. To him this
service consisted of a perpetual mortification of the flesh, practised
chiefly in the hovels of the poor, or by beds of loathsome disease.

Of a mind and temper so austere, he seemed to the Jesuits the
heaven-called head for the Canadian Church; and it was doubtless
through their influence, acting upon the Queen Mother, Anne of
Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, that Laval was appointed titular Bishop
of Petraea, _in partibus infidelium_, and Vicar-Apostolic of all New
France.

The first bishop of Canada was welcomed by pealing bells and general
applause; but the excitement of his advent had scarcely subsided
before a sharp ecclesiastical quarrel occurred. M. l'Abbe de Queylus,
a Sulpitian priest, had lately been appointed spiritual head of Quebec
by the Archbishop of Rouen, who had been wont to regard Canada as a
part of his own diocese; and the Sulpitian so vigorously refused to be
superseded by the new bishop, that Governor D'Argenson, acting upon
the King's orders, had him arrested and sent back to France. The
quarrel, however, was not so soon decided, and supremacy was not
finally conceded to Laval until both contestants had referred the
matter to the Pope and the Grand Monarch.

Success in this churchman's conflict, however, had not softened the
autocratic temper of the new bishop. In France he had already
supported the contention of the Jesuits against the Jansenists that
the power of the Pope was above that of the King, and that the Church
was superior to the State. Laval insisted that his acolytes should
precede the Governor in receiving the consecrated bread, in the
distribution of boughs on Palm Sunday, in the adoration of the Cross
on Good Friday, and in the presentation of holy water. For a time the
gallant old soldier D'Argenson did his best to live in harmony with
the Vicar-Apostolic, even under the annoying conditions created by the
churchman's imperious temper. But the forbearance of the Governor was
not sufficient to save him from his opponent's powerful friends at
Court, who finally compassed his recall. His successors, the Baron
D'Avaugour and M. de Mezy, however, soon took up the intermitted
quarrel on behalf of the State, until the new order of government in
1663.

The institution of royal government in that year had a visible effect
upon the ecclesiastical power. Louis XIV. had declared himself to be
the State, and thus acquired a personal and selfish interest in the
controversy. M