[Footnote 559:  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.  Memoire sur les Fraudes, etc.  Compare Pouchot, I. 8.]

[Footnote 560:  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin, commissary of marine, and Bigot’s deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited, arrogant, headstrong, capricious, and dissolute.  Worthless as he was, he found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to supplant Bigot in the intendancy.  To this end, as well as to save himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray his own.  Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son of a shoemaker at Quebec, and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King’s storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality, but who was now in the confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful, and in whose service he grew rich.

Canada was the prey of official jackals,—­true lion’s providers, since they helped to prepare a way for the imperial beast, who, roused at last from his lethargy, was gathering his strength to seize her for his own.  Honesty could not be expected from a body of men clothed with arbitrary and ill-defined powers, ruling with absolute sway an unfortunate people who had no voice in their own destinies, and answerable only to an apathetic master three thousand miles away.  Nor did the Canadian Church, though supreme, check the corruptions that sprang up and flourished under its eye.  The Governor himself was charged with sharing the plunder; and though he was acquitted on his trial, it is certain that Bigot had him well in hand, that he was intimate with the chief robbers, and that they found help in his weak compliances and wilful blindness.  He put his stepson, Le Verrier, in command at Michillimackinac, where, by fraud and the connivance of his stepfather, the young man made a fortune.[561] When the Colonial Minister berated the Intendant for maladministration, Vaudreuil became his advocate, and wrote thus in his defence:  “I cannot conceal from you, Monseigneur, how deeply M. Bigot feels the suspicions expressed in your letters to him.  He does not deserve them, I am sure.  He is full of zeal for the service of the King; but as he is rich, or passes as such, and as he has merit, the ill-disposed are jealous, and insinuate that he has prospered at the expense of His Majesty.  I am certain that it is not true, and that nobody is a better citizen than he, or has the King’s interest more at heart."[562] For Cadet, the butcher’s son, the Governor asked a patent of nobility as a reward for his services.[563] When Pean went to France in 1758, Vaudreuil wrote to the Colonial Minister:  “I have great confidence in him.  He knows the colony and its needs.  You can trust all he says.  He will explain everything in the best manner.  I shall be extremely sensible to any kindness you may show him, and hope that when you know him you will like him as much as I do."[564]