Two years did the doughty hero Champlain linger in Old France. To everybody he met, king, courtier, priest, and peasant, he had but one subject: Canada, never ceasing all this while to urge the needs of the colony across the sea and to further its interests by tongue and pen. It needed all his influence. The Duke of Montmorency, becoming disgusted by the perpetual squabbles of the merchants, sold his rights as patron of Canada to the Duke de Ventadour, a religious enthusiast, whose passion was not trade nor settlement, but saving human souls. Although bred a soldier, he had actually entered a monkish order, vowing to spend the rest of his days in religious exercises, and it was this nobleman who now sent out to Quebec the first little body of Jesuit priests, five in all, that arrived in that colony. Now these Jesuits were the very last people either Champlain or the Huguenots wanted in Canada. They belonged to a very powerful, crafty order. They could sway both king, queen, and minister to their wishes. De Caen and the Huguenot traders received the five priests when they arrived at Quebec as coldly as Poutraincourt had done in Acadia, but the {46} Recollets generously gave them shelter in their convent until they could build one for themselves. This they soon did on the very spot where, ninety years before, Jacques Cartier had laid out his little fort. These five priests were destined to have some thrilling experiences and to meet with terrible ends, all of which you shall hear in due time.