Disembarking in the year 1675 on that soil where as apostolic vicar he
had already accomplished so much good, giving his episcopal benediction
to that Christian throng who came to sing the Te Deum to thank God for
the happy return of their first pastor, casting his eyes upon that manly
and imposing figure of one of the most illustrious lieutenants of the
great king, the Count de Frontenac, what could be the thoughts of Mgr.
de Laval? He could not deceive himself: the letters received from Canada
proved to him too clearly that the friction between the civil powers and
religious authorities would be continued under a governor of
uncompromising and imperious character. With what fervour must he have
asked of Heaven the tact, the prudence and the patience so necessary in
such delicate circumstances!

Two questions, especially, divided the governor and the bishop: that of
the permanence of livings, and the everlasting matter of the sale of
brandy to the savages, a question which, like the phoenix, was
continually reborn from its ashes. "The prelate," says the Abbé
Gosselin, "desired to establish parishes wherever they were necessary,
and procure for them good and zealous missionaries, and, as far as
possible, priests residing in each district, but removable and attached
to the seminary, which received the tithes and furnished them with all
they had need of. But Frontenac found that this system left the priests
too dependent on the bishop, and that the clergy thus closely connected
with the bishop and the seminary, was too formidable and too powerful a
body. It was with the purpose of weakening it and of rendering it, by
the aid which it would require, more dependent on the civil authority,
that he undertook that campaign for permanent livings which ended in the
overthrow of Mgr. de Laval's system."

Colbert, in fact, was too strongly prejudiced against the clergy of