ssor: "Alberic is dead to
our eyes, but he is not so to the eyes of God, and dead though he appear
to us, he lives for us in the presence of the Lord; for it is peculiar
to the saints that when they go to God through death, they bear their
friends with them in their hearts to preserve them there forever." This
is our dearest desire; the friends of the venerable prelate were and
still are to-day his own Canadians: may he remain to the end of the
ages our protector and intercessor with God!

There were attributed to Mgr. de Laval, according to Latour and Brother
Houssart, and a witness who would have more weight, M. de Glandelet, a
priest of the seminary of Quebec, whose account was unhappily lost, a
great number of miraculous cures. Our purpose is not to narrate them; we
have desired to repeat only the wonders of his life in order to offer a
pattern and encouragement to all who walk in his steps, and in order to
pay the debt of gratitude which we owe to the principal founder of the
Catholic Church in our country.

The body of Mgr. de Laval lay in state for three days in the chapel of
the seminary, and there was an immense concourse of the people about his
mortuary bed, rather to invoke him than to pray for his soul. His
countenance remained so beautiful that one would have thought him
asleep; that imposing brow so often venerated in the ceremonies of the
Church preserved all its majesty. But alas! that aristocratic hand,
which had blessed so many generations, was no longer to raise the
pastoral ring over the brows of bowing worshippers; that eloquent mouth
which had for half a century preached the gospel was to open no more;
those eyes with look so humble but so straightforward were closed
forever! "He is regretted by all as if death had carried him off in the
flower of his age," says a chronicle of the time, "it is because virtue
does not grow old." The obsequies of the prelate were celebrated with a
pomp still unfamiliar in the colony; the body, clad in the pontifical
ornaments, was carried on the shoulders of priests through the different
religious edifices of Quebec before being interred. All the churches of
the country celebrated solemn services for the repose of the soul of the
first Bishop of New France. Placed in a leaden coffin, the revered
remains were sepulchred in the vaults of the cathedral, but the heart of
Mgr. de Laval was piously kept in the chapel of the seminary, and later,
in 1752, was transported in