Produced by D. Garcia, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. [Illustration: SISTER MARGARET BOURGEOIS Foundress of the Congregation of Notre Dame ESTABLISHED IN MONTREAL. CANADA. 1659.] THE LIFE OF VENERABLE SISTER MARGARET BOURGEOIS, FOUNDRESS OF THE SISTERS OF THE CONGREGATION OF NOTRE DAME. _ESTABLISHED AT MONTREAL, CANADA, 1659_. _TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH_ BY A RELIGIEUSE, CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA. AUTHOR'S PREFACE * * * * * Having read a French edition of the Life of Venerable Sister Bourgeois, published in 1818, the translator of the present work was so charmed by its perusal that she resolved on rendering it into English for the spiritual edification of others. Many years ago the work of translation was commenced, but from some preventing cause or other, was as often laid aside. Yet the idea of presenting it to the public remained, as no _English_ Version of Sister Bourgeois' life exists, at least in the United States. Therefore determining at last to obey an impulse of long standing, the scattered translation sheets have been prepared for publication, with the humble hope that the reader may derive as much benefit from their perusal as did the writer. In this age of miscellaneous and corrupt literature, when people of every condition of life are literally devouring irreligious magazines and serials, it surely cannot be amiss to add another volume to the already rich store of our libraries in order to help roll back the torrent of universal depravity that threatens the rain of our beloved country, and also to place before the minds of the young, the glorious example of one of God's heroines. The _Second Centennial_ of Sister Bourgeois' advent to America is already past, and more than a hundred years before the _Declaration of Independence_, was she laboring in the cause of humanity for the glory of God in the New World.