n Normandy, married at a
very early age a M. de la Peltrie, who left her a young widow of
twenty-two years of age, without {132} any children. Deeply attached
to her religion from her youth, she decided to devote her life and her
wealth to the establishment of an institution for the instruction of
girls in Canada. Her father and friends threw all possible obstacles
in the way of what they believed was utter folly for a gentle cultured
woman, but she succeeded by female wiles and strategy in carrying out
her plans. On the first of August, 1639, she arrived at Quebec, in
company with Marie Guyard, the daughter of a silk manufacturer of
Tours, best known to Canadians as Mere de l'Incarnation, the mother
superior of the Ursulines, whose spacious convent and grounds now cover
seven acres of land on Garden Street in the ancient capital. She had a
vision of a companion who was to accompany her to a land of mists and
mountains, to which the Virgin beckoned as the country of her future
life-work. Canada was the land and Madame de la Peltrie the companion
foreshadowed in that dream which gave Marie Guyard a vocation which she
filled for thirty years with remarkable fidelity and ability.

Madame de la Peltrie and Marie Guyard were accompanied by Mdlle. de
Savonniere de la Troche, who belonged to a distinguished family of
Anjou, and was afterwards known in Canada as Mere de St. Joseph, and
also by another nun, called Mere Cecile de Sainte-Croix. A Jesuit,
Father Vimont, afterwards superior, and author of one of the
_Relations_, and the three Hospital sisters, arrived in the same ship.

The company landed and "threw themselves on their knees, blessed the
God of Heaven, and kissed {133} the earth of their near country, as
they now called it." A _Te Deum_ followed in the Jesuits' church which
was now completed on the heights near their college, commenced as early
as 1635--one year before the building of Harvard College--through the
generosity of Rene Rohault, eldest son of the Marquis de Gamache. The
first visit of the nuns was to Sillery, four miles to the west of
Quebec, on the north bank of the river, where an institution had been
established for the instruction of the Algonquin and other Indians,
through the liberality of Noel Brulart de Sillery, a Knight of Malta,
and a member of an influential French family, who had taken a deep
interest in the settlement of Canada and proved it by his bounty.
Madame de la Peltrie and h