whip has covered my fault." I mention this usage of the Cceur d'Alenes, because our good Louise sometimes presented herself to the chief to be publicly whipped. But here the case was different; she seized the opportunity in a spirit of profound humility, always regarding herself as a poor and enormous sinner, and at the same time from a desire to satisfy her devotion to imitate our Lord, by submitting to the cruel flagellation. Louise's faults were only of the nature of those of which the Book of Proverbs speaks, when he says that the " just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again."- Prov. xxiv. 16. Nevertheless, what she called her faults caused her such regret and confusion, that the missionary often found her bathed in tears. At the least fault, her contrition was so lively, and at the same time her veneration for the Lodge o f the Lord (the church) so profound, and her respect for the cabin of the priest so sincere, that she durst not enter either till she had approached the tribunal of penance. We admired in her, too, that faith and that love of God, which, in the real sins and faults of others, made her share in their sorrow and shame.
A certain member of the tribe, blinded by passion, in spite of all the obstacles in the way of his illicit desires, had resolved to unite himself with a near relative of Louise's, and who was at the same time nearly related to himself. Among the Indians there is no power to prevent evil in such a case but argument; when this fails there is no means to which they can have recourse. The wretched man, deaf to all the advice of the chief and of his own friends, obdurately closing his ears to the exhortations of the missionary, had united himself to the object of his desires. The traits which I have already given of the pure soul of Louise, will speak sufficiently the grief and bitterness which this depravity in a near kinswoman must have caused her. She had already employed all the means of persuasion in her power, to prevent the union of these two miserable people. They had turned a deaf ear to her wholesome advice and counsel, as to all that others had offered.