Champlain remained at Quebec four years before again returning to France. His time was divided between many local enterprises of great importance. His special attention was given to advancing the work on the unfinished fort, in order to provide against incursions of the hostile Iroquois, [88] who at one time approached the very walls of Quebec, and attacked unsuccessfully the guarded house of the Recollects on the St. Charles. [89] He undertook the reconstruction of the buildings of the settlement from their foundations. The main structure was enlarged to a hundred and eight feet [90] in length, with two wings of sixty feet each, having small towers at the four corners. In front and on the borders of the river a platform was erected, on which were placed cannon, while the whole was surrounded by a ditch spanned by drawbridges. Having placed every thing at Quebec in as good order as his limited means would permit, and given orders for the completion of the works which he had commenced, leaving Émeric de Caen in command, Champlain determined to return to France with his wife, who, though devoted to a religious life, we may well suppose was not unwilling to exchange the rough, monotonous, and dreary mode of living at Quebec for the more congenial refinements to which she had always been accustomed in her father's family near the court of Louis XIII. He accordingly sailed on the 15th of August, and arrived at Dieppe on the 1st of October, 1624. He hastened to St. Germain, and reported to the king and the viceroy what had occurred and what had been done during the four years of his absence. The interests of the two companies had not been adjusted and they were still in conflict. The Duke de Montmorency about this time negotiated a sale of his viceroyalty to his nephew, Henry de Levi, Duke de Ventadour. This nobleman, of a deeply religious cast of mind, had taken holy orders, and his chief purpose in obtaining the viceroyalty was to encourage the planting of Catholic missions in New France. As his spiritual directors were Jesuits, he naturally committed the work to them. Three fathers and two lay brothers of this order were sent to Canada in 1625, and others subsequently joined them. Whatever were the fruits of their labors, many of them perished in their heroic undertaking, manfully suffering the exquisite pains of mutilation and torture.