amidst the duties of his ministry to such a point indeed,
that he had narrowly escaped interdiction. It was only since Cardinal
Boccanera, compassionating his bad luck, had taken him into his house and
attached him to his person, that he had enjoyed a little repose. "Here I
have a refuge, an asylum," he continued. "They execrate his Eminence, who
has never been on their side, but they haven't yet dared to attack him or
his servants. Oh! I have no illusions, they will end by catching me
again, all the same. Perhaps they will even hear of our conversation this
evening, and make me pay dearly for it; for I do wrong to speak, I speak
in spite of myself. They have stolen all my happiness, and brought all
possible misfortune on me, everything that was possible, everything--you
hear me!"

Increasing discomfort was taking possession of Pierre, who, seeking to
relieve himself by a jest, exclaimed: "Come, come, at any rate it wasn't
the Jesuits who gave you the fever."

"Yes, yes, it was!" Don Vigilio violently declared. "I caught it on the
bank of the Tiber one evening, when I went to weep there in my grief at
having been driven from the little church where I officiated."

Pierre, hitherto, had never believed in the terrible legend of the
Jesuits. He belonged to a generation which laughed at the idea of
wehr-wolves, and considered the _bourgeois_ fear of the famous black men,
who hid themselves in walls and terrorised families, to be a trifle
ridiculous. To him all such things seemed to be nursery tales,
exaggerated by religious and political passion. And so it was with
amazement that he examined Don Vigilio, suddenly fearing that he might
have to deal with a maniac.

Nevertheless he could not help recalling the extraordinary story of the
Jesuits. If St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic are the very soul and
spirit of the middle ages, its masters and teachers, the former a living
expression of all the ardent, charitable faith of the humble, and the
other defending dogma and fixing doctrines for the intelligent and the
powerful, on the other hand Ignatius de Loyola appeared on the threshold
of modern times to save the tottering heritage by accommodating religion
to the new developments of society, thereby ensuring it the empire of the
world which was about to appear.

At the advent of the modern era it seemed as if the Deity were to be
vanquished in the uncompromising struggle with sin, for it was certain
that the old dete