his reports to the Provincial of
the Order and these communications ever increasing accompanied the
pupil on his way through life. Wherever an Affiliated might go, he
could not escape his past life, whether he settled in the new or old
world. Everywhere the eye of the Order was fixed upon him, everywhere
was he accompanied by his former confessions, in which were marked out
the dark points of his life, everywhere was a fresh book opened for his
every deed. Did any one of those entangled in these toils feel a desire
to break away, he knew but too well, that the Order had it in its power
to destroy him morally. But these paroxysms had not yet been felt at
that time by Paolo. He had been filled with a consciousness of the
importance of the Order, and he knew, that he had been called to a most
brilliant career in connection with a Society spread over the new and
old world. The training which he had received rendered him thoroughly
aware of his superiority over the rest of the world and over those
children of man addicted to the ways of simplicity. Accustomed for
years to spy and be spyed, he had assumed a self-command which
protected him like an impenetrable iron mask against any attack. It had
long become a second nature to him, to utter no word that might be used
against him, and even as little to let any escape which he might use
against another. Kindly feelings and interests he knew nothing of All
that he had brought with him from his father's house, love of family,
home, and brother, had been consumed by the blast of ambition. God made
the heart of man straight, but it learns many arts in the school of
ambition. As a fresh, fantastic, good and beauteous child had Paolo
entered College, he left it a pale, ambitious overwrought champion of
the Church. He was in his twentieth year, when the Rector of the
College declared his education completed, and the school awarded him
all the prizes which it had to bestow. It is true that he knew nothing
of that inward satisfaction, which usually accompanies the attainment
of such an object. The vocation of his life had been up to that time to
be _primus omnium_, and he would have preferred remaining thus for the
rest of his life. He had no family who desired to render his gifts of
use for this or that interest. The exhortations of the Holy Ignatius to
speak of relations only as relations which one formerly had, and the
doctrines of the order that the dependence on flesh and blood was