The bishop’s infirmities left him scarcely any respite.  “My health,” he wrote to his successor, “is exceedingly good considering the bad use I make of it.  It seems, however, that the wound which I had in my foot during five or six months at Quebec has been for the last three weeks threatening to re-open.  The holy will of God be done!” And he added, in his firm resolution to pass his last days in Canada:  “In any case, I feel that I have sufficient strength and health to return this year to the only place which now can give me peace and rest. In pace in idipsum dormiam et requiescam. Meanwhile, as we must have no other aim than the good pleasure of our Lord, whatever desire He gives me for this rest and peace, He grants me at the same time the favour of making Him a sacrifice of it in submitting myself to the opinion that you have expressed, that I should stay this year in France, to be present at your return next autumn.”  The bad state of his health did not prevent him from devoting his every moment to Canadian interests.  He went into the most infinitesimal details of the administration of his diocese, so great was his solicitude for his work.  “We must hasten this year, if possible,” he wrote, “to labour at the re-establishment of the church of Ste. Anne du Petit-Cap, to which the whole country has such an attachment.  We must work also to push forward the clearing of the lands of St. Joachim, in order that we may have the proper rotation crops on each farm, and that the farms may suffice for the needs of the seminary.”  In another letter he concerns himself with the sum of three thousand francs granted by the king each year for the marriage portion of a certain number of poor young girls marrying in Canada.  “We should,” says he, “distribute these moneys in parcels, fifty francs, or ten crowns, to the numerous poor families scattered along the shores, in which there is a large number of children.”  He practises this wise economy constantly when it is a question, not of his personal property, but of the funds of his seminary.  He finds that his successor, whom the ten years which he had passed at court as king’s almoner could not have trained in parsimony, allows himself to be carried away, by his zeal and his desire to do good, to a somewhat excessive expense.  With what tact and delicacy he indulges in a discreet reproach! “Magna est fides tua,” he writes to him, “and much greater than mine.  We see that all our priests have responded to it with the same confidence and entire submission with which they have believed it their duty to meet your sentiments, in which they have my approval.  My particular admiration has been aroused by seeing in all your letters and in all the impulses of your heart so great a reliance on the lovable Providence of God that not only has it permitted you not to have the least doubt that it would abundantly provide the wherewithal for the support of all the works which it has suggested to you, but that upon this basis, which is the firm