au, in the Opelousas region.
Mother Eugenie Aude and Sister Mary Layton were sent to begin it. A
little later, Mother Duchesne was able to send them valuable help in the
person of Madame Xavier (Anna) Murphy, who had just arrived from France
with Madame Lucile Mathevon, another valiant woman, who had a notable
part to play in the early history of the Society of the Sacred Heart in
America.

The school at Grand Coteau had soon filled up, but ere long Mother
Duchesne heard of the distressing condition to which the new community
was reduced, through sickness and overwork. With the uncalculating
charity that characterized her, she at once determined to go in person
to their assistance, though it was in the middle of summer and the
journey must necessarily be long and painful, as well as expensive. She
took with her Madame St. Cyr and a lay novice to leave at Grand Coteau,
and Therese Pratte, whose family had so hospitably entertained her and
her companions during their two weeks' stay in St. Louis, after their
arrival. The young girl was one of her pupils, who had obtained her
father's consent for a visit to Mother Aude.

The voyage was long, full of difficulties and endless interruptions and
delays, and marked by very dramatic and even tragic incidents,
especially on the return trip, of which alone we will give a brief
account. Among other particulars, she had to go from Plaqumine all the
way down to New Orleans to find a boat for St. Louis. In New Orleans she
was stricken with malarial fever, still the physician advised her
departure by the first steamer, because at the time yellow fever was
epidemic in the city. Scarcely, however, had the steamer started on her
voyage, before the dread disease broke out on board, the captain being
the first to die of it. Mother Duchesne, though reduced to a state of
great prostration, gathered up the remnant of her strength to take care
of one of the yellow fever patients on board, to whom no one else seemed
to give any attention. She not only ministered to his needs, but
converted and baptized him before he died.

Weak and exhausted as she was, foreseeing that under the existing
conditions the steamer would scarcely be able to reach her destination,
she determined to trust in Providence, and land with her young companion
at Natchez. But the quarantine excluded her from the town, nor would any
one in the neighborhood take them in, for fear of the prevailing
epidemic. Providence came t