The condition of the little colony had not improved during the absence of the governing and inspiring spirit. From the force of circumstances, it did not at once improve upon Champlain's return. These first settlers of Quebec, whose food and living were easily got, and with no ambition to work or trade, idled their time away. Gambling and drinking were their common diversions, the more reckless spirits taking to the woods and adopting the savage life of the hunting tribes. These became the famous _coureurs de bois_, the picturesque vagrants who were destined in the succeeding years to constitute so serious a "problem" in the administration of New France. At first Champlain could do little more than hold his colony together. Intelligent as his purposes were, he received no help from the Court of France or from the Viceroy De Monts, though the importance of the enterprise of colonisation was set before Europe with every circumstance of national pride and no detail of responsibility. A painful evidence of the slight importance which the Louvre attached to New France is furnished by the frequent and easy changes in its patronage to which reference has already been made. On the imprisonment of Condé, the young Duc de Montmorency purchased for a song the Lieutenancy of New France, and he in turn sold it to his nephew, Henri Lévis, the Duc de Ventadour. All except De Ventadour had been moved by the lust of gain; in his case, however, the motive was religious--to win the infidels of the New World to the faith of the Old. The Jesuits were his chosen instruments; and accordingly, in the summer of 1625, Charles Lalement, Enemond Masse, and Jean de Brébeuf, landed at Quebec. No guns boomed a welcome to the disciples of Loyola. No salvos of artillery hailed their arrival. Their reception was even distressing. In the temporary absence of Champlain, the Calvinist Émery de Caen was in charge of the fort, and in the violence of his heresy refused them shelter. The inhabitants, likewise, declined to admit the newcomers to their homes. In despair at such treatment the three Jesuits were on the point of returning to France, when the hospitable Récollets invited them to the convent at Notre Dame des Anges. In September the Jesuits made a clearing on the opposite side of the St. Charles, and here they began to build a convent of their own. Thus had the forty-three French exiles, who now made the permanent population of Quebec, a sufficiency of both Récollets and Jesuits for their spiritual guidance. Lalement soon became the keeper of Champlain's conscience, and from this time forward the Jesuits were to have their way in New France.