Montreal on Easter Sunday, to the excessive labour which M. de Frontenac
had exacted from the inhabitants of Ville-Marie for the erection of Fort
Cataraqui. According to La Salle, who heard the sermon, the Abbé de
Fénelon said: "He who is invested with authority should not disturb the
people who depend on him; on the contrary, it is his duty to consider
them as his children and to treat them as would a father.... He must not
disturb the commerce of the country by ill-treating those who do not
give him a share of the profits they may make in it; he must content
himself with gaining by honest means; he must not trample on the people,
nor vex them by excessive demands which serve his interests alone. He
must not have favourites who praise him on all occasions, or oppress,
under far-fetched pretexts, persons who serve the same princes, when
they oppose his enterprises.... He has respect for priests and ministers
of the Church."

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