precious time and his pastoral duties, Laval caused a manager to be appointed by the Royal Council for the abbey of Lestrees, and rented it for a fixed sum to M. Berthelot.  He also made with the latter a very advantageous transaction by exchanging with him the Island of Orleans for the Ile Jesus; M. Berthelot was to give him besides a sum of twenty-five thousand francs, which was employed in building the seminary.  Later the king made the Island of Orleans a county.  It became the county of St. Lawrence.

Mgr. de Laval was too well endowed with qualities of the heart, as well as with those of the mind, not to have preserved a deep affection for his family; he did not fail to go and see them twice during his stay in France.  Unhappily, his brother, Jean-Louis, to whom he had yielded all his rights as eldest son, and his titles to the hereditary lordship of Montigny and Montbeaudry, caused only grief to his family and to his wife, Francoise de Chevestre.  As lavish as he was violent and hot-tempered, he reduced by his excesses his numerous family (for he had had ten children), to such poverty that the Bishop of Quebec had to come to his aid; besides the assistance which he sent them, the prelate bought him a house.  He extended his protection also to his nephews, and his brother, Henri de Laval, wrote to him about them as follows:  “The eldest is developing a little; he is in the army with the king, and his father has given him a good start.  I have obtained from my petitions from Paris a place as monk in the Congregation of the Cross for his second son, whom I shall try to have reared in the knowledge and fear of God.  I believe that the youngest, who has been sent to you, will have come to the right place; he is of good promise.  My brother desires greatly that you may have the goodness to give Fanchon the advantage of an education before sending him back.  It is a great charity to these poor children to give them a little training.  You will be a father to them in this matter.”  One never applied in vain to the heart of the good bishop.  Two of his nephews owed him their education at the seminary of Quebec; one of them, Fanchon (Charles-Francois-Guy), after a brilliant course in theology at Paris, became vicar-general to the Swan of Cambrai, the illustrious Fenelon, and was later raised to the bishopric of Ypres.

Meanwhile, four years had elapsed since Mgr. de Laval had left the soil of Canada, and he did not cease to receive letters which begged him respectfully to return to his diocese.  “Nothing is lacking to animate us but the presence of our lord bishop,” wrote, one day, Father Dablon.  “His absence keeps this country, as it were, in mourning, and makes us languish in the too long separation from a person so necessary to these growing churches.  He was the soul of them, and the zeal which he showed on every occasion for the welfare of our Indians drew upon us favours of Heaven most powerful for the success of our missions; and since, however distant he be