The progress of New France, as reported in these dispatches from Quebec, with their figures of slow growth in population, of poor crops, and of failing trade, of Indian troubles and dangers from the English, of privations at times and of deficits always, must often have dampened the royal hopes.  The requests for subsidies from the royal purse were especially relentless.  Every second dispatch contained pleas for money or for things which were bound to cost money if the King provided them:  money to enable some one to clear his lands, or to start an industry, or to take a trip of exploration to the wilds; money to provide more priests, to build churches, or to repair fortifications; money to pension officials—­the call for money was incessant year after year.  In the face of these multifarious demands upon his exchequer, Louis XIV was amazingly generous, but the more he gave, the more the colony asked from him.  Until the end of his days, he never failed in response if the object seemed worthy of his support.  It was not until the Grand Monarch was gathered to his fathers that the officials of New France began to ply their requests in vain.

So much for the frame of government in the colony during the age of Louis XIV.  Now as to the happenings during the decade following 1663.  The new administration made a promising start under the headship of De Mezy, a fellow townsman and friend of Bishop Laval, who arrived in the autumn of 1663 to take up his duties as governor.  In a few days he and the bishop had amicably chosen the five residents of the colony who were to serve as councilors, and the council began its sessions.  But troubles soon loomed into view, brought on in part by Laval’s desire to settle up some old scores now that he had the power as a member of the Sovereign Council and was the dominating influence in its deliberations.  Under the bishop’s inspiration the Council ordered the seizure of some papers belonging to Peronne Dumesnil, a former agent of the now defunct Company of One Hundred Associates.  Dumesnil retorted by filing a dossier of charges against some of the councilors; and the colonists at once ranged themselves into two opposing factions—­those who believed the charges and those who did not.  The bishop had become the stormy petrel of colonial politics, and nature had in truth well fitted him for just such a role.

Soon, moreover, the relations between Mezy and Laval themselves became less cordial.  For a year the governor had proved ready to give way graciously on every point; but there was a limit to his amenability, and now his proud spirit began to chafe under the dictation of his ecclesiastical colleague.  At length he ventured to show a mind of his own; and then the breach between him and Laval widened quickly.  Three of the councillors having joined the bishop against him, Mezy undertook a coup d’etat, dismissed these councilors from their posts, and called a mass-meeting of the people to choose their successors.  On