r life, her correspondence with her beloved Mother General
was all that her faithful heart could desire. The latter often sent her
presents, which she knew the aged Mother would be happy to bestow upon
the other houses, or upon the Indians, or upon the poor.

During the latter years of her life, many of her most valued friends,
both in France and in America, passed into their eternity, among others
Father Van Quickenborne, and Bishops Dubourg and Rosati, with whom,
during so many years, she had borne the heat and the burden of the day,
in the harvest field of her Missouri mission. Several times, also,
during those years, she was tried by severe illness, to say nothing of
the infirmities which overtook her after her arrival in America, and
caused her a great deal of suffering without impairing her wonderful
activity or inducing her to relax either in her austerities or in her
devotions. As she advanced in years, though growing naturally weaker,
she was never idle for a moment. When not on her knees in the chapel,
she was busy knitting, seated with a prayer-book open before her, in her
narrow cell, which to her great consolation, was separated from the
chapel only by a partition wall. Sometimes, when the weather was fine,
she would go and sit under an old pear-tree in the garden with her
knitting. This she would lay down now and then to take up her French
hymn book, and with a weak and quavering voice, she would sing the
beautiful hymns she had always loved. One of them, entitled "Beau Ciel,"
was her favorite, for it gave expression to the longing of her soul for
her eternal home.

CHAPTER VIII

LAST DAYS

Her dear Mother Regis Hamilton, whom she had found as Superior at St.
Charles, on her return from the Pottowatomie Mission, was replaced three
years later and sent to Canada. The aged Mother missed her greatly, and
when Mother Barat asked her at a later period, what she could do to give
her pleasure, she begged for the return of Mother Regis, though, with
her usual disinterestedness, it was for the benefit of the community
rather than her own, that she desired it. Her petition was granted, and
on New Year's Day, 1852, it was with great joy and consolation that she
welcomed back her beloved daughter. Mother Regis was pained to find her
venerable Mother so worn and weak; but the joy of the latter on having
her dear Mother Regis with her again, together with the tender and
tactful care with which she was surrounded