Some of the seigneurs were as poor as their own censitaires and, like them, toiled with their hands.  But usually there was a social gulf between the cottage and the manor house.  Even the Church marked this.  The seigneur had the right to a special pew; he was censed first; he received the wafer first at the communion; he took precedence in processions, and was specially recommended from the pulpit to the prayers of the congregation.  Caldwell, who was seigneur of Lauzon opposite Quebec, used to drive through his great seigniory in state, half reclining on the cushions of his carriage and with a numerous following.  If on a long drive he stopped at a farm house, even for the light refreshment of a drink of milk, he never paid the habitant with anything less than a gold coin.  I once asked a habitant, who remembered the old days, whether the seigneur really was such a very great man in the village.  He replied, with something like awe in his voice, “Monsieur, il etait le roi, l’empereur, du village.”

The ministrations of the manor house were often patriarchical and beneficent; the seigneur’s wife was like the squire’s wife in an English village.  In time this relation aroused resentment.  Some villager’s son with a taste for business or letters made his way in the world, got into touch with more advanced thought, and when he came back to the village was not so willing as formerly to touch his hat to the seigneur and accept an inferior social status as a matter of course.  M. de Gaspe tells how he often accompanied Madame Tache, in her own right co-seigneuress of Kamouraska, opposite Malbaie, in her visits to the people on the seigniory.  She took alms to the poor, and wine, cordials, delicacies to the sick and convalescent.  “She reigned as sovereign in the seigniory,” he says, “by the very tender ties of love and of gratitude.”  When she left the village church after mass on Sunday the habitants, most of whom drove to church in their own vehicles, would wait respectfully for her to start and then follow her in a long procession, none of them venturing to pass her on the road.  At the point where she turned from the high-way up the avenue leading to the manor house, each habitant, as he passed, would raise his hat, although only her back was in view disappearing in the direction of the house.

But early in the 19th century this spirit was changing: 

One day I was myself witness, says M. de Gaspe, of a violation of this universal deference.  It was St. Louis’s day, the festival of the parish of Kamouraska.  As usual Madame Tache, at the close of mass, was leading the long escort of her censitaires, when a young man, excited by the frequent libations of which in the country many are accustomed to partake during the parish fetes,—­a young man, I say, breaking from the procession passed the carriage of the seigneuress as fast as his horse would go.  Madame Tache stopped her carriage and turning round towards those who followed her cried in a loud voice: 

     “What insolent person is this who has passed before me?”