In the hearts of God's saints, joy and sorrow are in close alliance. Mother Duchesne was overwhelmed with joy on seeing the realization of her ardent and long-cherished desires; but a midnight blackness settled upon her soul, when she found herself about to sail away from the shores of sunny France, leaving behind her all that her loving heart held so dear, and with the conviction that the parting was final, as far as this life was concerned. But her strong spirit did not flinch for an instant, and the world would never have known how keenly she felt the sacrifice, were it not for a few lines in one of her letters to Mother Barat. Her companions were Madame Octavie Berthold, a fervent convert, whose father had been secretary to Voltaire; Madame Eugenie Aude, a young lady whose grace and elegance had been admired at the court of Savoy, and two lay sisters of tried virtue. After a tedious voyage of ten weeks in a small sailing vessel, they reached New Orleans on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, May 29, 1818, and as soon as it was possible, they set out for St. Louis in one of the primitive steamboats of the time, a trip of six weeks, with numberless inconveniences and a very rough set of fellow-passengers. CHAPTER II FIRST SCHOOLS IN THE NEW WORLD Mgr. Dubourg cordially welcomed them to his Episcopal city, but the best he could do for them was to assign to them a log-house, which he had leased for their use at St. Charles, a village on the Missouri River, at a distance of thirty miles from St. Louis. Here they opened a boarding school which at first was only very scantily attended. They also opened a school for poor children, which immediately gathered in twenty-two pupils. As the nuns could not afford to keep a servant, they themselves had to cultivate the garden which, when they arrived, was a wilderness of weeds and briars. They also had to care for their cow and milk it, to chop wood for their fires, to bake their bread, to do the cooking and washing, besides teaching the two schools. For their supply of water, they were compelled to depend upon the muddy current of the Missouri River, brought to them in small bucketfuls, for which they had to pay an exorbitant price. The summer was very hot, and the cold of winter was so intense, that the clothes, hung up to dry near the kitchen stove, froze stiff. They had to be careful in handling the tin plates, etc., which served for their meals, lest their hands should adhere to them. The white fingers of Mesdames Aude and Berthold soon became hard and grimy. As for Mother Duchesne her hands had become rugged and horny long ago, from the hard, rough work to which she had devoted herself, especially after her reentrance into Sainte Marie d'en Haut. Indeed, it had always been her custom to reserve to herself, as much as possible, every kind of work that might be most painful or fatiguing for others. These particulars offer but a faint idea of the sufferings and privations