One alone was calm amidst that wild tumult of passion, and that one was
Sister Bourgeois, who willingly and repeatedly offered the sacrifice of
her life to God. In the meantime M. de Maisonneuve was fortunate enough
to secure a new ship, and all other things necessary to continue the
voyage. So they set sail again on the feast of St. Margaret, after
having assisted at Mass, a happiness they had not enjoyed for a long
time. As if to add to their misery, sickness now became general, and
Sister Bourgeois was alternately priest and infirmarian, eight persons
having died in her arms. As soon as they were finally settled in
Ville-Marie, She requested M. de Maisonneuve to lead her to the cross he
had erected in 1640. But that one having been weather-beaten and broken,
he replaced it with another, higher up on the mountain, with an image of
Mary near it. This was a rendezvous for the savages, who assembled there
to receive religious instruction. He carried the second cross on his
shoulders through thorns, and rocks, and forest trees, there being no
pathway up the hill-side, and having secured it on the platform prepared
for it, placed beside it the statue of the Blessed Virgin given him by
the Congregation Sisters. The erection of this cross was quite a
religious ceremony, and occurred on the _same day_, and at _then same
hour_, on which Sister Bourgeois received the first miraculous favor
from the Mother of God, in the porch of the church of Notre Dame, in the
city of Troyes. She always believed that this extraordinary event
determined her vocation for Canada. The consecrated hillside became
afterwards the "Mission of the Mountain." The following year an altar
was erected at the foot of the cross, and the early missionary priests
of Ville-Marie celebrated Mass there for the converted savages. It
happened once, that of fifteen or sixteen persons present at the Holy
Sacrifice, not one knew how to serve Mass, and Jean Mance had to get a
little child, four years old, to wait on the priest, by suggesting the
responses, and indicating the ceremonies. At the foot of this mountain,