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It would be misjudging the foresight of Mgr. de Laval to think that before embarking for the mother country he had not sought out a priest worthy to replace him. He appealed to two men whose judgment and circumspection he esteemed, M. Dudouyt and Father Le Valois of the Society of Jesus. He asked them to recommend a true servant of God, virtuous and zealous above all.
The task now became much easier, and Laval had no difficulty in inducing the king to urge the erection of the diocese at Quebec, and to abandon his claims to making the new diocese dependent on the archbishopric of Rouen. Before leaving Canada the Bishop of Quebec had entrusted the administration of the apostolic vicariate to M. de Bernières, and, in case of the latter's death, to M. Dudouyt.
Thus M. Dudouyt could not but fail in his mission, and he wrote to Mgr. de Laval that Colbert, while recognizing very frankly the devotion of the bishop and the missionaries, believed that they exaggerated the fatal results of the traffic.
The first directors of the seminary were, besides M. de Bernières, MM. de Lauson-Charny, son of the former governor-general, Jean Dudouyt, Thomas Morel, Ange de Maizerets and Hugues Pommier. Except the first, who was a Burgundian, they were all born in the two provinces of Brittany and Normandy, the cradles of the majority of our ancestors.
MM. de Bernières and Dudouyt protested, declaring that M. Morel was amenable only to the diocesan authority. We see in such an incident some of the reasons which induced Laval to insist upon the immediate constitution of a regular diocese.
Three priests of the Seminary of Quebec went to receive in heaven almost at the same period the reward of their apostolic labours. M. Thomas Morel died on September 23rd, 1687; M. Jean Guyon on January 10th, 1688; and M. Dudouyt on the fifteenth of the same month. This last loss, especially, caused deep grief to Mgr. de Laval.
During the early days of the absence of its first pastor, the Church of Canada had enjoyed only days of prosperity; skilfully directed by MM. de Bernières and de Dudouyt, who scrupulously followed the line of conduct laid down for them by Mgr. de Laval before his departure, it was pursuing its destiny peacefully.
He desired that the heart of the devoted missionary should rest in that soil of New France for which it had always beat, and he brought it with him. The ceremony of the burial at Quebec of the heart of M. Dudouyt was extremely touching; the whole population was present.
The former, among whom were five priests born in the colony, were M. Henri de Bernières, priest of Quebec, who remained dean until his death in 1700; MM. Louis Ange de Maizerets, archdeacon, Charles Glandelet, theologist, Dudouyt, grand cantor, and Jean Gauthier de Brulon, confessor.
MM. de Bernières, de Maizerets and Dudouyt vied in the imitation of their model, and they likewise abandoned to the holy house their goods and their pensions. The prelate confined himself, like the others, from humility even more than from economy on behalf of the community, to the greatest simplicity in dress as well as in his environment.
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