these third Orders are still
numerous.--Trans.

For some days now, in the Rome of the present time, Pierre had been
coming into contact with those great Orders of the past. The Franciscans
and the Dominicans were there face to face in their vast convents of
prosperous aspect. But it seemed as if the humility of the Franciscans
had in the long run deprived them of influence. Perhaps, too, their
_role_ as friends and liberators of the people was ended since the people
now undertook to liberate itself. And so the only real remaining battle
was between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, both of whom still claimed to
mould the world according to their particular views. Warfare between them
was incessant, and Rome--the supreme power at the Vatican--was ever the
prize for which they contended. But, although the Dominicans had St.
Thomas on their side, they must have felt that their old dogmatic science
was crumbling, compelled as they were each day to surrender a little
ground to the Jesuits whose principles accorded better with the spirit of
the century. And, in addition to these, there were the white-robed
Carthusians, those very holy, pure, and silent meditators who fled from
the world into quiet cells and cloisters, those despairing and consoled
ones whose numbers may decrease but whose Order will live for ever, even
as grief and desire for solitude will live. And then there were the
Benedictines whose admirable rules have sanctified labour, passionate
toilers in literature and science, once powerful instruments of
civilisation, enlarging universal knowledge by their immense historical
and critical works. These Pierre loved, and with them would have sought a
refuge two centuries earlier, yet he was astonished to find them building
on the Aventine a huge dwelling, for which Leo XIII has already given
millions, as if the science of to-day and to-morrow were yet a field
where they might garner harvests. But _cui bono_, when the workmen have
changed, and dogmas are there to bar the road--dogmas which totter, no
doubt, but which believers may not fling aside in order to pass onward?
And finally came the swarm of less important Orders, hundreds in number;
there were the Carmelites, the Trappists, the Minims, the Barnabites, the
Lazzarists, the Eudists, the Mission Fathers, the Servites, the Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine; there were the Bernadines, the Augustinians,
the Theatines, the Observants, the Passionists, the Celest