THE convent of the Ursulines had received and infolded the lambs sent out by Louis XIV. to help stock his wilderness. This convent, though substantially built of stone, was too small for all the purposes of the importation, and a larger structure, not far from it, had been prepared as a bazar in which to sort and arrange the ship-load.

The good nuns, while they waited on their crowd of miscellaneous guests, took no notice of that profane building; and only their superior, Mother Mary of the Incarnation, accompanied and marshaled future brides to the marriage market.

Squads began to cross the court soon after matins. The girls were rested by one night’s sleep upon land, the balsam odor of pines, and the clear air on Quebec heights. They must begin taking husbands at once. The spring sowing was near. Time and the chemistry of nature wait on no woman’s caprices. And in general there was little coyness among these girls. They had come to New France to settle themselves, and naturally wished to make a good bargain of it. Some faces wore the stamp of vice, but these were the exceptions. A stolid herd of peasantry, varying in shape and complexion but little, were there to mother posterity in Canada. Some delicate outlines and auburn tresses offset the monotony of somber black eyes and stout waists. Clucking all the way across the court her gentle instructions and repressions, Mother Mary led squad after squad.

There were hilarious girls, girls staring with large interest at the oddities of this new world while they remarked in provincial French, and girls folding their hands about their crucifixes and looking down. The coquettish had arrayed themselves coquettishly, and the sober had folded their shoulder-collars quite high about their throats.

“But,” dropped Mother Mary into the ear of Madame Bourdon, who stood at the mouth of the matrimonial pen, receiving and placing each squad, “these are mixed goods!” To which frolicsome remark from a strict devotee Madame Bourdon replied with assenting shrug.

The minds of both, however, quite separated the goods on display from one item of the cargo then standing in the convent parlor before the real bishop of Canada. This item was a slim young girl, very high-bred in appearance, richly plain in apparel. She held a long, dull-colored cloak around her with hands so soft and white of flesh that one’s eye traced over and over the flexible curve of wrist and finger. Her eyes were darkly brown, yet they had a tendency towards topaz lights which gave them moments of absolute yellowness; while her hair had a dazzling white quality that the powders of a later period could not impart. Bits of it straying from her high roll of curls suggested a nimbus around the forehead. Her lower face was full, the lips most delicately round. Courage and tears stood forth in her face and encountered the bishop.

FranÇois Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, then vicar-apostolic of the province, with the power rather than name of bishop, was a tall noble, priestly through entire length of rusty cassock and height of intellectual temples. He regarded the girl with bloodless patience. He had a large nose, which drooped towards a mouth cut in human granite; his lean, fine hands, wasted by self-abasement and voluntary privations, were smaller than a woman’s. Though not yet forty, he looked old, and his little black skull-cup aged him more. The clear Montmorency eye had in him gained, from asceticism and rigid devotion, a brightness which penetrated.

His young relative’s presence and distress annoyed him. For her soul’s salvation, he would have borne unstinted agony; for any human happiness she craved, he was not prepared to lift a little finger.

“Monseigneur,” the girl began their interview, “I have come to New France.”

“Strangely escorted,” said Laval.

“The reverend father cannot be thinking of Madame Bourdon: Madame Bourdon was the best of duennas on the voyage.”

Laval shook his chin, and for reply rested a glance upon his cousin’s attendant as a type of the company she had kept on shipboard. The attendant was a sedate and pretty young girl, whose black hair looked pinched so tightly in her cap as to draw her eyebrows up, while modesty hung upon her lashes and drew her lids down. The result was an unusual expanse of veined eyelid.

“If you mean Louise Bibelot,” the young lady responded, “she is my foster-sister. Her mother nursed me. Louise bears papers from the curÉ of her parish to strangers, but she should hardly need such passports to the head of our house.”

“In brief, daughter,” said Laval, passing to the point, “what brings you to this savage country—fit enough to be the arena of young men, or of those who lay self upon the altar of the Church, but most unfit for females tenderly brought up to enjoy the pleasures of the world?”

“Has my bringing-up been so tender, monseigneur? I have passed nearly all my years an orphan in a convent.”

“But what brings you to New France?”

“I came to appeal against your successor in the estates.”

“My successor in the estates has nothing to do with you.”

“He has to marry me, monseigneur.”

“Well, and has he not made a suitable marriage for you?”

Her face burned hotly.

“I do not wish him to make any marriage for me. I refused all the suitors he selected, and that is what determined him to marry me to the last one.”

“You are deeply prejudiced against marriage?”

“Yes, monseigneur.”

“Against any marriage?”

“Yes, monseigneur.”

“This must be why you come with the king’s girls to the marriage market.”

Her face burned in deeper flames.

“The court of Louis,” pursued Laval, “would furnish a better mate for you than any wild coureur de bois on the St. Lawrence.”

“I have not come to any marriage market,” she stammered.

“You are in the marriage market, Mademoiselle Laval. His Majesty, in his care for New France, sends out these girls to mate with soldiers and peasants here. It is good, and will confirm the true faith upon the soil. What I cannot understand is your presence among them.”

Her face sank upon her breast.

“I did not know what to do.”

“So, being at a loss, you took shipping to the ends of the earth?”

“Other women of good families have come out here.”

“As holy missionaries: as good women should come. Do you intend leading such a life of self-sacrifice? Is that your purpose?” said Laval, penetrating her with his glance.

Her angelic beauty, drowned in red shame, could not move him. “Rash” and “forward” were the terms to be applied to her. She had no defense except the murmur:

“I thought of devoting myself to a holy life. Everybody was then willing to help me escape the marriage.”

“Were there, then, no convents in France able to bound your zeal? Did you feel pushed to make this perilous voyage and to take up the hard life of saintly women here?”

“I am myself a Laval-Montmorency,” said mademoiselle, rearing her neck in her last stronghold. “The Bishop of PetrÆa[1] may not have inherited all the heroism of the present generation.”

He smiled slowly; his mouth was not facile at relaxing.

“In your convent they failed to curb the tongue. This step that you have taken is, I fear, a very rash one, my daughter.”

“Monseigneur, I am a young girl without parents, but with fortune enough to make suitors troublesome. How can I take none but wise steps? I want to be let alone to think my thoughts, and that was not permitted me in France.”

“We will have further talk to-morrow and next week,” concluded the bishop. “We will see how your resolution holds out. At this hour I go to the governor’s council. Receive my benediction.”

He abruptly lifted his hands and placed them above her bowed head for an instant’s articulation of Latin, then left the room. As long as his elastic, quick tread could be heard, Mademoiselle Laval stood still. It died away. She turned around and faced her companion with a long breath.

“That is over! Louise, do you think after fifteen years of convent life I shall cease to have blood in me?”

“Not at all, Mademoiselle Claire,” responded Louise literally. “As long as we live we have blood.”

“He is terrible.”

“He is such a holy man, mademoiselle; how can he help being terrible? You know Madame Bourdon told us he ate rotten meat to mortify his flesh, and his servant has orders never to make his bed or pick the fleas out of it. I myself have no vocation to be holy, mademoiselle. I so much like being comfortable and clean.”

Claire sat down upon the only bench which furnished ease to this convent parlor. Louise was leaning against the stone wall near her. Such luxuries as came out from France at that date were not for nuns or missionary priests, though the Church was then laying deep foundations in vast grants of land which have enriched it.

“I do not love the dirty side of holiness myself,” said Claire. “They must pick the fleas out of my bed if I endow this convent. And I do not like trotting, fussy nuns who tell tales of each other and interfere with one. But, O Louise! how I could adore a saint—a saint who would lead me in some high act which I could perform!”

“The best thing next to a live saint,” remarked Louise, “is a dead saint’s bone which will heal maladies. But, mademoiselle,—the Virgin forgive me!—I would rather see my own mother this day than any saint, alive or dead.”

“The good Marguerite! How strange it must seem to her that you and I have been driven this long journey—if the dead know anything about us.”

“She would be glad I was in the ship to wait upon you, mademoiselle. And I must have done poorly for myself in Rouen. Our curÉ said great matches were made out here.”

“Now, tell me, Louise, have you the courage for this?”

“I am here and must do my duty, mademoiselle.”

“But can you marry a strange man this evening or to-morrow morning and go off with him to his strange home, to bear whatever he may inflict on you?”

“My mother told me,” imparted Louise, gazing at the floor, where lay two or three rugs made by the nuns themselves, “that the worst thing about a man is his relatives. And if he lives by himself in the woods, these drawbacks will be away.”

“You have no terror of the man himself?”

“Yes, mademoiselle. I can hardly tell at sight whether a man is inclined to be thrifty or not. It would be cruel to come so far and then fare worse than at Rouen. But since my mother is not here to make the marriage, I must do the best I can.”

“HÉ, Louise! Never will you see me bending my neck to the yoke!”

“It is not necessary for you to marry, mademoiselle. You are not poor Louise Bibelot.”

“I meant nothing of the kind. We played together, my child. Why should you accuse me of a taunt?—me who have so little command of my own fortune that I cannot lay down a dozen gold pieces to your dower. No! I have passed the ordeal of meeting the bishop. My spirits rise. I am glad to dip in this new experience. Do you know that if they send me back it cannot be for many months? One who comes to this colony may only return by permission of the king. The bishop himself would be powerless there. And now I shall hear no more about husbands!”

“Louise Bibelot,” summoned Mother Mary, appearing at the door, “come now to the hall. Mademoiselle Laval will dispense with thee. The young men are going about making their selections. Come and get thee a good honest husband.”