cruelty.

The Jesuits, in their misfortunes, managed with consummate craft.
Their policy was to appear in the light of victims of persecution.
There was to them no medium between reigning as despots or dying as
martyrs. Mediocrity would have degraded them. Ricci, the general of
the order, would not permit them to land in Italy, to which country
they were sent by the king of Spain. Six thousand priests, in misery
and poverty, were sent adrift upon the Mediterranean, and after six
months of vicissitude, suffering, and despair, they found a miserable
refuge on the Island of Corsica.

[Sidenote: Pope Clement XIV.]

Soon after, the pope, their most powerful protector, died. A
successor was to be appointed. But France, Spain, and Portugal, bent
on the complete suppression of the Jesuits, resolved that no pope
should be elected who would not favor their end. A cardinal was
found,--Ganganelli,--who promised the ambassadors that, if elected
pope, he would abolish the order. They, accordingly, intrigued to
secure his election. The Jesuits, also, strained every nerve, and put
forth marvellous talent and art, to secure a pope who would _protect
them_. But the ambassadors of the allied powers overreached even the
Jesuits. Ganganelli was the plainest, and, apparently, the most
unambitious of men. His father had been a peasant; but, by the force
of talent and learning, he had arisen, from the condition of his
father, to be a Roman cardinal. Under the garb of a saint, he aspired
to the tiara. There was only one condition of success; and that was,
to destroy the best supporters of that fearful absolutism which had so
long enslaved the world. The sacrifice was tremendous; but it was
made, and he became a pope. Then commenced in his soul the awful
struggle. Should he fulfil his pledge, and jeopardize his cause and
throne, and be branded, by the zealots of his church, with eternal
infamy? or should he break his word, and array against himself, with
awful enmity, the great monarchs of Europe, and perhaps lose the
allegiance of their subjects to him as the supreme head of the
Catholic Church? The decision was the hardest which mortal man had
ever been required to make. Whatever course he pursued was full of
danger and disgrace. Poor Ganganelli! he had better remained a
cowherd, a simple priest, a bishop, a cardinal,--any thing,--rather
than to have been made a pope! But such was his ambition, and he was
obliged to reap its penalty. Long