These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois; *** and he begs the proprietary company which he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers or laborers, according to the occasion. * La Reception de Monseigneur le Vicomte d’Argenson par toutes les nations du pais de Canada a son entrée au gouvernement de la Nouvelle France; a Quebecq au College de la Compagnie de Jésus, le 28 de Juillet de l’année 1658. The speeches, in French and Indian, are here given verbatim, with the names of all the boys who took part in the ceremony. ** Papiers d’Argenson. Kebec, 5 Sept., 1658. *** Mémoire sur le subject (sic) de la Guerre des Iroquois, 1659. The company turned a deal ear to his appeals. They had lost money in Canada, and were grievously out of humor with it. In their view, the first duty of a governor was to collect their debts, which, for more reasons than one, was no easy task. While they did nothing to aid the colony in its distress, they beset Argenson with demands for the thousand pounds of beaver-skins, which the inhabitants had agreed to send them every year, in return for the privilege of the fur trade, a privilege which the Iroquois war made for the present worthless. The perplexed governor vents his feelings in sarcasm. “They (_the company_) take no pains to learn the truth; and, when they hear of settlers carried off and burned by the Iroquois, they will think it a punishment for not settling old debts, and paying over the beaver-skins.” * “I wish,” he adds, “they would send somebody to look after their affairs here. I would gladly give him the same lodging and entertainment as my own.” Another matter gave him great annoyance. This was the virtual independence of Montreal; and here, if nowhere else, he and the bishop were of the same mind. On one occasion he made a visit to the place in question, where he expected to be received as governor-general; but the local governor, Maisonneuve, declined, or at least postponed, to take his orders and give him the keys of the fort. Argenson accordingly speaks of Montreal as “a place which makes so much noise, but which is * Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659. of such small account.” * He adds that, besides wanting to be independent, the Montrealists want to monopolize the fur trade, which would cause civil war; and that the king ought to interpose to correct their obstinacy.