The first house of French Ursulines was established at Avignon in 1594 by two ladies named De Bermond. This branch of the Society, known as the Congregation of Avignon, adopted the Rules of the Congregation of Milan, and quickly spread through other parts of Provence. A few years later, the Institute of St. Angela was introduced into Paris by Madame Acarie, now venerated as the saintly Carmelite, Blessed Mary of the Incarnation. Though not the second foundation in order of date, the Paris house occupies a prominent position in the annals of the Ursulines, as their first monastery. As we have already more than once observed, the Sisters were not originally cloistered, bound by vows or monastic observances, or even irrevocably consecrated to their manner of life, but the time was come when by the adoption of these essential obligations, the Society, as St. Angela herself had called it, would receive its full development by being converted into a regular monastic Order. This alteration in the form, changed nothing in the substance of the Saint's original institution. Whether a member of a simple confraternity, or of a religious order in the restricted meaning of the word, the Ursuline was at all times equally bound to devote her life to the instruction of the young, and to work out her own sanctification by the practice of the evangelical counsels. The instrument of the great work in question was Madame St. Beuve, a pious and wealthy widow, who at the request of her relative, Madame Acarie, consented to accept the title and responsibilities of Foundress of the house at Paris, on the express understanding that it should in due time be formed into a monastery. In this object she finally succeeded to her entire satisfaction. The reigning Pontiff, Paul V., approved the design, and on the 16th of June, 1612, issued a Bull converting the Congregation into a Monastery, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the rule of St. Augustine. His Holiness, moreover, ordained that for the greater stability of the order, the religious should add to the three ordinary solemn vows, a fourth of the instruction of the young. The Bull of Pope Paul V. was confirmed in 1626 by Urban VIII. The convent in Paris, so interesting to Ursulines from its associations, "le grand couvent de St. Jacques," as it was called from its locality, was among those destroyed in the first Revolution, but, by an inscrutable permission of Divine Providence, it is not among those restored. Still, even in its ruins, it not only lives in the hearts of Ursulines, but may be said actually to survive in its numerous foundations and their offshoots. Between its establishment in 1612, and the death of its venerated Foundress in 1630, eleven houses of the Congregation had sprung up in the north of France. Its subsequent diffusion was equally satisfactory.