** Talon au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1670. Colbert highly approves this order. Faillon found a case of its enforcement among the ancient records of Montreal. In December, 1670, François Le Noir, an inhabitant of La Chine, was summoned before the judge, because, though a single man, he had traded with Indians at his own house. He confessed the fact, but protested that he would marry within three weeks after the arrival of the vessels from France, or, failing to do so, that he would give a hundred and fifty livres to the church of Montreal, and an equal sum to the hospital. On this condition he was allowed to trade, but was still forbidden to go into the woods. The next year he kept his word, and married Marie Magdeleine Charbonnier, late of Paris. The prohibition to go into the woods was probably intended to prevent the bachelor from finding a temporary Indian substitute for a French wife. *** “Il serait à propos de leur augmenter les charges, de les priver de tous honneurs, même d’y ajouter quelque marque d’infamie.” Lettre du 20 Fev., 1668. if not Cupid, was whipped into a frenzy of activity. Dollier de Casson tells us of a widow who was married afresh before her late husband was buried. * Nor was the fatherly care of the king confined to the humbler classes of his colonists. He wished to form a Canadian _noblesse_, to which end early marriages were thought needful among officers and others of the better sort. The progress of such marriages was carefully watched and reported by the intendant. We have seen the reward bestowed upon La Motte for taking to himself a wife, and the money set apart for the brother officers who imitated him. In his despatch of October, 1667, the intendant announces that two captains are already married to two damsels of the country; that a lieutenant has espoused a daughter of the governor of Three Rivers; and that “four ensigns are in treaty with their mistresses, and are already half engaged.” ** The paternal care of government, one would think, could scarcely go further. It did, however, go further. Bounties were offered on children. The king, in council, passed a decree “that in future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not * Histoire du Montréal, A.B. 1671, 1672. ** “Quatre enseignes sont en pourparler avec leurs maîtresses et sent déjà à demi engagés.” Dépêche du 27 Oct., 1667. The lieutenant was René Gaultier de Varennes, who on the 26th September, 1667, married Marie Boucher, daughter of the governor of Three Rivers, aged twelve years. One of the children of this marriage was Varennes de la Vérendrye, discoverer of the Rocky Mountains.