f Tartuffe, and the third Voltaire.

The worst of it is, by the light of this great modern flambeau which
they had been unable to extinguish, they saw their own deformity. They
knew what they were, and began to despise themselves. No one is so
hardened in lying as to deceive himself entirely. They were obliged
tacitly to confess that their _probabilism_, or doctrine of
probability, was at bottom but doubt, and the absence of all principle.
They could not help discovering that they, the most Christian of all
societies, and the champions of the faith, were only sceptics.

Of faith?--what faith? It was not, at any rate, Christian faith: all
their theology had no other tendency than to ruin the base on which
Christianity is founded--grace and salvation by the blood of Jesus
Christ.

Champions of a principle? No; but agents of a plot, occupied with one
project, and this an impossible one--the restoration of popery.

Some few Jesuits resolved to seek a remedy in themselves for their
fallen condition. They avowed frankly the urgent need that the Society
had of reform. Their chief, a German, dared to attempt this reform;
but it went hard with him: the great majority of the Jesuits wished to
maintain the abuses, and they deprived him of all power.

These good workmen, who had been so successful in justifying the
enjoyments of others, wanted to enjoy themselves in their turn. They
chose for their general a man after their own heart, amiable, gentle,
and kind, the epicure Oliva. Rome, recently governed by Madame
Olympia, was in a season of indulgence; Oliva, retiring to his
delightful villa, said, "Business to-morrow," and left the Society to
govern itself after its own fashion.

Some became merchants, bankers, and cloth-makers for the profit of
their establishments. Others following more closely the example of the
pope, worked for their nephews, and transacted the business of their
families. The idle wits frequented the public walks, coquetted, and
made madrigals. Others again found amusement in chatting to the nuns,
in the little secrets of women, and in sensual inquisitiveness. Their
rulers, lastly, who found themselves excluded from the society of
women, became too often the Thyrsis and Corydons of the Colleges; the
consequence was in Germany a formidable investigation; when a great
number of the proud and austere German houses were found to be criminal.

The Jesuits, who had fallen so low both in theory an