uptcies, politics, finances, wars,--all became
insignificant, compared with those questions which affected the
position and welfare of the society. Pascal became a popular idol, and
"Tartuffe grew pale before Escobar." The reports of the trial lay on
every toilet table, and persons of both sexes, and of all ages and
conditions, read with avidity the writings of the casuists. Nothing
was talked about but "probability," "surrender of conscience," and
"mental reservations." Philosophers grew jealous of the absorbing
interest with which every thing pertaining to the _regime_ of the
Jesuits was read, and of the growing popularity of the Jansenists, who
had exposed it. "What," said Voltaire, "will it profit us to be
delivered from the foxes, if we are to be given up to the wolves?" But
the philosopher had been among the first to raise the cry of alarm
against the Jesuits, and it was no easy thing to allay the storm.

[Sidenote: Their Expulsion from France.]

The Jesuits, in their distress, had only one friend sufficiently
powerful to protect them, and he was the king. He had been their best
friend, and he still wished to come to their rescue. He had been
taught to honor them, and he had learned to fear them. He stood in
fear of assassination, and dreaded a rupture with so powerful and
unscrupulous a body. And his resistance to the prosecution would have
been insurmountable, had it not been for the capriciousness of his
temper, which more than balanced his superstitious fears. His minister
and his mistress circumvented him. They represented that, as the
parliament and the nation were both aroused against the Jesuits, his
resistance would necessarily provoke a new Fronde. Nothing he dreaded
so much as civil war. The wavering monarch, placed in the painful
necessity of choosing, as he supposed, between a war and the ruin of
his best friends, yielded to the solicitations of his artful advisers.
But he yielded with a moderation which did him honor. He would not
consent to the expulsion of the Jesuits until efforts had been made to
secure their reform. He accordingly caused letters to be written to
Rome, demanding an immediate attention to the subject. Choiseul
himself prepared the scheme of reformation. But the Jesuits would not
hear of any retrenchment of their power or privileges. "Let us remain
as we are, or let us exist no longer," was their reply. The
parliament, the people, the minister, and the mistress renewed their
clam