Even in his earliest day, the _gentilhomme_ was not always in the evil plight where we have found him. There were a few exceptions to the general misery, and the chief among them is that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. Charles Le Moyne, son of an innkeeper of Dieppe and founder of a family the most truly eminent in Canada, was a man of sterling qualities who had been long enough in the colony to learn how to live there. * Others learned the same lesson at a later day, adapted themselves to soil and situation, took root, grew, and became more Canadian than French. As population increased, their seigniories began to yield appreciable returns, and their reserved domains became worth cultivating. A future dawned upon them; they saw in hope their names, their seigniorial estates, their manor-houses, their tenantry, passing to their children and their children’s children. The beggared noble of the early time became a sturdy country gentleman; poor, but not wretched; ignorant of books, except possibly a few scraps of rusty Latin picked up in a Jesuit school; hardy as the hardiest woodsman, yet never forgetting his quality of _gentilhomme_; scrupulously wearing its badge, the sword, and copying as well as he could the fashions of the court, which glowed on his vision across the sea in all the effulgence of Versailles, and beamed with reflected ray from the chateau of Quebec. He was at home among his tenants, at home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the war-path with a * Berthelot, proprietor of the comté of St. Laurent, and Robineau, of the barony of Portneuf, may also be mentioned as exceptionally prosperous. Of the younger Charles Le Moyne, afterwards Baron de Longueuil, Frontenac the governor says, “son fort et sa maison nous donnent une idée des chateaux de France fortifiez.” His fort was of Stone and flanked with four towers. It was nearly opposite Montreal, on the south shore. crew of painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like a lynx from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest blood streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian _gentil-homme_. CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA. _Nature Of The Government.--The Governor.--The Council, Courts and Judges.--The Intendant.--His Grievances.--Strong Government.--Sedition and Blasphemy.--Royal Bounty.--Defects and Abuses._