communications regarding the graces with which she had been favoured, and
partly on her correspondence with himself extending over the thirty years
which she passed in Canada.  With the genuine information thus received,
he intersperses, under the name of "Additions," further details which had
either come under his personal observation, or been gleaned from
perfectly reliable sources.  His work is therefore a sure and invaluable
guide to the biographer. 

The accounts of her inner life referred to, were written by the Venerable
Mother at two different epochs, and each time in obedience to an
imperative command from her confessors.  The first written in 1633, the
34th year of her age, fell into the possession of the Ursulines of St.
Denis, near Paris, who on hearing that Dom Claude Martin was engaged in
writing his holy Mother's life, obligingly sent him the precious
document.  The second, written in 1654, was forwarded to him from Canada. 

The Annals of the Quebec Ursulines also afford rich material to the
historian of the Mother of the Incarnation, their pages containing
constant references to and quotations from her letters both spiritual and
historical, as well as from the Annual Reports of the Jesuit Missioners,