A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs | Page 7

accompanied by seven or eight persons with whom he had supped and all were armed with swords, pistols or other weapons. When Lanoraye demanded the drum, Bonneau was defiant and told him to go away or he should chastise him. The inevitable fight followed. Comport��, whose own account we have, says that it lasted some time and the results were fatal. Comport�� declares that he himself struck no blows but the fact remains that two of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that they died. Comport�� and the rest of the Company soon went to Canada. In their absence he and others were sentenced to death.
In Canada he appears to have behaved himself. In France a simple volunteer, in New France he became an important citizen. Talon trusted him and made him Quarter-Master-General. In 1672 Comport�� received an enormous grant of land stretching along the St. Lawrence from Cap aux Oies to Cap �� l'Aigle, a distance of some eighteen miles, including Malbaie and a good deal more. About the same time he married Marie Bazire, daughter of one of the chief merchants in the colony, by whom he had a numerous family. So eminently respectable was he that we find him churchwarden at Quebec. In time he retired from trade, in which he had engaged, and became a judge of the newly established Court of the Pr��v?t�� at Quebec. This was not doing badly for a man under sentence of death. But over him still hung this affair in France and, in 1680, he petitioned the King to have the sentence annulled. For this petition he secured the support of the families of the men killed in the quarrel fifteen years earlier. In 1681 Louis XIV's pardon was registered with solemn ceremonial at Quebec, and at last Comport�� was no longer an outlaw.
He had plans to settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he resolved to sell two-thirds of his interest in the seigniory of Malbaie. The price was a pitiful 1000 livres, or some $200, and the purchasers were Fran?ois Hazeur, Pierre Soumande and Louis Marchand of Quebec, who were henceforth to get two-thirds of the profits of the seigniory. Then, in 1687, still young--he was only forty-six--Comport�� died, as did also his wife, leaving a young family apparently but ill provided for. His name still survives at Malbaie. The portion of the village on the left bank of the river above the bridge is called Comport��, and a lovely little lake, nestling on the top of a mountain beyond the Grand Fond, and unsurpassed for the excellence of its trout fishing, is called Lac �� Comport��; it may be that well-nigh two and a half centuries ago the first seigneur of Malbaie followed an Indian trail to this lake and wet a line in its brown and rippling waters.
Comport�� and his partners in the seigniory had planned great things. They had begun the erection of a mill, an enterprise which Comport��'s heirs could not continue. So the guardian of the children determined to sell at auction their third of the seigniory. The sale apparently took place in Quebec in October, 1688. We have the record of the bids made. Hazeur began with 410 livres; one Riverin offered 430 livres; after a few other bids Hazeur raised his to 480 livres; then Riverin offered 490 and finally the property was sold to Hazeur for 500 livres. Malbaie was cheap enough; one third of a property more than one hundred and fifty square miles in extent sold for about $100! In 1700 for a sum of 10,000 livres ($2,000) Hazeur bought out all other interests in the seigniory and became its sole owner. Its value had greatly improved in 22 years.
Of Hazeur we know but little. He was a leading merchant at Quebec and was interested in the fishing for "porpoises" or white whales. When he died in 1708 he left money to the Seminary at Quebec on condition that from this endowment, forever, two boys should be educated; for the intervening two centuries the condition has been faithfully observed; one knows not how many youths owe their start in life to the gift of the former seigneur of Malbaie. There, however, no memory or tradition of him survives. In his time some land was cleared. The saw mill and a grist