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before the inquisitors, but both times proved too slight and unsubstantial to warrant any action; the episodes, in fact, turned out to the ultimate advantage of Loyola, for the Dominican friar, Dr. Matthew Ori, who at the time held the office of inquisitor at Paris, conceived a high opinion of him, and stood his friend at a time of need, years afterwards, in Rome. Besides, the book of Spiritual Exercises, which as usual caught the attention of the inquisitor, on being read testified eloquently to his pure, religious, and orthodox character and creed. On one occasion, however, the students whom he was drilling in the Spiritual Exercises got into trouble. This occurred while he was still at Montaigu College. The three students in question, Pedro de Peralta, Juan de Castro, Spaniards, and Amador, a Biscayan, attended Sainte-Barbe, and were, apparently, young gentlemen of more or less social consideration. These three, carried away by a passion for privations and ascetic discipline, left the college and went to live like beggars at the hospital of St. Jacques, where Loyola had formerly lodged. They gave away everything they possessed, even their books, and begged alms in the streets, publicly. Their Spanish fellow students at SaintBarbe were scandalized, and, finding the three obdurate to persuasion, came with swords and staves, dragged them back to the Latin quarter, and made them swear to conform to the usual ways of students so long as they should remain in the University. The Principal, Dr. Govea, said that the first time Loyola appeared at Sainte-Barbe, on lui donnerait la selle, a slang phrase which meant that Loyola, in the presence of the undergraduates, would run the gantlet between two rows of masters, armed with rods. This story, as usually told, represents Dr. Govea suddenly overcome by Loyola's humility, falling on his knees, begging pardon, and so forth; but as Loyola in his Memoirs says not a word of any such ending, it seems to me an exaggeration, an embellishment due to a college legend too readily accepted. Neither Father Astrain nor Father Tacchi Venturi think it worth repeating.

During his stay in Paris Loyola learned about the govern

ment and art of managing a corporation much that was to be of great service to him years later, when he should draw up the Constitution of the Society of Jesus. The rules of the Collège de Montaigu were largely derived from the practices of the Brothers of the Common Life, and so through this channel, as well as by the Life of Christ by Ludolf of Saxony, Loyola is connected with the great German mediæval mystical tradition. He also learned much technical matter essential to the teacher's craft, and further, from his own experience, that a student must attend to his studies, and that such time was as truly spent in the service of God as if he were in church on his knees, or going about preaching the gospel, or comforting unhappy women in their distress. But the chief interest attaching to his life in Paris lies outside the University and its

courses.

CHAPTER XI

LEFÈVRE, XAVIER AND LAINEZ

IN Paris, as at Salamanca and Alcalá, Loyola held fast to one great purpose, the service of human souls. But, though the general direction he should take was plain, the particular route was much less so. Two considerations helped mark out his course. On his memorable journey to Italy he had discovered that the world was far larger and far less readily intelligible, more stiff-necked and obdurate, more full of riddles and perplexities, than he had imagined; that the methods used by St. Francis for the winning of souls were outworn; that the most burning conviction of the true faith, would be ineffectual to succour souls that were wandering in the ways of worldliness and still more those living in the blindness of disbelief or heresy. If he would become a light to guide, he must be able to set forth the truth in the conventional terms of philosophy and theology; he must be able to combat doubts with the authority of the Fathers, to refute error with reason, to confront presumptuous speculations founded upon the sands of individual experience by arguments built upon the rock of God's word.

The second consideration sprang, I think, from his perception of his power over other men, his ability to supply their needs out of the fullness of his spirit, and to impose his conceptions of truth and duty upon them. Why should he go forth, single-handed, to serve human souls, if he could bid others leave their nets and become fellow fishers of souls with him? He had begun to gather disciples about him at Barcelona. Three had gone with him to Alcalá and Salamanca, but they did not have the means to follow him to Paris, and afterwards went their several ways. In Paris,

also, his teaching had stirred three impetuous young men to sudden heat-some seeds fell upon stony places where there was little earth-but their over ostentatious piety, as I have said, shocked academic sensibilities, and they, too, fell away and did not return. (But now, during his residence at Sainte-Barbe he won over to his hopes six disciples who were to stay with him and constitute, under his leadership, the little band that, in their deliberate but passionate zeal for the saving of souls and for the greater gloy of God, would found the Company of Jesus. Loyola's life, however high above the lives of ordinary men, lies for the most part on a level, like a gaunt, stark, table-land; but above this, like peaks, stand out three great happenings: first, his conversion; second, his bidding young masters of philosophy to lay down their private ambitions and worldly ends and follow him; the third will be the formal founding and establishment of the Company of Jesus. The second of these is my immediate subject. Ignatius entered the College of Sainte-Barbe at the beginning of the autumn term, 1529. There, whether by chance or by some law of spiritual gravitation, he made the acquaintance of two remarkable young men, and for a time at least shared a room with them. Of these I shall introduce first Pierre Lefèvre, often called Favre, who is considered the first disciple.

Lefèvre was born in a mountain village near Geneva, in April, 1506. His parents were good, religious peasants in moderate circumstances, unlettered, and, apparently, both loving and reasonable; the son was still more religious minded than they. He was extremely sensitive, and, even at the age of seven, subject to strong devotional impulses. He was expected to tread the path of ordinary peasant life, to become a farmer like his father, and, accordingly, was sent out into the fields to tend sheep, an occupation to which he refers in after life as "worldly"; but he soon evinced a strong desire to go to school. There was some opposition at first, but his tears prevailed, and he went. The schoolmaster was as pious as his pupil; he seems to have seen in Latin poems so many Christian allegories, and

to have expounded Virgil, Horace, Seneca and Statius, or whatever poets were the subject of his teaching, as good Catholics in disguise. At any rate he believed that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and instilled into Pierre a religious conception of the meaning of life that abode with him always. One day in vacation, when about twelve years old, Pierre was tending sheep all alone in a pasture, when a wave of religious emotion overwhelmed him with a sudden sense of obligation to dedicate his life to God, and he took upon himself a vow of perpetual chastity. Perhaps he had just waked to a consciousness of those attributes of the flesh which monastic tradition stigmatizes as evil, for during his period of early manhood he was sorely troubled by them, until thanks to Loyola's Spiritual Exercises he shook temptation from him. At any rate his vow, the influence of his school, or, as he thought, his love of literature, saved him from sin. He stayed nine years with this good schoolmaster, studying hard; and then, at the age of nineteen, in the year 1525, went to Paris. His memory, however, lingered in his native fields. La Fontaine du Bienheureux flows, even (it is said) throughout the hottest period of summer, from the spot where it first gushed forth in answer to the young shepherd's prayers on behalf of his thirsty sheep, and a chapel has been erected thereabouts, and the halt and lame have been known to recover the use of their limbs after praying there.

At Paris Pierre entered the Collège de Sainte-Barbe. Here after a full course of philosophy he took a degree as Bachelor of Arts and a further degree as Licentiate. During these years he lived in close intimacy with a fellow student, Francis Xavier, who entered college and also took his degree at the same time as himself.

In the autumn of 1529 Loyola matriculated at SainteBarbe, and the three, as I have said, shared a room together. Loyola was just beginning the course in philosophy, and, following a custom of the University, the professor, Juan Peña, assigned Lefèvre, whose scholarship was excellent, to act as his tutor. The relations between the tutor of twenty-three and the pupil of thirty-four became