The worthy bishop desired to prevent the laxity of the sale of brandy that might result from the declaration of the Committee of Twenty-four, and in the autumn of 1678 he set out again for France. To avoid a journey so fatiguing, he might easily have found excuses in the rest needed after a difficult pastoral expedition which he had just concluded, in the labours of his seminary which demanded his presence, and especially in the bad state of his health; but is not the first duty of a leader always to stand in the breach, and to give to all the example of self-sacrifice? A report from his hand on the disorders caused by the traffic in strong liquors would perhaps have obtained a fortunate result, but thinking that his presence at the court would be still more efficacious, he set out. He managed to find in his charity and the goodness of his heart such eloquent words to depict the evils wrought upon the Church in Canada by the scourge of intoxication, that Louis XIV was moved, and commissioned his confessor, Father La Chaise, to examine the question conjointly with the Archbishop of Paris. According to their advice, the king expressly forbade the French to carry intoxicating liquors to the savages in their dwellings or in the woods, and he wrote to Frontenac to charge him to see that the edict was respected. On his part, Laval consented to maintain the _cas reserve_ only against those who might infringe the royal prohibition. The Bishop of Quebec had hoped for more; for nothing could prevent the Indians from coming to buy the terrible poison from the French, and moreover, discovery of the infractions of the law would be, if not impossible, at least most difficult. Nevertheless, it was an advantage obtained over the dealers and their protectors, who aimed at nothing less than an unrestricted traffic in brandy. A dyke was set up against the devastations of the scourge; the worthy bishop might hope to maintain it energetically by his vigilance and that of his coadjutors. Unfortunately, he could not succeed entirely, and little by little the disorders became so multiplied that M. de Denonville considered brandy as one of the greatest evils of Canada, and that the venerable superior of St. Sulpice de Montreal, M. Dollier de Casson, wrote in 1691: "I have been twenty-six years in this country, and I have seen our numerous and flourishing Algonquin missions all destroyed by drunkenness." Accordingly, it became necessary later to fall back upon the former rigorous regulations against the sale of intoxicating liquors to the Indians.