De Maisonneuve's skill had been shown in a judgment of July 13, 1656. A brave soldier, Saint Jacques, one Sunday morning when coming out of church after mass, had been attacked with a stick at the hands of an irate woman. He gallantly did not retaliate but contented himself with taking the case before the governor. The good lady was present, confident in the justice of her cause, for she accused the soldier of having got his deserts by her trouncing for having uttered a calumny against her honour. On cross-examination it appears that she heard the calumny, through another soldier, who related it to her as coming from the lips of Saint Jacques. This witness being called, he now owned that he had told the calumny to the woman but he had invented the story himself out of frivolousness, and that Saint Jacques was guiltless. This malicious meddler was ordered by Maisonneuve to pay a fine of twenty _livres_ to the church, as his offence had been against God, and fifty to the woman for her wounded honour. She, in turn, for having struck an innocent man was condemned to pay twenty _livres_ to the church for the offence against God, and to pay back to the wounded victim of her misplaced energy, the fifty _livres_ received from the meddler. In the case of grave public scandals de Maisonneuve had recourse to the sentence of banishment. A soldier of the garrison, having been appointed to be on guard at Point St. Charles, was accused of daily absenting himself from the guardhouse of the redoubt, and being found annoying an honest woman with his unseemly and scandalous discourse. In his sentence of November 4, 1658, Maisonneuve says: "We have cast him out of the garrison and condemned him to pay a penalty of 200 _livres_, applicable to some poor girls, to help them to get married at Ville Marie." In 1660 Maisonneuve, who was no respecter of persons, ordered perpetual banishment to one of the principal men of Montreal[81] for an offence with a woman; and her he permitted the husband either to send back to her father and mother, or to keep her shut up for the rest of her days. We have referred to an ordinance issued in 1658 to insure public safety. He had now to issue proclamations to safeguard public morals. Accordingly, as his short notice of July 9th forbidding, under pain of confiscation, liquor to be smuggled from the boats arriving in the harbour, and requiring his permission, had not apparently been sufficiently observed, on the 18th day of January, 1659, he drew up a long proclamation, that was posted up by Basset, the official clerk of justice, at the parish church next day at the end of vespers, so that no one might be ignorant of it.