orld as of the next, was ever whispering at the facile
ear of the renegade King. New France offered a fresh field of action
to the indefatigable Society of Jesus, and Coton urged upon the royal
convert, that, for the saving of souls, some of its members should be
attached to the proposed enterprise. The King, profoundly indifferent in
matters of religion, saw no evil in a proposal which at least promised
to place the Atlantic betwixt him and some of those busy friends whom
at heart he deeply mistrusted. Other influences, too, seconded the
confessor. Devout ladies of the court, and the Queen herself, supplying
the lack of virtue with an overflowing piety, burned, we are assured,
with a holy zeal for snatching the tribes of the West from the bondage
of Satan. Therefore it was insisted that the projected colony should
combine the spiritual with the temporal character,--or, in other words,
that Poutrincourt should take Jesuits with him. Pierre Biard, Professor
of Theology at Lyons, was named for the mission, and repaired in haste
to Bordeaux, the port of embarkation, where he found no vessel, and no
sign of preparation; and here, in wrath and discomfiture, he remained
for a whole year.

That Poutrincourt was a good Catholic appears from a letter to the
Pope, written for him in Latin by Lescarbot, asking a blessing on his
enterprise, and assuring his Holiness that one of his grand objects was
the saving of souls. But, like other good citizens, he belonged to the
national party in the Church, those liberal Catholics, who, side by side
with the Huguenots, had made head against the League, with its Spanish
allies, and placed Henry the Fourth upon the throne. The Jesuits, an
order Spanish in origin and policy, determined champions of ultramontane
principles, the sword and shield of the Papacy in its broadest
pretensions to spiritual and temporal sway, were to him, as to others of
his party, objects of deep dislike and distrust. He feared them in his
colony, evaded what he dared not refuse, left Biarci waiting in solitude
at Bordeax, and sought to postpone the evil day by assuring Father
Coton that, though Port Royal was at present in no state to receive the
missionaries, preparation should be made to entertain them the next year
after a befitting fashion.

Poutrincourt owned the barony of St. Just in Champagne, inherited a few
years before from his mother. Hence, early in February, 1610, he set out
in a boat loaded to the gunwa