* Talon, Mémoire sur l'Etat présent du Canada, 1667. The families of Repentigny, Tilly, Poterie, and Aillebout appear to be meant. ** Tracy’s request was in behalf of Bourdon, Boucher, Auteuil, and Juchereau. Talon’s was in behalf of Godefroy, Le Moyne, Denis, Amiot, and Couillard to advancement, so far had _noblesse_ already fallen from its old estate. Thus Jacques Le Ber, the merchant, who had long kept a shop at Montreal, got himself made a gentleman for six thousand livres. * All Canada soon became infatuated with _noblesse_; and country and town, merchant and seignior, vied with each other for the quality of _gentilhomme_. If they could not get it, they often pretended to have it, and aped its ways with the zeal of Monsieur Jourdain himself. “Everybody here,” writes the intendant Meules, “calls himself _Esquire_, and ends with thinking himself a gentleman.” Successive intendants repeat this complaint. The case was worst with _roturiers_ who had acquired seigniories. Thus Noel Langlois was a good carpenter till he became owner of a seigniory, on which he grew lazy and affected to play the gentleman. The real _gentilshommes_, as well as the spurious, had their full share of official stricture. The governor Denonville speaks of them thus: “Several of them have come out this year with their wives, who are very much cast down; but they play the fine lady, nevertheless. I had much rather see good peasants; it would be a pleasure to me to give aid to such, knowing, as I should, that within two years their families would have the means of living at ease; for it is certain that a peasant who can and will work is well off in this country, while our nobles with nothing to do can never be any thing but beggars. Still they ought not to be * Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325. driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” *