se_ were either officers of the
disbanded Carignan-Salieres regiment, or _gentilhommes_ who had come
to the New World in search of adventure or gain. In both cases they
were unsuited to the hard and restrictive conditions of a rugged
country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into
ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them
accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain
their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became
the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these
families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the
bounties granted to large families--an ineffective resource, inasmuch
as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand.
Disdaining work of any sort, the Canadian _gentilhomme_ yet gave
himself airs that were in amusing contrast to his shabby coat and
empty stomach. The world, he held, owed him a living without the
labour of his hands, and to him "the world" was Louis the perpetual
almsgiver.

The official correspondence of the period describes in some detail the
pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the
Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of
Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of
bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one
who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army
again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can.
I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough.
Other families are in the same condition. They come to me with tears
in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you
to send them aid. There is need that the King should provide support
for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the
English."

Nor was this impecunious _noblesse_ merely a passive burden to New
France, for the dignified hardships of their estate soon bred active
conditions equally distressing to those in authority. Having no
inducement to remain peacefully at home, the sons of the seigneurs
took to the woods, often enticing the more unsettled of their own
_habitants_ to follow them thither to a life of unbridled freedom and
outlawry. Reckless bushrangers, they carried on an illicit trade with
the Indians, diverting peltries from the fur company at Quebec, and
demoralising the savage