use of the Jesuits than their
constantly repeating that their austere founder had expressly forbidden
them ever to govern the convents of women. This was true, as applied
to convents generally, but false as regarded nuns in particular, and
their special direction. They did not, indeed, govern them
_collectively_, but they directed them _individually_.

The Jesuit was not pestered with the daily detail of spiritual
management, or the small fry of trifling faults. He did not fatigue;
he only interfered at the right time; he was particularly useful in
dispensing the nuns from telling the confessor what they wished to
conceal. The latter became, by degrees, a sort of husband, whom they
might disregard.

If he happened, indeed, to have any firmness in his composition, or to
be able to exercise any influence, the others worked hard to get rid of
him by force of calumny. We may form an opinion of the audacity of the
Jesuits in this particular, since they did not fear to attack the
Cardinal de Berulle himself, notwithstanding his power.[4] One of his
relatives, living with the Carmelites, having become pregnant, they
boldly accused him of the crime, though he had never set his foot
within the convent. Finding no one to believe them, and seeing they
would gain nothing by attacking him on the score of morality, they
joined in a general outcry against his books. "They contained the
hidden poison of a dangerous mysticism: the cardinal was too tender,
too indulgent, and too weak, both as a theologian and _a director_."
Astounding impudence! when everybody knew and saw what sort of
directors they were themselves!

This, however, had, in time, the desired effect, if not against
Berulle, at least against the Oratory, who became disgusted with, and
afraid of, the direction of the nuns, and at last abandoned it.

This is a remarkable example of the all-powerful effects of _Calumny_,
when organised on a grand scale by a numerous body, vented by them, and
continually sung in chorus. A band of thirty thousand men repeating
the same thing every day throughout the Christian world! Who could
resist that? This is the very essence of Jesuitical art, in which they
are unrivalled. At the very creation of their order, a sentence was
applied to them, similar to those well-known verses in which Virgil
speaks of the Romans:--

"Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera," &c., &c.

Others shall animate brass, or give life to marble; the