ther, or nurse could caress them more, or could find
better some endearing word to make them smile. In the churches of the
Jesuits the good saints of the order, St. Xavier or St. Ignatius, are
often painted as grotesque nurses, holding the divine darling (poupon)
in their arms, fondling and kissing it. They began also to make on
their altars and in their fantastically-ornamented chapels those little
paradises in glass cases, where women are delighted to see the wax
child among flowers. The Jesuits loved children so much, that they
would have liked to educate them all.

Not one of them, however learned he might be, disdained to be a tutor,
to give the principles of grammar, and teach the declensions.

There were, however, many people among their own friends and penitents,
even those who trusted their souls to their keeping, who, nevertheless,
hesitated to confide their sons to them. They would have succeeded far
less with women and children, if their good fortune had not given them
for ally a tall lad, shrewd and discreet, who possessed precisely what
they had lacked to inspire confidence,--a charming simplicity.

This friend of the Jesuits, who served them so much the better as he
did not become one of them, invented, in an artless manner, for the
profit of these intriguers, the manner, tone, and true style of easy
devotion, which they would have ever sought for in vain. Falsehood
would never assume the shadow of reality as it can do, if it was always
and entirely unconnected with truth.

Before speaking of Francois de Sales, I must say one word about the
stage on which he performs his part.

The great effort of the Ultramontane reaction about the year 1600 was
at the Alps, in Switzerland and Savoy. The work was going on bravely
on each side of the mountains, only the means were far from being the
same: they showed on either side a totally different countenance--here
the face of an angel, there the look of a wild beast; the latter
physiognomy was against the poor Vaudois in Piedmont.

In Savoy, and towards Geneva, they put on the angelic expression, not
being able to employ any other than gentle means against populations
sheltered by treaties, and who would have been protected against
violence by the lances of Switzerland.

The agent of Rome in this quarter was the celebrated Jesuit, Antonio
Possevino[2], a professor, scholar, and diplomatist, as {38} well as
the confessor of the kings of the North. He him