if they had remained in the world, a chance which he
desired by all means to shun, and which was hardly offered in a recent
and humble fraternity, still in the furnace of trial through which the
others had long ago passed; how the Company, by embracing in its scheme
the active as well as the contemplative life, provided for the spiritual
welfare of men of the most opposite characters, and of each man in the
various stages of his mental being; and lastly, how he had submitted
these reasons to several grave and holy fathers of the other orders, and
had received their approval and blessing before he took the vows which
for ten years had been the hope and consolation of his life.

The emperor listened to this long narrative with attention, and
expressed his satisfaction at hearing his friend's history from his own
lips. "For," said he, "I felt great surprise when I received at Augsburg
your letter from Rome, notifying the choice you had made of a religious
brotherhood. And I still think, that a man of your weight ought to have
entered an order which had been approved by age rather than this new
one, in which no white hairs are found, and which besides, in some
quarters, bears but an indifferent reputation." To this Borja replied,
that in all institutions, even in Christianity itself, the purest piety
and the noblest zeal were to be found near the source; that had he been
aware of any evil in the Company, he would never have joined, or he
would already have quitted it; and that, in the matter of white hairs,
though it was hard to expect that the children should be old while the
parent was still young, even these were not wanting, as might be seen in
his companion, the father Bustamente. That ecclesiastic, who had begun
his novitiate at the age of sixty, was accordingly called into the
presence. The emperor at once recognized him as a priest who had been
sent to his court at Naples, soon after the campaign of Tunis, charged
with an important mission by Cardinal Tavera, primate of Spain.

Three hours of discourse with these able, earnest, and practised
champions of Jesuitism appear to have had their natural influence on the
mind of Charles. He hated innovation with the hate of a king, a devotee,
and an old man; and having fought for forty years a losing battle
against the reform of the terrible monk of Saxony, he looked with
suspicion even upon the great orthodox movement, led by the soldier of
Guipuzcoa. The infant Company, a