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But, alas, the King was never to hear of it! Even while all this was happening, while the future of the colony promised so well, a terrible blow had fallen upon it and the realm of France. The brave and humane Henry the Fourth had been stabbed to death by the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac. The new King, Louis the Thirteenth, being only a little boy, all the power and influence of the Court fell into the hands of the Queen Dowager, Marie de Medici, a false and cruel woman. Her closest friends and advisers were the Jesuit priests. Now these Jesuits, although professing Christianity and brotherly love, held in horror anybody who did not think exactly as they did. They wanted especially, by whatever means, to make converts of the Canadian savages. They wanted too, being very ambitious, to get the direction of the affairs of the New World into their own hands.

Yet ignorant of the royal tragedy, Poutraincourt sent his son, Biencourt, a fine youth of eighteen, back in the ship to France, to report to his Majesty the success at Port Royal in converting the natives. Whereupon the Jesuits decided that the time had come to supplant Poutraincourt. They announced that they would send back two of their priests with young Biencourt. A number of rich and pious Catholic ladies of the Court, headed by Madame de Guercheville, interested themselves so far in the work as to buy up all the rights of Poutraincourt's friends and partners, including De Monts, as proprietors of Acadia. Henceforward Poutraincourt was to be under the dependence of the Jesuits. That was the unwelcome news his son sailed back to tell him. The two priests whom he was obliged to receive—Biard and Ennemond Massé—were the very first members of their famous order to engage in the work of converting the North-American Indians. You will see as our story progresses what a terrible and dangerous task this was, and how it demanded men of boundless zeal and courage to undertake it.