seemed already assured." And more, much more than that, he was in their eyes a holy man. One of the household, André Desfreux, used to say that somehow the grace of God seemed to have been born in Father Ignatius at birth, as a part of him, for all inordinate and sinful affections had been so dominated and suppressed, and virtuous feelings so firmly rooted in righteousness, that all of them together, affections and feelings, had become ministers to holiness, and ascended up from him to God.

By nature Ignatius was of a choleric disposition, but he had learned to master it so absolutely, that physicians, who did not know this, set down his temperament in their diagnosis as phlegmatic. This does not mean that he never showed anger; on the contrary, though he did not feel it, he often affected the appearance of it, for the sake of discipline. Ribadeneira says:

Often and often we have seen him, in perfect calmness and with all the sweetness of manner that can be imagined, order some one brought before him for punishment; and when the offender came into his presence, it seemed as if he was transformed and all afire; and then, after he had finished speaking and the offender had gone, immediately, without the slightest interval of time, he returned to his former serenity and blitheness of countenance, as if nothing had happened. It was clear that there had been no irritation whatever within, and that he had made use of that sudden look as a mask, putting it on and laying it aside at will.

And though his bodily condition had its ups and downs, for his health was inconstant, nevertheless his soul was invariably of an even temper. What I mean [I am quoting Ribadeneira] is that if you wished to ask for something from Father Ignatius, it made no difference whether he was on his way from mass or had had dinner, or whether he had just got out of bed, or had been at prayer, whether he had received good news or bad, whether things were quiet, or the world all upside down. With him there was no such thing as feeling his pulse, no taking a reckoning by the North Star, no steering by a sea chart, as is the usual way

of dealing with men in authority, for he was always in a state of calm self-mastery.

And Father Gonzalez says: "His dominion over himself, is a thing to praise God for."

During the conclave on the death of Marcellus II, in 1555, it was known that Cardinal Caraffa would in all probability be elected Pope.

Loyola sat by his window waiting for news. When it arrived a visible change came over his countenance, and as I [Father Gonzalez] have heard since both from him and from old Fathers to whom he told it, all his bones shook in his body. Without a word he got up and went into the chapel to pray and shortly came back as cheerful and contented as if the election had been to his liking.

There can be no question but that his countenance was often a mask; Gonzalez confirms this:

In Father Ignatius [he says] consideration always seems to precede his smile, as well as all his other external manifestations of feeling; for instance, he often shows an angry face when he feels no anger, or appears gay and affectionate towards some one, when he does not feel any very great affection. In short, as far as those who live with him can judge, he is so complete a master of his inner feelings, that he only gives them play as reason dictates.

Ignatius himself remarked that "whoever measured his affection by what he showed, would be much deceived; and the same with regard to harshness or any lack of affection." Let me quote Lord Rosebery again, who is speaking of Cromwell:

A great general inured to tremendous hazards has to curb and disguise his emotions until he almost loses the sensations of nature. He has to appear calm when uneasy, imperturbable in the face of calamity, confident when least confident, so as to inspire his officers and his troops; he is, in fine,

ground by fortune into temper harder than steel. Little or nothing of nature survives or is possible.

Three years before his death Ignatius was able to say that he had not called anyone a fool or a blockhead (fatuum vel stupidum) for thirty years, or used any other insulting epithet.

Ignatius was stern to himself and stern to his followers. He regarded them as soldiers in the army of Christ, and enforced discipline. Disobedience, as in an army, was the worst fault. To novices he was gentle, but to those who had been in the Society long enough to understand the rules, he showed great rigor, and if the disobedience were serious, he expelled the offender without a moment's delay. He turned one backslider (who in a time of penitence had prayed leave to stay in the kitchen and be the scullion's scullion) out of the Society and out of the house into the street on a stormy night. And when a brother of Lainez had left the Order in great destitution, Ignatius would give him nothing: "What! to a deserter, to a runaway soldier? If I were the owner of everything in the wide world, I would not give a penny to those who leave the Order, after they have once taken the vows." And he was overheard to say to a Portuguese nobleman, a member of the Society: "Don Theutonio, I will not permit in my time any breach of our rules; and much less will I permit a man of rank, and learning, to step aside from the straight path than I would an unlettered man of low birth"; and when this nobleman did step aside, Ignatius expelled him from the Society, although almost all the Fathers, for fear of scandal, protested.

Once one of the Fathers was called suddenly to confess a woman; he could not find a companion on the instant and had gone alone, contrary to rule. He was a man of well tried virtues; of the sort that no suspicion, no sinister rumor could come near. Nevertheless, for the sake of example, lest in the course of time the necessary strictness of the rule be relaxed, Ignatius commanded him to scourge himself in the presence of eight priests, while they repeated psalms in turn. On another occasion, a venerable, elderly man, Father Diego

Eguia, spoke in terms of superlative praise about Ignatius, in the presence of some people who seem to have found fault with its extravagance, or put some misinterpretation upon it; when Ignatius heard of this, he bade Father Eguia scourge himself for the time it took to repeat three psalms, on three several days, in the presence of the persons who had taken his words in ill part, and between each psalm to say, "One must not say things liable to misinterpretation," etc. And, again, Ribadeneira says:

Father Ignatius and I were strolling about together after supper, and a good many others were walking about and talking of one thing or another at a little distance off. While we two were discussing spiritual matters, Father Ignatius paused, and stepping up to one of the brothers said: "Go, see who those are walking over yonder" (the spot was too far to be distinctly visible from where we stood). The brother came back, and said it was one of our priests talking to a novice. Ignatius called the priest up, and asked, “What were you talking about to the novice?" The priest replied: "Father, we got on the topic of humility and mortification, and I was telling him what I had seen myself, or had heard, in those respects, about Brother Texeda [this was a man of high repute but not a member of the Society of Jesus] in order to encourage the lad to follow his pattern." Father Ignatius said: "Are there no examples to be found in the Society, that you go seeking them from outsiders? Who gave you permission to talk to novices, when you have not sense enough? Go to the minister, and bid him strike your name off that list, and don't speak again to a novice without leave from me."

Ribadeneira says, that Ignatius wished to teach both the priest, and the others who were standing by, that in conversations with a novice they must avoid all topics, however spiritual, that did not have to do with his novitiate, lest he be distracted, and rendered irresolute; meaning, I presume, that if Franciscans or Cistercians were held up as examples of virtue, the novice might think he would do bet

ter to join one of those orders. But to a reader today, not under the spell of Loyola's dominant character, it would appear that a slight touch, not more perhaps, of paternal jealousy entered into that abrupt rebuke. At another time he ordered an old Father, of marked piety, to scourge himself during the recitation of three psalms, because he had said to outsiders, that one of the Fathers in the house was out of his head with a fever and said things he would not have said if he had been in his right mind. These instances show, I think, that Ignatius was often very severe, but nobody ever questioned his justice; and he never asked for an act of obedience from another that he was not ready to exact of himself. Once he was in his own room alone, at prayers, when the porter came knocking at the door, and calling out importunately: "Father! Father!" Ignatius did not answer. The porter kept on knocking. Finally, Ignatius opened, and asked: "What do you want?" The porter said: "Here are letters for you which the messenger says have just come from Azpeitia, from your family," and handed him a bundle of letters. There was a fire in the room, because of the winter's cold. "Throw them into the fire," Ignatius said, and then shutting the door on the man, returned to his prayers.

I will now speak of the impression his tact made upon his companions. Ribadeneira says:

He possessed a very remarkable gift for bringing a perturbed conscience back to composure and peace; even when a sufferer found himself unable to explain his difficulty. Ignatius would set out before him everything that he felt in his soul as clearly as if he had been told; then he would recount some similar experience that he himself had passed through, and the remedy that he had discovered for a similar infirmity, and give serenity and peace, as if his hand had brushed aside a cloud.

And Lainez used to say, that "although Father Favre was greatly practised in spiritual matters, as we know and as can be seen from his letters and his book, nevertheless the dif