It was just after this that vocations began to come in. The first were Emilie Saint Cyr, one of her pupils, and the sisters Eulalie and Mathilde Hamilton, of a very distinguished family related to the Fenwicks of Maryland, and also two lay sisters, Mary Layton and Mary Ann Summers. These five formed the nucleus of a novitiate whose numbers increased by degrees. CHAPTER III TRIALS AT FLORISSANT In 1821, the little community of Florissant sent out its first offshoot. With the consent and approbation of her Superior General, Mother Barat, Mother Duchesne made her second foundation in Lower Louisiana, as it was then called, at a place known as Grand Coteau, in the Opelousas region. Mother Eugenie Aude and Sister Mary Layton were sent to begin it. A little later, Mother Duchesne was able to send them valuable help in the person of Madame Xavier (Anna) Murphy, who had just arrived from France with Madame Lucile Mathevon, another valiant woman, who had a notable part to play in the early history of the Society of the Sacred Heart in America. The school at Grand Coteau had soon filled up, but ere long Mother Duchesne heard of the distressing condition to which the new community was reduced, through sickness and overwork. With the uncalculating charity that characterized her, she at once determined to go in person to their assistance, though it was in the middle of summer and the journey must necessarily be long and painful, as well as expensive. She took with her Madame St. Cyr and a lay novice to leave at Grand Coteau, and Therese Pratte, whose family had so hospitably entertained her and her companions during their two weeks' stay in St. Louis, after their arrival. The young girl was one of her pupils, who had obtained her father's consent for a visit to Mother Aude. The voyage was long, full of difficulties and endless interruptions and delays, and marked by very dramatic and even tragic incidents, especially on the return trip, of which alone we will give a brief account. Among other particulars, she had to go from Plaqumine all the way down to New Orleans to find a boat for St. Louis. In New Orleans she was stricken with malarial fever, still the physician advised her departure by the first steamer, because at the time yellow fever was epidemic in the city. Scarcely, however, had the steamer started on her voyage, before the dread disease broke out on board, the captain being the first to die of it. Mother Duchesne, though reduced to a state of great prostration, gathered up the remnant of her strength to take care of one of the yellow fever patients on board, to whom no one else seemed to give any attention. She not only ministered to his needs, but converted and baptized him before he died.