A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs | Page 7

secure recruits, when one Bonneau, the
local judge, attacked him, and took away the drum. Lanoraye rushed to
arouse his fellow soldiers. When Comporté and half a dozen other
hot-heads had listened to his tale, they cried with one voice, "Let us go
and demand the drum. He must give it up." So at eight or nine o'clock
at night they set out to look for Bonneau. They came upon him
unexpectedly in the streets of the town. He was 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. Comporté, whose own account we have,
says that it lasted some time and the results were fatal. Comporté
declares that he himself struck no blows but the fact remains that two
of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that they died. Comporté
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 Comporté

received an enormous grant of land stretching along the St. Lawrence
from Cap aux Oies to Cap à 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 Prévôté 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
Comporté 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 François 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--Comporté
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 Comporté,
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 à Comporté; 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.
Comporté and his partners in the seigniory had planned great things.

They had begun the erection of a mill, an enterprise which Comporté'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