Meanwhile De Monts was in France, striving with all the foes of the monopoly. Thanks to the fur trade, his company had paid its way during the first two years, despite the losses at St Croix. The third season had been much less prosperous, and at the same moment when the Dutch and the Basques [Footnote: Traders from the extreme south of France, whose chief port was St Jean de Luz. Though living on the confines of France and Spain, the Basques were of different racial origin from both Spaniards and French. While subject politically to France, their remoteness from the main ports of Normandy and Brittany kept them out of touch with the mariners of St Malo and Havre, save as collision arose between them in the St Lawrence. Among the Basques there were always interlopers, even when St Jean de Luz had been given a share in the monopoly. They are sometimes called Spaniards, from their close neighbourhood to the Pyrenees.] were breaking the monopoly by defiance, the hatters of Paris were demanding that it should be withdrawn altogether. To this alliance of a powerful guild with a majority of the traders, the company of De Monts succumbed, and the news which Poutrincourt received when the first ship came in 1607 was that the colony must be abandoned. As the company itself was about to be dissolved, this consequence was inevitable. Champlain in his matter-of-fact way states that De Monts sent letters to Poutrincourt, 'by which he directed him to bring back his company to France.' Lescarbot is much more outspoken. Referring to the merits and struggles of De Monts, he exclaims: Yet I fear that in the end he may be forced to give it all up, to the great scandal and reproach of the French name, which by such conduct is made a laughing-stock and a byword among the nations. For as though their wish was to oppose the conversion of these poor Western peoples, and the glory of God and of the King, we find a set of men full of avarice and envy, who would not draw a sword in the service of the King, nor suffer the slightest ill in the world for the honour of God, but who yet put obstacles in the way of our drawing any profit from the province, even in order to furnish what is indispensable to the foundation of such an enterprise; men who prefer to see the English and Dutch win possession of it rather than the French, and would fain have the name of God remain unknown in those quarters. And it is such godless people who are listened to, who are believed, and who win their suits. O tempora, O mores!