h the saints; so he could not fail in that which
our Lord incessantly recommends to His disciples, charity! He no longer
possessed anything of his own, since he had at the outset abandoned his
patrimony to his brother, and since later on he had given to the
seminary everything in his possession. But charity makes one ingenious:
by depriving himself of what was strictly necessary, could he not yet
come to the aid of his brothers in Jesus Christ? "Never was prelate,"
says his eulogist, M. de la Colombiere, "more hostile to grandeur and
exaltation.... In scorning grandeur, he triumphed over himself by a
poverty worthy of the anchorites of the first centuries, whose rules he
faithfully observed to the end of his days. Grace had so thoroughly
absorbed in the heart of the prelate the place of the tendencies of our
corrupt nature that he seemed to have been born with an aversion to
riches, pleasures and honours.... If you have noticed his dress, his
furniture and his table, you must be aware that he was a foe to pomp and
splendour. There is no village priest in France who is not better
nourished, better clad and better lodged than was the Bishop of Quebec.
Far from having an equipage suitable to his rank and dignity he had not
even a horse of his own. And when, towards the end of his days, his
great age and his infirmities did not allow him to walk, if he wished to
go out he had to borrow a carriage. Why this economy? In order to have a
storehouse full of garments, shoes and blankets, which he distributed
gratuitously, with paternal kindness and prudence. This was a business
which he never ceased to ply, in which he trusted only to himself, and
with which he concerned himself up to his death."

The charity of the prelate was boundless. Not only at the hospital of
Quebec did he visit the poor and console them, but he even rendered them
services the most repugnant to nature. "He has been seen," says M. de la
Colombiere, "on a ship where he behaved like St. Francois-Xavier, where,
ministering to the sailors and the passengers, he breathed the bad air
and the infection which they exhaled; he has been seen to abandon in
their favour all his refreshments, and to give them even his bed, sheets
and blankets. To administer the sacraments to them he did not fear to
expose his life and the lives of the persons who were most dear to him."
When he thus attended the sick who were attacked by contagious fever, he
did his duty, even more than