uns of the Hotel-Dieu. The poor who might be admitted to it would be
employed at work proportionate to their strength, and more particularly
in the tilling of the farms belonging to the establishment. If we
remember that Mgr. de Laval had consecrated twenty years of his life to
giving his seminary, by a perfect union between its members and his
whole clergy, a formidable power in the colony, a power which in his
opinion could be used only for the good of the Church and in the public
interest, and that he now saw his efforts annihilated forever, we cannot
help admiring the resignation with which he managed to accept this
destruction of his dearest work. And not only did he bow before the
impenetrable designs of Providence, but he even used his efforts to
pacify those around him whose excitable temperaments might have brought
about conflicts with the authorities. The Abbe Gosselin quotes in this
connection the following example: "A priest, M. de Francheville, thought
he had cause for complaint at the behaviour of his bishop towards him,
and wrote him a letter in no measured terms, but he had the good sense
to submit it previously to Mgr. de Laval, whom he regarded as his
father. The aged bishop expunged from this letter all that might wound
Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, and it was sent with the corrections which he
desired." The venerable prelate did not content himself with avoiding
all that might cause difficulties to his successor; he gave him his
whole aid in any circumstances, and in particular in the foundation of
a convent of Ursulines at Three Rivers, and when the general hospital
was threatened in its very existence. "Was it not a spectacle worthy of
the admiration of men and angels," exclaims the Abbe Fornel in his
funeral oration on Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, "to see the first Bishop of
Quebec and his successor vieing one with the other in a noble rivalry
and in a struggle of religious fervour for the victory in exercises of
piety? Have they not both been seen harmonizing and reconciling together
the duties of seminarists and canons; of canons by their assiduity in
the recitation of the breviary, and of seminarists in condescending to
the lowest duties, such as sweeping and serving in the kitchen?" The
patience and trust in God of Mgr. de Laval were rewarded by the
following letter which he received from Father La Chaise, confessor to
King Louis XIV: "I have received with much respect and gratitude two
letters with which yo