to the morrow, to the generations which are growing up and whose master
one must be if one desire to reign eternally. So great is their power,
based on the necessity of compromise with sin, that, on the morrow of the
Council of Trent, they transform the very spirit of Catholicism,
penetrate it, identify it with themselves and become the indispensable
soldiers of the papacy which lives by them and for them. And from that
moment Rome is theirs, Rome where their general so long commands, whence
so long go forth the directions for the obscure tactics which are blindly
followed by their innumerable army, whose skilful organisation covers the
globe as with an iron network hidden by the velvet of hands expert in
dealing gently with poor suffering humanity. But, after all, the most
prodigious feature is the stupefying vitality of the Jesuits who are
incessantly tracked, condemned, executed, and yet still and ever erect.
As soon as their power asserts itself, their unpopularity begins and
gradually becomes universal. Hoots of execration arise around them,
abominable accusations, scandalous law cases in which they appear as
corruptors and felons. Pascal devotes them to public contempt,
parliaments condemn their books to be burnt, universities denounce their
system of morals and their teaching as poisonous. They foment such
disturbances, such struggles in every kingdom, that organised persecution
sets in, and they are soon driven from everywhere. During more than a
century they become wanderers, expelled, then recalled, passing and
repassing frontiers, leaving a country amidst cries of hatred to return
to it as soon as quiet has been restored. Finally, for supreme disaster,
they are suppressed by one pope, but another re-establishes them, and
since then they have been virtually tolerated everywhere. And in the
diplomatic self-effacement, the shade in which they have the prudence to
sequester themselves, they are none the less triumphant, quietly
confident of their victory like soldiers who have once and for ever
subdued the earth.

Pierre was aware that, judging by mere appearances, the Jesuits were
nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated
at the Gesu, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they
formerly fashioned so many souls; and with no abode of their own, reduced
to accept foreign hospitality, they had modestly sought a refuge at the
Collegio Germanico, where there is a little chap