and in particular in the foundation of a convent of Ursulines at Three Rivers, and when the general hospital was threatened in its very existence.  “Was it not a spectacle worthy of the admiration of men and angels,” exclaims the Abbe Fornel in his funeral oration on Mgr. de Saint-Vallier, “to see the first Bishop of Quebec and his successor vieing one with the other in a noble rivalry and in a struggle of religious fervour for the victory in exercises of piety?  Have they not both been seen harmonizing and reconciling together the duties of seminarists and canons; of canons by their assiduity in the recitation of the breviary, and of seminarists in condescending to the lowest duties, such as sweeping and serving in the kitchen?” The patience and trust in God of Mgr. de Laval were rewarded by the following letter which he received from Father La Chaise, confessor to King Louis XIV:  “I have received with much respect and gratitude two letters with which you have honoured me.  I have blessed God that He has preserved you for His glory and the good of the Church in Canada in a period of deadly mortality; and I pray every day that He may preserve you some years more for His service and the consolation of your old friends and servants.  I hope that you will maintain towards them to the end your good favour and interest, and that those who would wish to make them lose these may be unable to alter them.  You will easily judge how greatly I desire that our Fathers may merit the continuation of your kindness, and may preserve a perfect union with the priests of your seminary, by the sacrifice which I desire they should make to the latter, in consideration of you, of the post of Tamarois, in spite of all the reasons and the facility for preserving it to them....”

The mortality to which the reverend father alludes was the result of an epidemic which carried off, in 1700, a great number of persons.  Old men in particular were stricken, and M. de Bernieres among others fell a victim to the scourge.  It is very probable that this affliction was nothing less than the notorious influenza which, in these later years, has cut down so many valuable lives throughout the world.  The following years were still more terrible for the town; smallpox carried off one-fourth of the population of Quebec.  If we add to these trials the disaster of the two conflagrations which consumed the seminary, we shall have the measure of the troubles which at this period overwhelmed the city of Champlain.  The seminary, begun in 1678, had just been barely completed.  It was a vast edifice of stone, of grandiose appearance; a sun dial was set above a majestic door of two leaves, the approach to which was a fine stairway of cut stone.  “The building,” wrote Frontenac in 1679, “is very large and has four storeys, the walls are seven feet thick, the cellars and pantries are vaulted, the lower windows have embrasures, and the roof is of slate brought from France.”  On November 15th, 1701, the