now masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot; an imperial
queen, and a tinselled actress. Clearly, she is of earth, not of heaven;
and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill,
the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate,
the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that
battle in the restless heart of man.

It was her nobler and purer part that gave life to the early missions of
New France. That gloomy wilderness, those hordes of savages, had nothing
to tempt the ambitious, the proud, the grasping, or the indolent.
Obscure toil, solitude, privation, hardship, and death were to be the
missionary's portion. He who set sail for the country of the Hurons left
behind him the world and all its prizes. True, he acted under orders,--
obedient, like a soldier, to the word of command: but the astute Society
of Jesus knew its members, weighed each in the balance, gave each his
fitting task; and when the word was passed to embark for New France,
it was but the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart.
The letters of these priests, departing for the scene of their labors,
breathe a spirit of enthusiastic exaltation, which, to a colder nature
and a colder faith, may sometimes seem overstrained, but which is in no
way disproportionate to the vastness of the effort and the sacrifice
demanded of them.

[ The following are passages from letters of missionaries at this time.
See "Divers Sentimens," appended to the Relation of 1635.

"On dit que les premiers qui fondent les Eglises d'ordinaire sont
saincts: cette pensee m'attendrit si fort le coeur, que quoy que ie me
voye icy fort inutile dans ceste fortunee Nouuelle France, si faut-il que
i'auoue que ie ne me scaurois defendre d'vne pensee qui me presse le coeur: