s,--but because they
interfered with her ascendency. It is true she despised their
sophistries, ridiculed their pretensions, and detested their government;
but her hostility was excited, not because they aspired like her, like
the philosophers, like the popes, like the press in our times, to a
participation in the government of the world, but because they disputed
her claims as one of the powers of the age. The Jesuits were scandalized
that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they
perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to
pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had
not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, or the desperate
means of revenge to which she could resort; nor had they considered
those other influences which had been gradually undermining their
influence,--even the sarcasms of the Jansenists, the ridicule of the
philosophers, and the invectives of the parliaments. Only one or two
favoring circumstances were required to kindle the smothered fires of
hatred into a blazing flame, and these were furnished by the attempted
assassination of the King, in his garden at Versailles, by Damiens the
fanatic, and the failure of La Valette the Jesuit banker and merchant at
Martinique. Then, when the nation was astounded by their political
conspiracies and their commercial gambling, to say nothing of the
perversion of their truth, did their arch-enemy, the King's mistress,
use her power over the King's minister, her own creature, the Due de
Choiseul, to decree the confiscation of their goods and their banishment
from the realm; nay, to induce the Pope himself, in conjunction with the
entreaties of all the Bourbon courts of Europe, to take away their
charter and suppress their order. The fall of the Jesuits has been
already alluded to in another volume, and I will not here enlarge on
that singular event brought about by the malice of a woman whom they had
ventured to despise. It is easy to account for her hatred and the
general indignation of Europe. It is not difficult to understand that
the decline of that great body in those virtues which originally
elevated them, should be followed by animosities which would undermine
their power. We can see why their moral influence should pass away, even
when they were in possession of dignities and honors and wealth. But it
is a most singular fact that the Pope himself, with whose interests t