any understanding of what fruit there may be in the work upon which he is sent.

When it shall happen by God's grace (and from the very fact that we go blindfold) that a perception of what fruit there is in the labors to which we are sent opens before us, nevertheless, we must try not to lose the spirit with which we bow in blind obedience, even though a new and different task be commanded, and we be called off from what we were doing. It is necessary for those subject to command never to settle down to rest anywhere, no, not to a labor commanded, not even if they feel a clear and saintly desire in it; I mean to rest in any such fashion as to slacken the promptitude that belongs to obedience.

To sum up, obedience, as I have said, must be blind, both in contemplation of the work and in execution, dispassionate and free from any fleshly or worldly affection, taking as its pattern those words of perfection that Christ our Lord spoke to us in the Gospel: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," that is to say denying to ourselves every personal inclination, capacity, feeling, will and opinion, and submitting ourselves in every respect to the inclination, capacity, feeling, will and opinion of our superiors, taking up our own cross and not another's, although his may seem to us an easier cross to bear; and, with all humility and patience, being ready to suffer whatever may befall us at the hand of our Lord, following Christ with the cross of such labors, at whose hand we hope to receive our reward, as is said: "The husbandman that laboreth must be first partaker of the fruits."

From Coimbra Lefèvre set out on his mission to establish the Society in Spain. He was still at Valladolid when the Princess Mary, wife of Philip, died, leaving the unfortunate infant Don Carlos to grow up to mystery and tragedy; and he was still there when the Emperor's daughter Margaret, Duchess of Parma-destined to become famous in history as Regent of the Netherlands in the time of William the Silent and the beginning of the Dutch struggle for independence

from Spain-gave birth to twins in Rome, one of whom, at the parents' request, was baptized by Ignatius. I mention these dealings with royalty, for they are straws to show how the wind blows; the Jesuits are already in close intimacy with the King and Queen of Portugal, and on friendly terms with the royal house of Spain, and the royal house of Spain is the dominant power in European politics. While at Valladolid, Lefèvre wrote this entry in his Memoriale:

Another day, when I was very low in my mind and depressed by troubles and bitterness due to a lack of true brotherly love and humility towards those who had found fault with me, I lifted up my soul toward God, and I perceived that all other things are as nothing; and that the very best remedy in such moments is for me to lift my soul. For then, when my soul is lifted up on high, no darts that can be thrown have power to hurt it; I do not feel them. Neither word, nor sting, can follow there; nor mount up to the spirit that stands erect before God. No scourge comes near His tabernacle. So lift up your mind right speedily when aught of earth, in word or deed, touches your spirit; and that, whether it tend to human joy or to vain sorrow. And a longing comes over me of advancing towards the mystery of the ascension of our Lord, for in His ascension we are lifted above earthly things, now only in the spirit, but at last also in the body, even according to physical sense.

And in another entry:

An inclination always comes over me when I am at an inn, to edify by teaching and exhortation. It is always of profit in the sight of Christ and His court, to leave in inns or houses, where we happen to stop, some signs of holy living; for everywhere we can build up, everywhere we can either plant or reap, and we are debtors to all men in every condition, in every place. Let us humbly imitate the Most High God who takes heed of us and comforts us; we also are His fellow-laborers.

A little later we find him writing to Lainez, rules or counsels for winning back heretics. I think that they all went to Lefèvre when they had need of sweetness; for light they went to Ignatius. Lefèvre's first rule is: whoever wishes to do good to heretics at the present day, must see that he has much charity towards them, and loves them truly, casting out from his spirit all antagonisms.

When he left Spain, the colleges at Coimbra, Alcalá, Valencia, Gandia and Barcelona had been, at least informally, founded. He got back to Rome in July, and died on the 1st of August, 1546. According to the records of the Company his spirit joined that of Jean Coduri: "Their souls found one another in heaven (as their bodies met together in Santa Maria della Strada), and both, in one another's company, likewise abide with us here in Rome."

CHAPTER XXVIII

ROME IN LOYOLA'S TIME

ROME, in the years round and about 1540 and 1550, lay shrunken within the Aurelian walls, as if enveloped in a giant's robe. On the Pincian Hill there was scarce a building to be seen, the charming new villa erected for Cardinal Ricci, now the Villa Medici, stood on what might have been the edge of an English common; and as one went from the Villa Medici to Santa Trinità dei Monti, and then on along the Via Felix, now the Via Sistina, to Santa Maria Maggiore, all the space within the walls to the north and east, as far as the Porta Salaria, Porta Pia and the Campo Militare, was occupied by gardens, vineyards, olive groves, and vegetable patches, shaded by rows or clumps of trees, with a few churches and villas scattered in among them. And the streets that ran from Santa Maria Maggiore southwesterly towards the Forum virtually separated town from country, for all the region east and south of the Esquiline and Palatine hills, was a sort of wild park for horticulture or nature to take its ease in. So was the Aventine Hill. The Forum Romanum "overwrought with forest branches and the trodden weed" was half a cow pasture, half a waste haunted by Silence and slow Time; at the foot of the Palatine Hill, in the cool of the ruined arches that once supported the imperial palace, goat-herds lay on the grass in summer days and watched their goats, while shepherd lads drove their sheep along the Sacra Via or drovers shouted at cattle that ran loose up the Clivus Victoria. The site of the Circus Maximus was cut up into vegetable beds and irrigated by the little brook Marrana. Remains of ancient edifices lay all about, much more than now. Within the inhabited district, pavements, fragments of wall and scattered blocks testified to the magnificence of the colonnades

and arched walks that once connected the Roman Forum with Trajan's; and, out in the southerly parts, in the fields within the walls, where hunters went fowling, masons quarried and lovers of ancient art went digging for treasures, the mighty ruins of the imperial thermæ, covered with weeds, wild herbs, bushes and grasses, showed like fantastical creations of nature. Across the river, in Trastevere, over the flat land and up the hill to San Pietro in Montorio, and on all the slopes of the Janiculum, the story was much the same, vineyards, vegetable patches, or pleasure gardens with flowers and orange trees, encompassed a villa here and a church there.

The built-up parts of the city began to the north of the Capitoline Hill. Houses, sometimes detached, sometimes close to one another with walls in common, were grouped in blocks, called islands, which were separated and surrounded by little crooked, unpaved streets; excepting those of the rich, they were of a simple somewhat distrustful appearance, usually of two stories; the roofs were ridged. and tiled, the windows few and round topped, the doors protected by a penthouse. The Corso was almost the only straight road in the city; kept so, it might seem, for the gay days of the carnival, when horses, donkeys, buffaloes, and aged Jews ran involuntary races. The dwelling first occupied by Ignatius was at the foot of the hill that leads up to Santa Trinità dei Monti, near the present Piazza di Spagna, and looked out on the open hillside with vineyards and fields; whereas the house by the Torre de la Melangola was in a built-up neighborhood, to the west of the Palazzo Venezia, near the little church of Santa Maria della Strada, which was afterwards pulled down to make room for the Gesù. The first house built for the Jesuits (1543) was also put there.

At this time most of the famous buildings of the Renaissance had been already built, the palace of the Cancelleria, the Villa Farnesina, the Palazzo Madama, where the Emperor's daughter, Margaret, the friend and patron of the early Jesuits, dwelt, the Palazzo Farnese though still lacking the glorious cornice that Michelangelo was to add, and