sent messages to such of the inhabitants as he knew to be in his interest, who gathered in the council chamber, voted under his eye, and again chose a syndic agreeable to him. Laval’s party protested in vain. * The councillors held office for a year, and the year had now expired. The governor and the bishop, it will be remembered, had a joint power of appointment; but agreement between them was impossible. Laval was for replacing his partisans, Bourdon, Villeray, Auteuil, and La Ferté. Mézy refused; and on the eighteenth of September he reconstructed the council by his sole authority, retaining of the old councillors only Amours and Tilly, and replacing the rest by Denis, La Tesserie, and Péronne de Maze, the surviving son of Dumesnil. Again Laval protested; but Mézy proclaimed his choice by sound of drum, and caused placards to be posted, full, according to Father Lalemant, of abuse against the bishop. On this he was excluded from confession and absolution. He complained loudly; “but our reply was,” says the father, “that God knew every thing.” ** This unanswerable but somewhat irrelevant response failed to satisfy him, and it was possibly on this occasion that an incident occurred which is recounted by the bishop’s eulogist, La Tour. He says that Mézy, with some unknown design, appeared before the church at the head of a band of soldiers, while Laval was saying mass. The service over, the bishop presented himself at the door, on which, to * Registre du Conseil Supérieur. ** Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1664. the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him. * The story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary evidence. On the Sunday after Mézy’s _coup d’etat_, the pulpits resounded with denunciations. The people listened, doubtless, with becoming respect; but their sympathies were with the governor; and he, on his part, had made appeals to them at more than one crisis of the quarrel. He now fell into another indiscretion. He banished Bourdon and Villeray, and ordered them home to France. They carried with them the instruments of their revenge, the accusations of Laval and the Jesuits against the author of their woes. Of these accusations one alone would have sufficed. Mézy had appealed to the people. It is true that he did so from no love of popular liberty, but simply do make head against an opponent; yet the act alone was enough, and he received a peremptory recall. Again Laval had triumphed. He had made one governor and unmade two, if not three. The modest Levite, as one of his biographers calls him in his earlier days, had become the foremost power in Canada. Laval had a threefold strength at court; his high birth, his reputed sanctity, and the support of the Jesuits. This was not all, for the permanency of his position in the colony gave him another advantage. The governors were named for three