Count de Frontenac felt himself directly aimed at; he was the more inclined to anger, since, the year before, he had had reasons for complaint of the sermon of a Jesuit Father.  Let us allow the governor himself to relate this incident:  “I had need,” he wrote to Colbert, “to remember your orders on the occasion of a sermon preached by a Jesuit Father this winter (1672) purposely and without need, at which he had a week before invited everybody to be present.  He gave expression in this sermon to seditious proposals against the authority of the king, which scandalized many, by dilating upon the restrictions made by the bishop of the traffic in brandy....  I was several times tempted to leave the church and to interrupt the sermon; but I eventually contented myself, after it was over, with seeking out the grand vicar and the superior of the Jesuits and telling them that I was much surprised at what I had just heard, and that I asked justice of them....  They greatly blamed the preacher, whose words they disavowed, attributing them, according to their custom, to an excess of zeal, and offered me many excuses, with which I condescended to seem satisfied, telling them, nevertheless, that I would not accept such again, and that, if the occasion ever arose, I would put the preacher where he would learn how he ought to speak....”

On the news of the words which were pronounced in the pulpit at Ville-Marie, M. de Frontenac summoned M. de Fenelon to send him a verified copy of his sermon, and on the refusal of the abbe, he cited him before the council.  M. de Fenelon appeared, but objected to the jurisdiction of the court, declaring that he owed an account of his actions to the ecclesiastical authority alone.  Now the official authority of the diocese was vested in the worthy M. de Bernieres, the representative of Mgr. de Laval.  The latter is summoned in his turn before the council, where the Count de Frontenac, who will not recognize either the authority of this official or that of the apostolic vicar, objects to M. de Bernieres occupying the seat of the absent Bishop of Petraea.  In order not to compromise his right thus contested, M. de Bernieres replies to the questions of the council “standing and without taking any seat.”  The trial thus begun dragged along till autumn, to be then referred to the court of France.  The superior of St. Sulpice, M. de Bretonvilliers, who had succeeded the venerable M. Olier, did not approve of the conduct of the Abbe Fenelon, for he wrote later to the Sulpicians of Montreal:  “I exhort you to profit by the example of M. de Fenelon.  Concerning himself too much with secular affairs and with what did not affect him, he has ruined his own cause and compromised the friends whom he wished to serve.  In matters of this sort it is always best to remain neutral.”