[m'lachlan] FLEURY MESPLET, FIRST PRINTER AT MONTREAL 223 



In disposition he was most sanguine, for he seems never to have 

 faltered under a heavy load of debt and the chronic state of insolvency 

 in which he always lived. And bearing up imder this burden he was able 

 to ward off his creditors by one means or another, while at the same 

 time securing advances or fresh credit from new men. In only one 

 instance was he sued and pushed to the wall. That was when sold 

 out by Desautels. Each creditor in every financial transaction, save 

 two, who were paid in full after his death by ]\Iadam Mesplet, lost 

 part or whole of his debt, and these two, Charles Lusignan and 

 Desautels, were paid out of !Madam Mesplet's patrimony. Thus 

 while able to ward off his many creditors, in ordinary ability and power 

 to cope with and meet his financial engagements, he was altogether 

 wanting, and yet through all he was a painstaking, honest and per- 

 severing workman. 



Such then are the facts that have been gathered respecting our 

 first j\Iontreal printer. And, although this closer inspection has dis- 

 pelled much of the glamour that has hitherto surrounded him, and 

 shown him to have been ever very human and erring, yet, as a man 

 labouring under great disabilities — desertion by his patrons, accused 

 by the church, suspected by the people, imprisoned by the government, 

 and borne down with debt — he rose above all and, persevering to the 

 end, founded a free press, one that has uncovered the source of French 

 literature in the new world, which, flowing in an ever widening, deepen- 

 ing stream, is clear and limpid when compared with the turbid flood 

 inundatins: the old land. 



