e and the practical talents of modern
ages; he was replaced in his government by a knight of Malta, M. de
Montmagny. Quebec had a seminary, a hospital, and a convent, before it
possessed a population.

The foundation of Montreal was still more exclusively religious. The
accounts of the Jesuits had inflamed pious souls with a noble emulation;
a Montreal association was formed, under the direction of M. Olier,
founder of St. Sulpice. The first expedition was placed under the
command of a valiant gentleman, Paul de Maisonneuve, and of a certain
Mademoiselle Mance, belonging to the middle class of Nogent-le-Roi, who
was not yet a nun, but who was destined to become the foundress of the
hospital-sisters of Ville-Marie, the name which the religious zeal of the
explorers intended for the new colony of Montreal.

It was not without jealousy that the governor of Quebec and the agents of
the hundred associates looked upon the enterprise of M. de Maisonneuve;
an attempt was made to persuade him to remain in the settlement already
founded. "I am not come here to deliberate, but to act," answered he;
"it is my duty, as well as an honor to me, to found a colony at Montreal,
and I shall go, though every tree were an Iroquois!"

On the 16th of May, 1642, the new colonists had scarcely disembarked when
they were mustered around Father Vimont, a Jesuit, clothed in his
pontifical vestments. The priest, having first celebrated mass, turned
to those present. "You are only a grain of mustard-seed," said he, "but
you will grow until your branches cover the whole earth. You are few in
number, but your work is that of God. His eye is upon you, and your
children will replenish the earth." "You say that the enterprise of
Montreal is of a cost more suitable for a king than for a few private
persons too feeble to sustain it," wrote the associates of Montreal, in
1643, in reply to their adversaries, "and you further allege the perils
of the navigation and the shipwrecks that may ruin it. You have made a
better hit than you supposed in saying that it is a king's work, for the
King of kings has a hand in it, He whom the winds and the sea obey. We,
therefore, do not fear shipwrecks; He will not cause them save when it is
good for us, and when it is for His glory, which is our only aim. If
the, finger of God be not in the affair of Montreal, if it be a human
invention, do not trouble yourselves about it; it will never endure; but,
if God h