The original settlement of Montreal was probably the most completely religious enterprise of the many early French colonizing expeditions to Canada. Dauversière, a tax-gatherer of Anjou, was a religious devotee whose constant scourging with small chains and other torments, including a belt with more than twelve hundred sharp points, filled his father confessor with admiration. One day while at his devotions, an inward voice commanded him to found a new order of hospital nuns, and establish at the island called Mont Real in Canada a hospital or Hotel-Dieu for these nuns to conduct. But Mont Real being a wilderness where the hospital would be without patients, the island must be colonized to supply them, and the pious tax-gatherer was sorely perplexed. There was in Paris a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who was zealous and devout, and signalized his piety by much self-mortification, and one day while praying in church he thought he heard a voice from Heaven saying he was destined to be a light to the Gentiles, and that he was to form a society of priests and establish them on the island called Mont Real, in Canada, for the propagation of the true Faith. The old writers solemnly aver that both these men were totally ignorant of each other and of Canadian geography, yet they suddenly found themselves possessed, they knew not how, of the most exact details concerning the island, its size, shape, soil, productions, climate and situation; and they subsequently saw apparitions of the Virgin and the Saviour encouraging them in the great work. Dauversière went to Paris seeking aid to carry out his task, and met Olier in a chateau in the suburbs; the two men, who never before had seen or heard of each other, became at once familiar, and under holy inspiration fondly embraced each other; the tax-gatherer received communion at the hands of the priest; and then for three hours they walked together in the park forming their plans. They determined, as the pious chronicler records it, to "plant the banner of Christ in an abode of desolation and a haunt of demons, and to this end a band of priests and women were to invade the wilderness and take post between the fangs of the Iroquois." They believed in the mystic number, three, and proposed to found three religious communities--one of secular priests to direct the colonists and convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the Faith to all the children, white and red.