against his lawful master, Louis XIII, and in neglecting thus the
traditions handed down to him by his family through more than seven
centuries of glory.

Some historians reproach Richelieu with cruelty, but in that troublous
age when, hardly free from the wars of religion, men rushed carelessly
on into the rebellions of the duc d'Orléans and the duc de Soissons,
into the conspiracies of Chalais, of Cinq-Mars and de Thou, soon
followed by the war of La Fronde, it was not by an indulgence synonymous
with weakness that it was possible to strengthen the royal power. Who
knows if it was not this energy of the great cardinal which inspired the
young François, at an age when sentiment is so deeply impressed upon the
soul, with those ideas of firmness which distinguished him later on?

The future Bishop of Quebec was then a scholar in the college of La
Flèche, 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; François, 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 Abbé 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.

François 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