To Frontenac's friends the appointment seemed more like a banishment than a promotion. But there were several reasons why the governor should have accepted gladly. He had inherited only a modest fortune, and most of this had been spent, for thrift was not one of Frontenac's virtues. His domestic life had not been happy, and there were no strong personal ties binding him to life in France.[1] Moreover, the post of governor in the colony was not to be judged by what it had been in the days of D'Avaugour or De Mézy. The reports sent home by Talon had stirred the national ambitions. "I am no courtier," this intendant had written, "and it is not to please the King or without reason that I say this portion of the French monarchy is going to become something great. What I now see enables me to make such a prediction." And indeed the figures of growth in population, of acreage cleared, and of industries rising into existence seemed to justify the intendant's optimism. Both the King and his ministers were building high hopes on Canada, as their choice of Frontenac proves, and in their selection of a man to carry out their plans they showed, on the whole, good judgment. Frontenac proved to be the ablest and most commanding of all the officials who served the Bourbon monarchy in the New World. In the long line of governors he approached most nearly to what a Viceroy ought to be. [Footnote 1: Saint-Simon, in his _Mémoires_, prints the current Parisian gossip that Frontenac was sent to New France to shield him from the imperious temper of his wife and to afford him a means of livelihood.]