han before, but he renounced all
conversation and every kind of social recreation with them, although
his father tried to make him take part; and he commenced only too early
to deliver his innocent body to austerities of every kind."[211]

[211] Meschler's Life of Saint Louis of Gonzaga, French translation by
Lebrequier, 1891, p. 40.

At the age of twelve, we read of this young man that "if by chance his
mother sent one of her maids of honor to him with a message, he never
allowed her to come in, but listened to her through the barely opened
door, and dismissed her immediately. He did not like to be alone with
his own mother, whether at table or in conversation; and when the rest
of the company withdrew, he sought also a pretext for retiring....
Several great ladies, relatives of his, he avoided learning to know
even by sight; and he made a sort of treaty with his father, engaging
promptly and readily to accede to all his wishes, if he might only be
excused from all visits to ladies." [212]

[212] Ibid., p. 71.

When he was seventeen years old Louis joined the Jesuit order,[213]
against his father's passionate entreaties, for he was heir of a
princely house; and when a year later the father died, he took the loss
as a "particular attention" to himself on God's part, and wrote letters
of stilted good advice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving
mother. He soon became so good a monk that if any one asked him the
number of his brothers and sisters, he had to reflect and count them
over before replying. A Father asked him one day if he were never
troubled by the thought of his family, to which, "I never think of them
except when praying for them," was his only answer. Never was he seen
to hold in his hand a flower or anything perfumed, that he might take
pleasure in it. On the contrary, in the hospital, he used to seek for
whatever was most disgusting, and eagerly snatch the bandages of
ulcers, etc., from the hands of his companions. He avoided worldly
talk, and immediately tried to turn every conversation on to pious
subjects, or else he remained silent. He systematically refused to
notice his surroundings. Being ordered one day to bring a book from
the rector's seat in the refectory, he had to ask where the rector sat,
for in the three months he had eaten bread there, so carefully did he
guard his eyes that he had not noticed the place. One day, during
recess, having looked by chance on one o