What matter that the original settlement below the cliff lay in ruins? The Governor immediately set about its rebuilding, and on the Rock he erected the first parish church of Quebec, “Notre Dame de Recouvrance.” Authorities differ as to whether it stood on the site of the Basilica, or on that of the English Cathedral, for on a windy day in June, 1640, it was burnt to the ground, with all it contained. Before that catastrophe occurred the heroic founder of Quebec had gone to his rest. [Illustration: Tadousac.] During his last busy years Champlain found much time for devotional exercises, and already in his life-time Quebec had taken on that markedly religious character which it bears to-day. Then, as now, black-gowned priests pervaded the streets, and the clear sound of the church-bells broke in at oft-recurring intervals on the harsher clangor of secular life. “Fort St. Louis,” wrote the Governor’s Jesuit confessor, “seemed like a well-managed school; in the morning at table M. de Champlain heard read aloud some good history, and at night the lives of the saints; in the evening there was private meditation, and then prayers were said kneeling.” [Illustration: Indian Canoe.] [Illustration: Trillium.] Yet to the end Champlain bore the temporal welfare of his colony upon his heart. In the last of his letters, he gave to Cardinal Richelieu a glowing account of the possibilities of Canada, and begged for one hundred and twenty men to subdue the Iroquois, “Then worship and trade would increase beyond belief.” Two months later the Father of New France was stricken with paralysis, and on Christmas Day, 1635, he died. Amidst the mourning of his people, he was buried in a “sepulchre particulier,” and the “Chapelle de Champlain” was built over his tomb. It stood, it is believed, close beside “Fort St. Louis,” and was therefore very near the site of the monument erected a few years ago to commemorate the name and deeds of the brave, simple-hearted founder of Quebec. [Illustration: Waterlilies.] [Illustration] AFTER Champlain the story of Quebec takes a more sombre hue. Its pages tell of long-continued warfare with the savages; of a fierce though intermittent struggle with the “heretic” English, the papist-hating “Bostonnais.” The tale has no lack of heroes and of heroines, courageous, saintly, inspired by visions of the invisible, or driven to the supreme heights of self-sacrifice by the most awful sights ever shown to mortal eyes. [Illustration: Ursuline Nun.]