the most comfortable abodes in the colony.  The attractions of this home, and especially the hospitality of Madame Hebert and her daughters, are more than once alluded to in the meagre annals of the settlement.  It was the first dwelling to be erected on the plateau above the village; it passed to Hebert’s daughter, and was long known in local history as the house of the widow Couillard.  Its exact situation was near the gate of the garden which now encircles the seminary, and the remains of its foundation walls were found there in 1866 by some workmen in the course of their excavations.

That strivings so worthy should have in the end won due recognition from official circles is not surprising.  The only wonder is that this recognition was so long delayed.  An explanation can be found, however, in the fact that the trading company which controlled the destinies of the colony during its precarious infancy was not a bit interested in the agricultural progress of New France.  It had but two aims—­in the first place to get profits from the fur trade, and in the second place to make sure that no interlopers got any share in this lucrative business.  Its officers placed little value upon such work as Hebert was doing.  But in 1623 the authorities were moved to accord him the honour of rank as a seigneur, and the first title-deed conveying a grant of land en seigneurie was issued to him on February 4 of that year.  The deed bore the signature of the Duc de Montmorenci, titular viceroy of New France.  Three years later a further deed, confirming Hebert’s rights and title, and conveying to him an additional tract of land on the St Charles river, was issued to him by the succeeding viceroy, Henri de Levy, Duc de Ventadour.

The preamble of this document recounts the services of the new seigneur.  ’Having left his relatives and friends to help establish a colony of Christian people in lands which are deprived of the knowledge of God, not being enlightened by His holy light,’ the document proceeds, ’he has by his painful labours and industry cleared lands, fenced them, and erected buildings for himself, his family and his cattle.’  In order, accordingly, ’to encourage those who may hereafter desire to inhabit and develop the said country of Canada,’ the land held by Hebert, together with an additional square league on the shore of the St Charles, is given to him ’to have and to hold in fief noble for ever,’ subject to such charges and conditions as might be later imposed by official decree.

By this indenture feudalism cast its first anchor in the New World.  Some historians have attributed to the influence of Richelieu this policy of creating a seigneurial class in the transmarine dominions of France.  The cardinal-minister, it is said, had an idea that the landless aristocrats of France might be persuaded to emigrate to the colonies by promises of lavish seigneurial estates wrested from the wilderness.  It will be noted, however, that Hebert received his title-deed before Richelieu assumed the reins of power, so that, whatever influence the latter may have had on the extension of the seigneurial system in the colonies, he could not have prompted its first appearance there.