sober suits, such as a lawyer might wear, and carried swords. These were
not all the Jesuits thereabouts; for I heard them speak of Father John
Gavan and Father Anthony Turner (who were in the country on that day),
and others.

As I talked with them, and gave my news and listened to theirs, again
and again I thought of the marvellous misjudgments that were always
passed upon the Society; of how men such as these were always thought to
be plotting and conspiring, and how any charge against a Jesuit was
always taken as proven scarcely before it was stated; and that not by
common men only, but by educated gentlemen too, who should know better.
For their talk was of nothing but of the most harmless and Christian
matters, and of such simplicity that no man who heard them could doubt
their sincerity. It is true that they spoke of such things as the
conversion of England, and of the progress that the Faith was making;
and they told many wonderful stories of the religion of the common
people in country places, and how a priest was received by them as an
angel of God, and of their marvellous goodness and constancy under the
bitterest trials; but so, I take it, would the Apostles themselves have
spoken in Rome and Asia and Jerusalem. But as to the disloyalty that was
afterwards charged against them, still less of any hatred or murderous
designs, there was not one such thought that passed through any of their
minds.

It was a plain but well-furnished chamber in which we sat. Beneath the
windows folks came and went continually. There were hangings on the
wall; and a press full of books and papers, and two or three tables; but
there was no concealment of anything, nor thought of it. Through the
door I saw Mr. Grove laying for dinner.