Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/51

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THE BROTHERS D'AMOURS.
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the Minister he protests against his interdiction and attributes it to the fact that neither he nor his wife had visited Madame Freneuse. In the autumn of 1704, Madame Freneuse was sent by Governor Brourillan to the River St. John, but she soon returned, alleging that she could not live there because the place was deserted. Brouillan had been ordered to send her to Quebec, but he excused himself on the ground that he had no opportunity of doing so. A journey from Port Royal to Quebec was a serious matter in those days. For nearly a year the cause of all this trouble lived up the river, at a distance from Port Royal, at the house of an inhabitant, but in the autumn of 1705 she went to France. She did not remain there very long, for she was again at Port Royal in the summer of 1706, and was the subject of much correspondence. Subercase, who had succeeded Brouillan as Governor, required her to live at a distance from Port Royal, but she seems to have returned to it occasionally. It was not until the summer of 1708 that the instructions of the French government with regard to this remarkable woman were carried out and she was sent to Quebec.

It might be supposed that this would be the last heard of Madame Freneuse in Acadia, for Quebec was a place which no person could leave without the consent of the Governor General. But this Acadian widow was quite irrepressible, and it would almost seem as if she had become as influential with the Quebec authorities as she was with the leading personages in Acadia. After the capture of Port Royal by the English in 1710 she turned up as an emissary of the French government, and the attempt which was made in the summer of 171 1 by the French inhabitants and Indians to recapture that place was thought to be due to instructions she had brought from Canada. Major Paul Mascerene, an officer of the Annapolis garrison who afterwards