The outlay had
been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his
friends cold, his enemies active and keen. Poutrincourt, however, was
still full of zeal; and, though his private affairs urgently called for
his presence in France, he resolved, at no small sacrifice, to go in
person to Acadia. He had, moreover, a friend who proved an invaluable
ally. This was Marc Lescarbot, "avocat en Parlement," who had been
roughly handled by fortune, and was in the mood for such a venture,
being desirous, as he tells us, "to fly from a corrupt world," in which
he had just lost a lawsuit. Unlike De Monts, Poutrincourt, and others of
his associates, he was not within the pale of the noblesse, belonging to
the class of "gens de robe," which stood at the head of the bourgeoisie,
and which, in its higher grades, formed within itself a virtual
nobility. Lescarbot was no common man,--not that his abundant gift of
verse-making was likely to avail much in the woods of New France, nor
yet his classic lore, dashed with a little harmless pedantry, born not
of the man, but of the times; but his zeal, his good sense, the vigor of
his understanding, and the breadth of his views, were as conspicuous as
his quick wit and his lively fancy. One of the best, as well as
earliest, records of the early settlement of North America is due to his
pen; and it has been said, with a certain degree of truth, that he was
no less able to build up a colony than to write its history.
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