Surprise for the moment silenced Odo; for though it was known that Italy
was full of former Jesuits who had been permitted to remain in the
country as secular priests, and even to act as tutors or professors in
private families, he had never thought of de Crucis in this connection.
The latter, seeing his surprise, went on: "Once a Jesuit, always a
Jesuit, I suppose. I at least owe the Society too much not to own my
debt when the occasion offers. Nor could I ever see the force of the
charge so often brought against us: that we sacrifice everything to the
glory of the order. For what is the glory of the order? Our own motto
has declared it: Ad majorem Dei gloriam--who works for the Society works
for its Master. If our zeal has been sometimes misdirected, our blood
has a thousand times witnessed to its sincerity. In the Indies, in
America, in England during the great persecution, and lately on our own
unnatural coasts, the Jesuits have died for Christ as joyfully as His
first disciples died for Him. Yet these are but a small number in
comparison with the countless servants of the order who, labouring in
far countries among savage peoples, or surrounded by the heretical
enemies of our faith, have died the far bitterer death of moral
isolation: setting themselves to their task with the knowledge that
their lives were but so much indistinguishable dust to be added to the
sum of human effort. What association founded on human interests has
ever commanded such devotion? And what merely human authority could
count on such unquestioning obedience, not in a mob of poor illiterate
monks, but in men chosen for their capacity and trained to the exercise
of their highest faculties? Yet there have never lacked such men to
serve the Order; and as one of our enemies has said--our noblest enemy,
the great Pascal--'je crois volontiers aux histoires dont les temoins se
font egorger.'"