Still many of these struggling nobles, with the revenue of a peasant, but who did sell their seigneuries, became fairly wealthy in time, and were the nucleus of the Canadian "noblesse" and "gentilhommes" for many a long day, though it must not be understood that all seigneurs were also ennobled, as in France. Some of the lazier sort, who perchance looked to the "get rich quick" method of peltry trading, rather than the laborious toil of tilling the earth, were soon the victims of their own circumstances; for a few years later, in 1679, Duchesneau, the intendant, writing to the minister in France, says: "Many of our gentilhommes, officers and other holders of seigneuries, lead what in France is called the life of a country gentleman and spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and clothing are greater than those of the simple 'habitants' and as they do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves up in trade, run into debt on all hands, incite their young 'habitants' to range the woods and send their own children there to trade for furs in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the prohibition of His Majesty. Yet, with all this, they are miserably poor."[98] "It is pitiable," says another intendant, Champigny, in 1687, "to see their children, of which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields." Later, an intendant wrote to France not to create any more _gentilhommes_, for it meant making "beggars." But it must be remembered that later letters of patent of nobility were not so easily granted as at this early tentative period, when noble, habitant, and peasant had a hard struggle with the soil to make all ends meet. To form an idea of the establishment of a parish, it must be remembered that each seigneur was required to build a mill and a chapel to be served by a priest. The mill meant a heavy expense; the machinery had all to come from France, and the miller's wages had to be paid; the farmers, bringing grain, small in number. Beyond the three mills belonging to the seigneurs of the island at this period there was the one erected at Pointe aux Trembles and that erected by Jean Milot, a toolmaker, at a cost of 1,000 _écus_, after purchasing on November 9, 1670, La Salle's lands at Lachine, and that was finally taken over by the seminary also, on November 2, 1673. La Salle had been required to construct a mill, since his concession was larger than the military fiefs of 200 arpents granted to the other petty seigneurs. To these latter, the necessity of erecting their own mills was foregone on the stipulation that their grain and that of their _censitaires_, should be ground in the seminary mill.