well deserves it and we will bear this inconvenience with pleasure till the Episcopal residence is built. No sooner was he ordered Bishop in Paris than he asked the Father General of the Jesuits for Fr. Lallemant who for three months had been rector of the College in La Flèche to accompany him. It is a great good for the country and for us in particular and for me more than any body else because I tell you in confidence that I suffered in being deprived of a person to whom I could speak of my interior. All year I have had a premonition that Our Lord would send me help. He has done it in His own good time. May His holy name be eternally blessed.

You know what has been happening in recent years about M. L’Abbé de Quellus. He is at present a director of the Seminary of St. Sulpice. He has undertaken to found a house at Montreal with a very fine Church. He has come to Quebec to welcome the prelate. The Archbishop of Rouen had named him his vicar general but that no longer holds and his authority is at an end. The mission at Montreal is making great progress. Hospital Sisters have come from La Flèche and thirty families are going to establish themselves there. The last ship brought a big number of girls. They are pressing us to make foundation there but we cannot afford to do it. Our Bishop will look into the matter although he is here simply as Bishop of Petree and not of Quebec or of Canada. His title has set people talking but it is the result of the difference between the Court of Rome and that of France. The king wants the Bishop of Canada to be dependent on him and to take an oath of fidelity to him, as do the other Bishops of France. And the Holy Father claims to have particular rights in foreign nations, that is why he has sent us a Bishop not as Bishop of the country but as Apostolic Commissary with the strange title of Bishop of Petree.

You are worried about the affairs of this country. They are as before the Iroquois peace. They broke it and they have already taken and killed nine Frenchmen in an unexpected incursion when nobody believed that they had evil intentions for the French. They have burnt alive one of their prisoners and it will be a wonder if the others get any better treatment. Since then the French have killed eleven of their people and taken others prisoners for we heard from a Huron captive who escaped that they are preparing a powerful army to come to seize our new Christians and I think as many of the French as they can. This is how the Huron escaped. An Iroquois canoe in which he was, saw a Huron canoe that was going to harpoon eels, let it pass and then and there threw themselves on it when they were no longer together or in a state to defend themselves. The captive pitying those of his own nation, stole away from his captors who had landed and returned to warn his own people of the Iroquois plan and of their own danger. They embarked at once and he with them and came with all speed to Quebec when they told of the Iroquois plans. Only for that there would have been many a head split for besides the Huron who had no means of evading their rage, they would have slipped among the harvesters who thanks to the peace were doing their work without fear or distrust. It had happened already at Three Rivers where they took the nine Frenchmen already mentioned. At the moment of writing the Governor is leading a party of soldiers to rout them or capture some. What made him set out was that the Iroquois prisoners enclosed between strong walls and doors of Iron had heard that their nation had broken the peace and they will surely be burned alive. Last night they forced their prison door and jumped the walls of the fort. The sentinels saw them and gave the alarm and they were followed immediately. I don’t know whether they were taken or not but these people run like red deer. You astonish me by saying that our Mothers want to recall us. May God preserve us from such a misfortune. If we didn’t leave after our burnings or our other losses we will not leave for the Iroquois unless the whole colony leaves or a Superior orders us because we are daughters of obedience and must refer that to everything. If I am not mistaken that will never happen. They say an enemy army is preparing to come here but now that their plan is known it will not be easy for them. Yet if Our Lord let them do it they would have destroyed us long ago but his Goodness upset their plans by warning us so that we would be ready. If there was danger I would be the first to let you know about it so that you could make arrangements for our safety seeing that our mothers confide in you but thanks be to God we do not see or think that it will happen. Yet if it did happen would we not be glad to end our lives in the service of our Master and to give them back to Him who gave them to us. These are my sentiments and you can share them with our mothers if you think proper.

But I think if we suffer personally in Canada it would be from poverty rather than the sword of the Iroquois. For the country in general its destruction will come not from the Barbarians but from certain persons who through envy or otherwise write to the Gentlemen of the Company a pack of falsehoods against the holiest and most virtuous and defame by their calumnies those who maintain justice and promote it by their prudence. Blows delivered in secret cannot be parried and as corrupt nature is inclined to believe the bad rather than the good they are easily believed. So it happens when least expected vexatious orders and decrees are received here. In all this God is greatly offended and He would do us a great grace if he cleared the country of these captious spirits and of all dissension.

The last vessel was found on arrival to be infected with purple fever and plague. There were two hundred on board and nearly all were ill. Eight died at sea and others when they landed. Nearly all the country was infected and the hospital was filled with the sick. Mons. Laval was continually there helping the sick and making their beds. They did their best to stop him and protect his person but no eloquence would turn him from his acts of humility. Fr. de Quen in his great charity contracted the illness and is dead. He is a great loss to the Missions; he was the Missionary of the Algonquins, had worked twenty-five years with them enduring incredible hardships. In the end leaving his office as Superior of the Missions he has given his life in the exercise of Charity. Two hospital sisters were very ill but thanks be to God our Community has escaped. We are in a very healthy location here exposed to big winds that clear the air. As for me in particular my health is very good. I never stop sighing for Eternity though I am ready to live as long as it pleases Our Lord.

From Quebec. 1659.
Kelly, Sr M. St. Dominic, O.S.U. Marie of the Incarnation 1599 - 1672 Correspondence, (translated from the French edition by Dom Guy Oury Monk of Solesmes), Irish Ursuline Union, 2000, p. 232 - 234.