t
injury to their families and grief to their parents. The most notorious
of these cases Was that of two sons of Pandolfo Petrucci, whose name
indicates his high position in the aristocracy of Siena. These young men
they got into their power by inducing them to commit a theft, and then
compelled them to pledge fealty to the Society. Escaping by night in the
direction of Rome, the lads were arrested by the city guards, and
confessed that they had agreed to meet two Jesuits, who were waiting to
conduct them on their journey.'[173]

[Footnote 173: _Storia del Granducato di Toscana_, vol. iv. p. 275.]

It was, indeed, not the propagation of sound principles or liberal
learning, but the aggrandizement of the order and the enforcement of
Catholic usages, at which the Jesuits aimed in their scheme of
education. This was noticeable in their attitude toward literature and
science. Michelet has described their method in a brilliant and exact
metaphor, as the attempt to counteract the poison of free thought and
stimulative studies by means of vaccination. They taught the classics in
expurgated editions, history in drugged epitomes, science in popular
lectures. Instead of banning what M. Renan is wont to style _etudes
fortes_, they undertook to emasculate these and render them innocuous.
While Bruno was burned by the Inquisition for proclaiming what the
Copernican discovery involved for faith and metaphysics, Father Koster
at Cologne vulgarized it into something pretty and agreeable. While
Scaliger and Casaubon used the humanities as a propaedeutic of the
virile reason, the Jesuits contrived to sterilize and mechanize their
influences by insipid rhetoric. Everywhere through Europe, by the side
of stalwart thinkers, crept plausible Jesuit professors, following the
light of learning like its shadow, mimicking the accent of the gods like
parrots, and mocking their gestures like apes. Their adroit admixture of
falsehood with truth in all departments of knowledge, their substitution
of veneer for solid timber, and of pinchbeck for sterling metal, was
more profitable to the end they had in view than the torture-chamber of
the Inquisition or the quarantine of the Index. Mediocrities and
respectabilities of every description--that is to say, the majority of
the influential classes--were delighted with their method. What could be
better than to see sons growing up, good Catholics in all external
observances, devoted to the order of society