their respective generations. Soldiers, administrators,
and captains of industry, they contributed their full
share to the sum of French achievement, alike in war and
peace. By intermarriage also the Le Moynes of Longueuil
connected themselves with other prominent families of
French Canada, notably those of Beaujeu, Lanaudiere, and
Gaspe. Unlike most of the colonial noblesse, they were
well-to-do from the start, and the barony of Longueuil
may be rightly regarded as a good illustration of what
the seigneurial system could accomplish at its best.

These three seigneurs, Hebert, La Durantaye, and Le Moyne,
represent three different, yet not so very dissimilar
types of landed pioneer. Hebert, the man of humble birth
and limited attainments, made his way to success by
unremitting personal labour under great discouragements.
He lived and died a plain citizen. He had less to show
for his life-work than the others, perhaps; but in those
swaddling days of the colony's history his task was
greater. Morel de la Durantaye, the man-at-arms, well
born and bred, took his seigneurial rank as a matter of
course, and his duties without much seriousness. His
seigneury had his attention only when opportunities for
some more exciting field of action failed to present
themselves. Interesting figure though he was--an excellent
type of a hundred others--it was well for the colony that
not all its seigneurs were like him in temperament and
ways. Le Moyne, the nearest Canadian approach to the
seigneur of Old France in the days before the Revolution,
combined the best qualities of the other two. There was