We must now, for a little while, leave Charles de la Tour and his fortunes. We will return to them anon, but meanwhile it behoves us to see what was happening to Champlain and Quebec. You will remember that the great Cardinal Richelieu had placed himself at the head of the Company of the Hundred Associates. He had made Canada a royal province, with a nobility of its own and with Champlain as Viceroy. The war with England and the captures of Kirke brought this great scheme to a halt for some years, but the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was signed at last, and the Hundred Associates were ready to begin their operations. By the end of May 1633 Champlain was back again in his fort on Cape Diamond. This time he had with him two hundred persons and great equipments. In his Company also were a number of Jesuits, to take the place of the Recollets. With such zeal did they administer their charge that life at Quebec became pious and orderly, and many Indian conversions to Christianity were {56} made. A new fort was built at the old trading station of Three Rivers, at the mouth of St. Maurice River, as a protection against the Iroquois, but otherwise not very much happened worth describing here during the last two years of Champlain's life. The veteran was now but two years short of the allotted span, and could survey the fruits of his long labours in Canada with satisfaction. He had not, it was true, made Canada full of towns and cities and filled her countryside with prosperous farms and peasantry. But he had trod out a path through the forest and had sown the seed of future greatness. If only he had not also sown the seed of future hatred--if only he had made the Iroquois a friend instead of a foe! Nevertheless, when he fell sick on Christmas Day 1635 and his heroic spirit passed away for ever from the land he loved, Samuel de Champlain had well earned the name by which he is to-day called on the banks of the St. Lawrence, the "Father of Canada." In his prime Champlain had a handsome countenance, a noble and soldierly bearing, and an iron constitution. In an age when fifty miles was considered a great journey, he travelled many thousands by sea and by land, crossing the ocean at least twenty times to defend or promote the colony's interests in Old France. His wife survived him nearly twenty years, and having founded a convent at Meaux, in France, became herself a nun, and as Sister Helen, beloved by the other nuns, she died.