hostile Court of Sweden, in the old manor-houses of Cheshire,
among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing, consoling,
stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of
the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying.
Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and
lives of apostate kings, to spread evil rumours, to raise
tumults, to inflame civil wars, to arm the hand of the assassin.
Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they
were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of
loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of
obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty, the right of rulers
to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to
plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by
the same man, according as he addressed himself to the subject of
Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these
divines as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of
spiritual directors; and both descriptions were correct. The
truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality
of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the
body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found
in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, who knew how to
make allowance for the little irregularities of people of
fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper
of the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of
the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was
better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If
a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a
gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too.

The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The