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Such was his enthusiasm in these first days that various cronies in the grocery-store which he visited from time to time affiliated themselves with the liberal party and began to style themselves liberals: Don Eulogio Badana, a retired sergeant of carbineers; the honest Armendia, by profession a pilot, and a rampant Carlist; Don Eusebio Picote, customs inspector; and Don Bonifacio Tacon, shoe- and harness-maker.

After many and anxious consultations, principally caused by the uncertainty of the Duke as to the nature of the honours which were to be conferred upon him, it had been at length resolved between the two conspirators that they should despatch a priest to the Duke of Savoy, a monk of Cîteaux to Milan, and Picoté himself to Spain, to treat with the several Princes in the name of the Maréchal; and what was even more essential to the monarch to ascertain, was the fact that a short time subsequently, and before he visited Paris, the Duke of Savoy had entered into a secret negotiation with Biron, and even led him to believe that he would bestow upon him the hand of one of his daughters, by which marriage the Maréchal would have become the cousin of the Emperor of Germany, and the nephew of the King of Spain, an alliance which, to so ambitious a spirit, opened up an opportunity of self-aggrandizement never to be realized in his own country and under his own sovereign.

He then solemnly asserted that when the Maréchal de Biron proceeded to Flanders to receive the oath of peace from the Archduke Albert, the Spaniards, who at once detected the extent of his vanity and ambition, had flattered his weakness and encouraged his hopes; and that they had ultimately despatched to him an individual named Picoté, who for some crime had been exiled from Orleans, and who was authorized to give him the assurance that it only depended upon the Duke himself to secure a brilliant position through their agency, should he see fit to become their ally.

The institution was placed in charge of two members of the Society, a father and a brother. The collegians were clad in mantles of husi, which is a thin fabric like picote, inclining toward violet, with insignia of red braid extending to the feet.

Among the 'Montrealistes' of note the following should be specially mentioned: Zacharie Dupuy, major of the island; Charles d'Ailleboust, seigneurial judge; J. B. Migeon de Bransac, fiscal attorney; Louis Artus Sailly, who had been for some time juge royal; Benigne Basset, at once registrar of the seigneurial court, notary, and surveyor; Charles Le Moyne, king's treasurer, interpreter, soldier, settler, who was later to be ennobled and receive the title of Baron de Longueuil; Etienne Bouchard, surgeon; Pierre Picote de Belestre, a valiant militia officer; Claude de Robutel, Sieur de Saint-Andre; Jacques Leber, a merchant who controlled almost the whole trade of Ville-Marie.