Was this interval, then, one of peace? Not entirely. Frontenac defines his position and raises a note of alarm in his very first despatch to the minister for the colonies.[9] He was dissatisfied, he said, with "the complete subserviency of the priests of the seminary at Quebec, and the bishop's vicar-general to the Jesuit fathers, without whose orders they never do anything. Thus," he adds, "they [the Jesuits] are indirectly the masters of whatever relates to the spiritual, which, as you are aware, is a great machine for moving all the rest." He thinks they have gained an ascendency even over the Superior of the Recollets;[10] and he expresses the wish that the ecclesiastics of that order could be replaced by abler men who could hold their own against the Jesuit influence. He mentions that he had expressed his surprise in strong terms to the Jesuit fathers at Ste. Foy that not one of their Indian converts had been taught the French language, and had told them that they "should bethink themselves, when rendering the savages subjects of Jesus Christ, of making them subjects of the king also--that the true way to make them Christians was to make them men." The governor had probably noticed that lack of vigorous, self-helping manhood in the Indian converts, which is hinted at even in the _Jesuit Relations_, and which had certainly been conspicuous in the christianized Huron tribe in the crisis of their struggle with the Iroquois. As regards teaching them the French language, the missionaries had their own well-defined reasons for not doing so. They did not wish to bring them into too close contact with the French inhabitants, lest they should unlearn the lessons of morality and religion that had been taught to them. The great object which the priests had in view was to build up a kingdom not of this world; and, as the object which the king and his officers had mainly in view was to enlarge and strengthen the French dominions, it is not surprising that there was clashing now and again. Frontenac, in writing to Colbert, seems to have felt assured of sympathy in his somewhat anti-clerical, or, at least, anti-Jesuit, attitude; otherwise he would never have ventured to make, as he does in the same despatch, the unjustifiable statement that the Jesuit missionaries were quite as much interested in the beaver trade as in the conversion of souls, and that most of their missions were pure mockeries. It was of Colbert that Madame de Maintenon said: "He only thinks of his finances, and never of religion."