The future Bishop of Quebec was then a scholar in the college of La Fleche, directed by the Jesuits, for his pious parents held nothing dearer than the education of their children in the fear of God and love of the good.  They had had six children; the two first had perished in the flower of their youth on fields of battle; Francois, who was now the eldest, inherited the name and patrimony of Montigny, which he gave up later on to his brother Jean-Louis, which explains why he was called for some time Abbe de Montigny, and resumed later the generic name of the family of Laval; the fifth son, Henri de Laval, joined the Benedictine monks and became prior of La Croix-Saint-Leuffroy.  Finally the only sister of Mgr.  Laval, Anne Charlotte, became Mother Superior of the religious community of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament.

Francois edified the comrades of his early youth by his ardent piety, and his tender respect for the house of God; his masters, too, clever as they were in the art of guiding young men and of distinguishing those who were to shine later on, were not slow in recognizing his splendid qualities, the clear-sightedness and breadth of his intelligence, and his wonderful memory.  As a reward for his good conduct he was admitted to the privileged ranks of those who comprised the Congregation of the Holy Virgin.  We know what good these admirable societies, founded by the sons of Loyola, have accomplished and still accomplish daily in Catholic schools the world over.  Societies which vie with each other in piety and encouragement of virtue, they inspire young people with the love of prayer, the habits of regularity and of holy practices.

The congregation of the college of La Fleche had then the good fortune of being directed by Father Bagot, one of those superior priests always so numerous in the Company of Jesus.  At one time confessor to King Louis XIII, Father Bagot was a profound philosopher and an eminent theologian.  It was under his clever direction that the mind of Francois de Laval was formed, and we shall witness later the germination of the seed which the learned Jesuit sowed in the soul of his beloved scholar.

At this period great families devoted to God from early youth the younger members who showed inclination for the religious life.  Francois was only nine years old when he received the tonsure, and fifteen when he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Evreux.  Without the revenues which he drew from his prebend, he would not have been able to continue his literary studies; the death of his father, in fact, had left his family in a rather precarious condition of fortune.  He was to remain to the end of his career the pupil of his preferred masters, for it was under them that, having at the age of nineteen left the institution where he had brilliantly completed his classical education, he studied philosophy and theology at the College de Clermont at Paris.