not taken from institutions of charity usually belonged to the families of peasants overburdened with children, and glad to find the chance of establishing them. * How some of them were obtained appears from a letter of Colbert to Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen. “As, in the parishes about Rouen,” he writes, “fifty or sixty girls might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the curés of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of a settlement in life.” ** Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of _canaille_ of both sexes, who cause a great deal of scandal.” *** After some of the young women had been married at Quebec, it was found that they had husbands at home. The priests * Témoignage de la Mère du Plessis de Sainte-Helène (extract in Faillon). ** Colbert a l’Archevêque de Rouen, 27 Fev., 1670. That they were not always destitute may be gathered from a passage in one of Talon’s letters. “Entre les filles qu’on fait passer ici il y en a qui ont de légitimes et considérables prétentions aux successions de leurs parents, même entre celles qui sont tirées de l’Hôpital Général.” The General Hospital of Paris had recently been established (1656) as a house of refuge for the “Bohemians,” or vagrants of Paris. The royal edict creating it says that “les pauvres mendiants et invalides des deux sexes y seraient enfermés pour estre employés aux manufactures et aultres travaux selon leur pouvoir.” They were gathered by force in the streets by a body of special police, called “Archers de l’Hôpital.” They resisted at first, and serious riots ensued. In 1662, the General Hospital of Paris contained 6262 paupers. See Clement, Histoire de Colbert, 113. Mother de Sainte-Helène says that the girls sent from this asylum had been there from childhood in charge of nuns. *** “Beaucoup de canaille de l’un et l’autre sexe qui causent beaucoup de scandale.” Lettre du--Oct., 1669. became cautious in tying the matrimonial knot, and Colbert thereupon ordered that each girl should provide herself with a certificate from the cure or magistrate of her parish to the effect that she was free to marry. Nor was the practical intendant unmindful of other precautions to smooth the path to the desired goal. “The girls destined for this country,” he writes, “besides being strong and healthy, ought to be entirely free from any natural blemish or any thing personally repulsive.” *