¦ YALE-VHiPWEiasirinf •

From the estate of
Miss Martha Day Porter
1923

SECRET PLAN OF THE JESUITS.

THE JESUIT CONSPIRACY.

THE SECRET PLAN

THE ORDER.

DETECTED AND REVEALED BY

THE ABBATE LEONE.

WITH A PREFACE BY
M. VICTOR CONSIDEEANT,
Member of the National Assembly of France, and of the Municipal Council of the Seine.

TRANSLATED, WITH THE AUTHORS SANCTION, FBOM THE
AUTHENTIC FRENCH EDITION.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186 STEAND.
MDCCCXLVIII.

LONDON
VIZETELLTt BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS,
rHTERBOROUQB COURT, FL1ET STREET.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.
In putting forth a publication like the present,
the authenticity of which will undoubtedly be
strongly contested by those who are interested in so
doing — one, moreover, which does not belong to the
class of writings emanating from the Societary School,
and which I edit in my own individual capacity, I am
bound to accompany it with a testimonial, and with
some personal explanations. I.
I had long been aware of the existence of the
Secret Plan, of which I had received accounts from
many of my friends in Geneva. Their esteem and
affection for M. Leone were of a very warm nature.
They spoke of him in terms that excluded all suspicion
of fraud. The objects too of his constant studies, the
elevation of his ideas, and his religious labours in the
Edificateur, indicated a man of serious character, loving
goodness, and pursuing truth with natural and sincere
ardour. Notwithstanding all these grounds for a favour
able prejudice, I confess that I could not bring myself
to believe what had been told me of the Jesuit
Conference. b

EDITORS PKEFACB.

Visiting Geneva in September, 1846, I heard the
Secret Plan much talked of, and on all hands I received
the most positive assurances of M. Leone's good faith.
Among those to whom he had made complete disclo
sures — and there were a great number of such persons —
I did not meet with one who was not convinced of the
authenticity of the Conference, and of the narrator's
veracity. Nevertheless it was not until I had had
some very serious conversations with men whose
perspicacity and good sense it would have been absurd
in me to disregard — men who had long held intercourse
with M. Leone, and frequently heard his manuscript
read — that my incredulity was shaken.
I felt, indeed, that after all I was infinitely less
competent to decide in the matter than those whose
judgment upon it was opposed to mine, and that not
having seen the documents or conversed with the
witness, it would have been presumptuous and irra
tional in me to settle dogmatically that they were
wrong and that I was right. I therefore suspended
my judgment, and abstained from forming any positive
opinion on the subject.
It was in Paris, towards the close of 1846, that I
first saw M. Leone. I scarcely spoke to him about his
manuscript, for which I was informed he had found a
publisher. I awaited the appearance of the work tp
become acquainted with its contents.
I must confess that at that time I did not believe
much in the Jesuits, and therefore I was disposed to

EDIT0B S PEEFACE. ill
attach but little importance to the publication of the-
Conference. It had always struck me that the public
did the Jesuits too much honour in giving themselves
so much concern about them. I believed indeed that
the order was deeply committed to very retrograde
ideas, but I did not give it credit for the activity,
profundity, or Machiavellian ubiquity generally im
puted to it. In a word, to use a phrase that accurately
expresses what I then thought, I calculated that at least
a discount of from sixty to eighty per cent should be
struck offfrom the current estimate respecting the Jesuits.
As for their obscurantist and retrograde conspiracy,
I thought it of no more account against the develop
ment of human progress and liberty, than the barriers
of sand raised by children against the tides of the
ocean. And even now, though enlightened as to the
character and intrinsic power of the celebrated Com
pany, I still persist in that opinion ; for, however strong
the arms that raise it, the anti-democratic barrier is still
but a rampart of shifting sand, incapable of stopping
the rising tide : at most it can but trouble the clear
ness of the foremost waves. II.
By-and-bye M. Leone was a more frequent atten
dant at our weekly conversations on Wednesday at the
office of the Democratie Pacijique. He spoke to me
of a work on which he was engaged, and appointed a
day on which to read me a copious exposition of the

IV EDITOE S PEEFACE.
argument. I listened to it with the liveliest interest,
and was deeply impressed by its contents. They re
lated to the publication of extremely important docu
ments, stamped with the highest ecclesiastical sanction,
absolutely authentic beyond all cavil, and formed to
shatter the coarse and oppressive carapace of the
Catholic Theocracy,* and place in the most shining
light the democratic and humanitary Christianity of
the gospel, and the fathers of the first three centuries.
It is the lamp that sets fire to the bushel.
The publication of this work, resting on the most
solid bases, and of a theoretic value altogether superior,
appeared to me most important. The Introduction
* Theocracy. Excepting the rigorously defined terms used in
mathematics, almost all words in the language have very diverse
meanings ; yet with good faith and some intelligence a mutual under
standing is always possible.
But to avoid every false interpretation of the word Theocracy, which
occurs frequently in the preface, I declare that both therein, and in the
rest of the work, it is employed in its historical signification, and not
at all in its grand and beautiful etymological sense.
Theocracy, in its historical import, is the usurpation of the tem
poral government by a caste or sacerdotal body, separated from the
people, and exercising political, social, and religious despotism. For
this Theocracy religion is but a means, domination is the end.
The etymological meaning of the same word is, on the contrary, the
government of God, the coming of that reign of God, which Jesus com
mands us to pray for to our heavenly Father, and to establish amongst
us ; that is to say, the ideal of government here below — democracy, evan
gelically, harmoniously, and religiously organised. In this sense, far
from repudiating Theocracy, no one would desire it more ardently
than I !

EDITOE S PEEFACE. V
was complete, and was about to be published separately
in one volume, for which I was making the necessary
corrections, when Leone received from one of our
common friends in Geneva intelligence of a breach of
confidence committed by his copyist, and the advertise
ment of the approaching publication of the Secret
Plan in Berne.
On receiving this news, the details of which are
given in the subsequent introduction, Leone changed
his plans. He begged me to lay aside the first work,
and immediately publish the Secret Plan in Paris, so
as if possible to anticipate the necessarily faulty, trun
cated, and wholly unsubstantiated edition that was about
to appear in Switzerland. But the notice he had
received was too late, and ere long he had in his hands
a copy of a bad edition, containing a part only of his
MS., printed at Berne, without name or testimonial,
and which in its anonymous garb — the livery of shame
— did not and could not obtain any general notice.
Thenceforth Leone's solicitude was not so much to
hasten as to perfect the publication which was already
in the press, and to make the third part (corroborative
proofs), which is entirely wanting in the Berne edition,
as complete as circumstances could require or allow.
III.
At that period there no longer remained any doubt
in my mind as to the authenticity of the Secret
Conference and Leone's sincerity.
33

Vi EDITOR'S PEEFACE.
To suppose that his story was a romance, the Con
ference a lying fabrication, and that Leone made me at
once the dupe and the accomplice of a calumnious hoax,
it would be necessary to esteem him the vilest and most
despicable of men, considering the mutual relations
that had grown up between us. But those relations
had fully justified in my eyes the high estimate which
our common friends in Geneva, who had known him
long and intimately, had formed of his integrity, high-
mindedness, and goodness of soul. I therefore declare,
that if the circumstances detailed in the following
narrative present to the reader's eyes an extraordinary
character and a romantic appearance, calculated to
stagger his belief, I for my part would regard as a still
more inexplicable mystery, the quantum of baseness,
and the power of fraud, which Leone must have been
endowed with, in order so long to beguile the attached
friends he had found in Geneva and Paris. Leone
has given us such strong positive proofs of disinterested
ness, single-minded sincerity, and incapacity to play
an assumed part, that far from ascribing to him the
faculty of mystifying and duping others, those who
know him see in him, along with an unswerving
devotedness to principle and truth, one of those natures
which, while they preserve in mature age the confi
ding simplicity and sensibility of early youth, are
much rather themselves exposed to be deceived
every day.

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

IV.
But the guarantees afforded by the character of the
witness are not the only motives that have convinced
me of the authenticity of his testimony. Thousands
of proofs, incidents of conversation, questions put at
long intervals on delicate points, and imperceptible
circumstances of the drama, have always resulted in an
agreement so exact, positive, and formal, that truth
alone could produce such perfect coaptation. One
example will be sufficient to explain the nature of the
proofs I am now alluding to.
Among other points in the narrative, it had struck
me as an extraordinary and quite romantic circumstance,
that, when the young neophyte entered the rector's
apartment in the convent of Chieri, and took for
his amusement a book from one of the library shelves,
he should have found in the very first instance, behind
the very first book he laid his hand on, the registry of
the Confessions of the Novices, and again, immediately
behind it, that of the Confessions of Strangers, and
the rest. I had often reflected on the singularly sur
prising nature of this chance, and I had intended to
mention my perplexity on this subject to Leone. Now
it happened one morning while I was writing, and
while he was conversing near me with other persons
to whom he was relating his adventure, I heard him
say, in the course of a narrative delivered with all the
precision of a very lively recollection, "I laid my

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

hand on the first book on the library shelf." This
trivial detail, which was not in the first manuscript,
and which Leone thus gave, unasked for, in the course
of a recital the animation of which vividly recalled the
scene to his memory and made him describe all its
circumstances, explained to me in the most natural
and satisfactory manner a thing which had previously
appeared to me in the light, not indeed of an impossi
bility, but of a serious improbability.
This example is enough to show the nature of the
countefproofs I have mentioned ; and so great a num
ber of similar ones have occurred to me, in the infinite
turns and changes of conversation, during the four or
five months I have been led to apply myself, often for
several hours daily, to the correction of Leone's manu
script and proofs, that for my own part, independently
of the arguments drawn from the character of the
man, they are enough to erase from my mind all
doubt as to the veracity of his tale. The utmost skill
in lying could not produce a tissue always perfectly
smooth in its most delicate interruptions. Imagination
may, no doubt, very ingeniously arrange the plot and
details of a fiction ; but if at long intervals, in the
thousand turns of conversation, and without letting
the author perceive your drift, you make him talk at
random of all the details which the story suggests,
then certainly if the web is spurious you will discover
many a broken thread. Now, this web of Leone's I
have examined with a microscope for months together

EDITOE S PEEFACE. ix
in every part, and I have not been able to detect in it
one broken thread or one knot. I have no doubt,
therefore, if the authenticity of the narrative become
the subject of serious discussion, that the narrator will
rise victorious over every difficulty that can be raised
up against him ; for I do not think that he can encoun
ter any stronger or more numerous than I myself and
some of my friends have directly or indirectly set
before him. V.
I will now examine considerations of a third kind,
which have this advantage over the preceding ones,
that they can be directly appreciated by everybody —
for they are derived from internal evidence.
I say, without hesitation, that to me it is not
matter of doubt that every cool impartial person, who
has some experience of the affairs of life and of litera
ture, and who shall have read very attentively the
speeches in the Secret Conference, will recognise in
them the distinct stamp of reality.
It seems evident to me that these speeches cannot
be the produce of a literary artist's imagination : the
imitation of nature is not to be carried to such a pitch.
Certainly, it is not a young man, a young Piedmontese
priest, though endowed with talent, sensibility, ima
gination, and good sense, who could have produced
such a work. To this day, though his intellect is
much more mature and his acquirements considerably

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

enlarged, I do not hesitate to declare Leone quite
incapable of composing such a piece. I go further
and assert, that there is not one among all the living
writers of Europe who could have been capable of doing
so. There is in those speeches a mixture of strength,
weakness, brilliancy, a variety of styles and views, a
composite of puerilities, grandeur, ridiculous hopes, and
audacious conceptions, such as no art could create.
Yes, they are surely priests who speak those
speeches — not good and simple priests, but proud
priests, versed in a profound policy, nurtured in the
traditions of an order that regards itself as the citadel
and soul of Catholic Theocracy — whose gigantic am
bition, whose hopes and whose substance, it has gathered
up and condensed ; an order whose constant thought
is a thought of universal sway, and which ceases not
to strive after the possession of influences, positions,
and consciences, by the audacious employment of every
means. Yes, those who speak thus are indeed men
detached from every social tie — emancipated from every
obligation of ordinary morality— reckoning as nothing
whatever is not the Order, in which they are blended
like metals in the melting pot ; the corporation, in
which they are absorbed as rivers in the sea ; the
supreme end, to which they remorselessly sacrifice every
thing — having begun by sacrificing to it each his life,
his soul, his free-will, his whole personality. Yes,
those are truly the leaders of a mysterious formidable
initiation — patient as the drop of water that wears

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

down the rock — prosecuting in darkness its work of
centuries over the whole globe — despising men, and
founding its strength upon their weakness — covering
its political encroachments under the veil of humility
and the interests of Heaven — and weaving with invin
cible perseverance the meshes of the net with which, in
the pride that is become its faith, its morals, and its
religion, it dreams of enclosing Kings and Peoples,
States and Churches, and all mankind.
History demonstrates that it is the nature of all
great human forces, material or intellectual, military
or religious, individual or corporate, to be incarnated
in a People, an Order, an Idea, a Religion, or to have
borne mere names of men, such as Alexander, Cassar,
Mahomet, Charlemagne, Hildebrand, Napoleon, &c;
it is the nature of all these great forces to gravitate by
virtue of their inward potency towards the conquest
and unity of the world.
It is a phenomenon likewise proved by history,
that hitherto the laws of ordinary morality — the duties
considered by practical conscience as the imperative
rules of men's individual relations — are drowned and
annihilated in the gulphs opened by those vast domin
ating ambitions, which substitute the calculations of
their policy and the interests of their sovereign aim for
the rules of vulgar conscience. At those heights in the
subversive world in which humanity is still plunged,
men are soon considered by those ambitions which work
on nations and events, as but means or obstacles.

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

Now, the Theocratic genius, founding its domina
tion on the alleged interests of God— covering them
with the impenetrable veil of the Sanctuary — marching
with the infinite resources acquired in a long practice
of confession, in a profound study of the human heart,
and in the arsenal of all the seductions of matter and
mysticism ; taking for the auxiliaries of its inimitable
design human passions, obscurity, and time ;— the
Theocratic genius — if, with a deliberate consciousness
of its aim, it has constituted itself a hierarchical militia,
detached from all ties of affection — must necessarily
carry to its maximum of concentration and energy
that politic spirit before which persons and the morality
of actions disappear, and which retains but one human
sentiment and one moral principle — that of absolute
devotedness to the animus of the corporation, to its aim
and its triumph. And who, then, save eight or ten
of those strong heads among the higher class of the
initiated — those politic priests, those brains without
heart, puffed up by the defeat of the modern spirit
(1824), intoxicated by a recent triumph, and by the
perfume of that general Restoration which had already
given them back a legal and canonical existence, and
the favour of the governments of Italy, France,
Austria, &c. — who but such men, taking measure
at such a moment of their forces for conquest, could
have held such language ?

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

VI.
There are mad flights of pride so delirious, that no
imagination could invent them. To set them forth
with the fire, brilliancy, and energetic audacity, they
display in a great number of passages in the Secret
Conference, the Word that speaks must itself be wholly
possessed by them. That sombre and subterraneous
¦ profundity — that laborious patience, proof against the
toil of ages — that sense of ubiquity — that absolute
devotedness to a purpose whose fulfilment is seen
through the vista of many generations — that absorption
of the personal and transient individual in the corpor
ate and permanent individual — and above all, if I may
so express myself, that transcendant immorality, which
all stamp upon the Secret Conference the character
of a monstrous and insane grandeur ; these are surely
the tokens of a paroxysm of subversive unitism,
such as could only be manifested, the moment after a
European resurrection and victory, by Policy and
Theocracy allied in an Order self-constituted as the
occult brain of the Church, and the predestined supreme
government of the world.
And truly, when we reflect on the organic virtue
of that theocratic power, which feels itself immutable
amidst the vacillations of the political world, we are
constrained to own, that such is the nature of its
means, such the temper of its weapons, that it might
with more reason than any conqueror, or even than

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

any people, aspire to universal dominion, if instead of
seeking to cast back the nations into the past, and to
plunge mankind again into the night of the middle
ages, a thing which is purely impossible, it had under
taken the glorious task of guiding men towards the
splendours of freedom and the future. That Order,
which for many a century has braved kings and
nations — which neither the decrees of princes, nor the
bulls of popes, nor the anathemas of the conscience of
nations, nor the terrible wrath of revolutions, have
been able to crush — whose severed fragments reunite
in the shade like those of the hydra — that Order, every
where present and impalpable, which feels itself living,
with its eternal and mute thought, in the midst of all
that makes a noise and passes away — that Order, on
comparing itself with those governments whose vices,
corruption, and caducity, would make them pliant
subjects for its crafty magnetism — must certainly have
conceived through its chiefs the plan developed in the
Secret Conference, and none but the initiated could
have given to that plan the profound, eloquent, and
impassioned forms, which that grand folly there as
sumes. The fumes of pride have mounted to the
brain of the mysterious colossus, and he has failed
to perceive that his feet are of clay, and that the
inevitable flood of the modern spirit is reaching them
and washing them away.
Boundless ambition, a mighty organization, in
domitable perseverance, and absolute devotedness, all

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

directed to the attainment of an impossible object,
an absurd chimera pursued by a transcendent system
of means as immoral as they are puerile — such are, in
brief, the characteristics of that modern incarnation of
Theocracy which is called Jesuitism.
VII.
I am not the only person who has remarked a
strange form that frequently recurs in the speeches of
the reverend fathers of the Secret Conference, namely
those harangues to imaginary auditors, of which they
almost all present specimens, or fragments, in their
addresses to their colleagues. There are some to
whom this form seems extraordinary and unnatural-
Extraordinary I own it is, but as to its being unnatural,
the circumstances and the men considered, I am quite
of the opposite opinion.
Men who for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years, more
or less, have been in the daily practice of public
speaking, whose incessant task is proselytism, the
seduction of consciences, the propagation of their
policy, the conquest of souls, and who when met
together to concert and mutually make known their
means of action and their modes of proceeding, are
glad to display each his own individual skill, such
men would naturally have recourse to the form of
communication in question. On reflection, then, it is
evident that this singularity is perfectly natural in the
special case in which it occurs. The more improbable

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

it seems in an abstract point of view, the more strongly
does it argue in favour of the authenticity of the
Conference; for most assuredly the idea of putting all
those numerous harangues into the mouths of the
reverend fathers would never have occurred spon
taneously to one who should have sat down to
compose a fiction. The thing is one of those which
we can account for when they are done, but which
we can hardly imagine beforehand. Leone himself has
never, so far as I am aware, given the explanation of
the matter which to me appears so simple. The answer
I have heard him return to objections of this kind has
always been, " I can only say that the thing was so."
VIII.
It certainly cannot be said that there are not, in
the preliminary narrative, or in the Conference itself,
points as to which Leone has clearly perceived the
difficulty of overcoming public incredulity. He has
even debated with himself whether he should not
suppress certain passages of the conference, knowing
very well that they would prove stumbling-blocks,
and that many persons refusing to believe them, might
very probably reject all the rest along with them.
Finally he resolved to set down everything he had
heard with the most scrupulous fidelity, and in my
opinion the has herein done wisely, notwithstanding the
inconveniences resulting from such a course. Sound
critics will see in the fact an additional evidence of

EDITOE S PEEFACE. Xvii
truth. They will say to themselves that were Leone
an author instead of a narrator, he would have taken
good care not to leave in a work, not hastily put forth,
matters which he must have been well aware would
appear incredible.
In like manner, if his story of the circumstances
by which the Secret Conference was disclosed to him
were a fiction, would it not have been very easy to
make that fiction more probable ? Tale for tale, there
might have been devised a score that on the whole
would have been much simpler and would have pre
sented much fewer of those apparent difficulties on
which common objectors tenaciously fasten. No ; and
as Leone is far from being a fool, I say (and for proof
I might appeal to circumstances, such as the daring
resolution he adopted at the very moment when he
had been panic-stricken by a danger that still hung
over him, and which he himself describes to satiety;
the almost literally exact stenography of the conference ;
the accumulation in so brief a space of time of the
two revelations, that of the secret books in the library,
and that of the speeches of the reverend fathers,
&c, &c), I say for my part, instead of the veracity
of the story being impugned by its improbability, that
very improbability is a pledge of veracity:
IX.
I conclude with an observation. Leone gives with
exact details the narrative of his own life at the
c 2

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

periods which have reference to the event of which
he speaks. It is incontestible that he entered the
monastery of Chieri with an extremely ardent, fixed,
and profound determination ; that he desired nothing
so much as to become a Jesuit ; that hopes had already
been held out to him which could not but have whetted
his desires ; and that all at once, without any ascertained
motive, he was seen, to the great amazement of every
body, flying from that monastery into which he had
so eagerly desired admittance two months before, and
where he had met with nothing but kindness, favour,
and all sorts of winning treatment. It is certain, then,
that he received some terrible shock in the monastery.
The fact is attested by his flight, his subsequent illness,
and his sudden abandonment of that Jesuit career
which had been so much the object of his ambition,
while at the same time he did not quit the clerical pro
fession. This mysterious revolution, the meaning of
which he could not then explain to any one of his
friends or relations, and of which his old mother, who
now lives in Paris, did not know the cause until the
death of the head of the family allowed Leone to quit
Piedmont — this revolution was certainly the effect
of some extraordinary and formidable adventure, some
sudden revelation, some appalling burst of light ; for
him, whom it had befallen, it was decisive of the whole
bent of his life, and made the study of all that per
tains to Jesuitism thenceforth his principal occupation.
In fine, the facts relating to all the circumstances

EDITOR S PREFACE. XIX
which form in the narrative the envelope, as it were,
to the Secret Conference, are of public notoriety
in Leone's native land, and he narrates them
publicly, mentioning names, places, dates, facts, and
persons. Something most extraordinary, unknown to
the Jesuits themselves, who were unable to account
for his flight, must have perturbed his being, altered
his health, and effected a total change in the bent of
his mind and his ideas ; and for my part I doubt not
that the publication now made by Leone, is the true
and sincere explanation of that mysterious point.
X.
I will now say a word as to my co-operation in
Leone's publication, because, independently of what I
have already made known, there was in this matter
a circumstance which has strongly corroborated my
conviction. Leone as yet writes French but very imperfectly,
so that I have been obliged to revise his whole manu
script, pen in hand, before sending it to press. Now
I found an enormous difference as to style between
the second part and the others. In the Secret Con
ference Leone was supported by the text, and often by
the solidity of the speeches, which he had only to
translate, and here he left me hardly anything to
correct ; whenever there was any awkwardness or
ambiguity of expression, I had only to turn to the
Italian text and find a more exact translation for the

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

passage. In this part of the work his French manu
script has only undergone slight modifications in a
few passages.
In the other two parts (the first especially, for the
third consists chiefly of extracts), I have had much
more to do than I could have wished, and frequently
whole pages to rewrite completely. The difference
was so marked that it was impossible for me to retain
the least doubt as to the duality of the sources whence
it arose ; and notwithstanding our conjoint labour,
there still remains such a discrepancy between Leone's
style and that of the Secret Conference, that the least
observant reader will easily recognise a diversity of
origin. As an example, I will particularly invite atten
tion to the reflection with which Leone closes the con
ference, and which begins thus (see end of the second
part), " By these words, the echo and confirmation
of others not less presumptous." When we came to
this passage in the course of our revision, Leone said
to me, "Is it worth while, think you, to let that
reflection stand?" "By all means, my dear friend,"
I replied with a smile, "let it stand. We must not
think of suppressing this precious naif reflection with
which you, as a narrator, have quite naturally closed
your report of the conference. There is, if you will
allow me to say so, between your summing up and
that of the president, paragraphs xix. and xxi., which
precedes it, so enormous, so colossal a difference, that
I know no more glaring proof of the authenticity of

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

the conference, and of the impossibility of your being
its author. How pale and weak is what you say in
comparison with the language of the general of the
the Order ! How much does the expression of your
sentiments on Jesuit ambition sink below the Word of
the Company, the living incarnation of that ambition ?
The contrast seems to me so important, that far from
suppressing your lines, you must forthwith grant me
permission to repeat to the reader what I have just
been saying to you."
And indeed whoever compares the grandiloquent
language of paragraph xix. and the concluding words
of paragraph xxi., with Leone's final reflection, will, I
think, admit with me that the latter is merely a nar
rator, and will own how far external passion, if I may
be allowed the expression, falls short of internal
passion in the expression of a sentiment. To body
forth the theocratic will and purpose with those traits
of fire that flash every moment from the pen of De
Maistre, and often from the lips of the fathers of the
Secret Conference, the writer must himself have raised
an altar to theocracy in his soul, and have long
kept up, upon that inward altar, the sombre fire its
worship demands. Although it does not always show
with equal brilliancy throughout the conference, every
attentive critic will easily distinguish the language of
the initiated from that of ordinary men.

EDITOE'S PEEFACE.

XI.
Let me recapitulate.
In this affair I have examined the elements of the
cause like a juror.
The character of the witness, my scrutiny into
the circumstances of his story, and my study of the
subject in itself, have left no doubt upon my mind as
to the authenticity of the revelation, and I declare,
on my soul and conscience, that I believe Leone
TO BE PERFECTLY FAITHFUL AND SINCERE.
Now, whereas I should deem it odious to make use,
even against Jesuitism, of fraud and calumny, I have
held it no less obligatory upon me, in the actual state of
tilings, convinced as I am of the reality of the Jesuit
plan, to assist Leone, who had been unable to find a
publisher, in laying it before the public. This seemed
to me a personal and conscientious duty.
When I came to the determination to edit the
manuscript, the Jesuits were exhibiting in Switzerland
what they were capable of. They tried every means
to bring about there an intervention of the anti-liberal
powers — a coalition into which the French government
monstrously entered. Instead of conjuring civil war by
a voluntary retreat, those pretended disciples of Jesus
were seen artfully kindling the fanaticism and rancour
of the abused populations of the Sonderbund, and doing
all in their power to provoke a bloody conflict. Their
aim was to recover, by means of an intervention, the

EDITOE S PEEFACE. XXlli
ground taken from them in the cantons and the diet
by the progress of free ideas. They spared no effort
to produce that odious result, which happily they
failed to accomplish.
Moreover, it is well known what has been and
what is still the part played by them in Rome, and
what a weighty obstacle they are to the liberal inten
tions of the great Pontiff, who at every step in advance
encounters their occult and potent influence. The
publication of the Secret Plan will serve to unmask
them. Their whole strength consists in the mystery
in which they shroud themselves ; let their projects be
exposed to daylight, and the charm will be broken.
These darksome and malignant associations are like
the phantoms of the night that vanish the moment they
are touched by one ray of sunshine.
I have said wherefore, and how, I came to take upon
me the editing of this book, although certain of Leone's
tendencies are not always perfectly in accordance with
mine. The main thing for me in this matter has been
to aid in unveiling that odious conspiracy (in which
many still hesitate to believe, and I own that I was
for a long time among the number) which has for its
defined and specific end the re -establishment of dark
ness and despotism, and for its means the deliberate
and conscious employment of the most abominable of
lies — religious lying.
Those who may refuse to consider the Secret Con
ference as anything but a romance, cannot at least deny

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

that the romance is perfectly historical. The third part
contains an assemblage of proofs putting this point
beyond all cavil. The gospel is the code of human
freedom and dignity ; some would make it a code of
brutification and slavery, or rather they would stifle
the rays of light and love that beam from it, and
substitute a despicable fanaticism for the spiritual and
democratic religion of Jesus. They will not succeed
in their design ; but to insure the defeat of the theo
cratic conspiracy, the friends of progress and freedom
must bestir themselves.
Catholicism is a great religious institution. It is
necessary to the development of that living institu
tion that the hierarchy which governs it be renovated
and retempered in the living sources of the gospel.
The first steps which the pontiff, who now wears the
tiara, has made in the way of progress and liberty, are
a capital revelation for Catholicism. To be or not to be.
Christianity is immortal. A religion which is
summed up in these words, " Love one another, and
love God above all things," cannot die out from man
kind ; for every progress of humanity is but a new
and fuller unfolding within it of Christianity, that is to
say of love and liberty. But the future destiny of
the catholic institution, which is a government, now
depends, like that of all other governments, on its
reconciliation with the spirit of the gospel, which is the
spirit of humanity.
The catholic government is still aristocratic and

EDITOE'S PEEFACE. XXV
despotic. Let it emancipate its serfs ! let it recognise
the rights of the secondary clergy and guarantee them ;
let it put itself in harmony with the sentiments of the
primitive church, and strive to free the world instead of
employing itself in the old work of oppression. Chris
tianity is young and radiant ; Theocracy is decrepid:
let Roman Catholicism choose between the two. Any
long delay would be perilous.
The Jesuits are the janissaries of theocratic Catho
licism. The pope of Islam has perhaps shown the
Catholic pope in what way a serious reform should be
begun. LONDON, Jan. 21th, 1848. VICTOR C0N8IDEBANT,
The Editor,
Publisher, Member of the General Council of the Seine.
P.S.— Paris, May 28th, 1848.— Since I wrote the
above Preface to Leone's narrative in London, and
at the moment when the work was about to appear
simultaneously in England, France, Belgium, and
Germany, the Revolution of February changed the
face of things. The party of oppression, favoured by
the impious alliance of the French government with
the absolute courts, has been miraculously overthrown ;
the Jesuits themselves have been expelled from Rome.
Let us not be deceived, however ; the battle is not
won ; peace and liberty are still far from being solidly
established in the world. d

XXvi EDITOR'S PEEFACE.
Peace, liberty, complete reciprocity ( solidarity J,
and universal brotherhood, will only be realised by the
definitive incarnation of the spirit of the Gospel in
humanity. The work now before us is to make a
democratic and christian Europe, instead of the aris
tocratic -and, socially speaking, heathen Europe, which
was yesterday official and legal. The question is far
more religious and social than political. It is the era
of practical Christianity which we are called on to
inaugurate. Hence, though Leone's publication now no longer
possesses the character it would have had in the very
heat of the strife, before the Revolution, it nevertheless
retains its value. It will serve the good cause by
exposing the designs of the bad cause ; it will help
the development of the true Christianity, democratic
Christianity, by exhibiting in its odious nakedness
the pseudo Christianity, the Christianity of the profit-
seekers, of Theocracy, of Despotism.
The two parties must be accurately segregated : on
the one side daylight, on the other darkness.
The subordinate clergy, whose condition in France
is an actual civil, political, and religious thraldom, has
respired the air of freedom with hope and love. Let
the Republic give it a democratic constitution — let it
restore to it the rights and guarantees of which it
cannot be much longer despoiled — and it will soon
have made its conquest. The subordinate clergy begs
only to be released from the yoke. It groans beneath

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

superiors who are imposed upon it, and whom it fears ;
whereas it ought to elect and love them. Let us
emancipate the sacerdotal people ; set it free, and the
oppressive and shameful doctrines of Jesuitism will
find in it their most formidable antagonist.
It is time that this be done. It is time that the
ecclesiastical people communicate with the lay people
in the sentiments of modern life and modern ideas.
It is idle now to think of conserving dead interpreta
tions. Society is athirst for liberty, equality, and
fraternity : it is time to return to the holy source, and
recover the liberating import of Christianity.
Providence had committed an august mission to
the Church : to perpetuate Christ's teaching, to render
him for ever living on earth, preciously to preserve
and to realise daily more and more the gospel principles
of unity, charity, and universal brotherhood. Instead
of accomplishing this task, the theocratic spirit has
striven to efface from the Church the traces of Him
who had founded it — to filch away the liberal meaning
of his instructions — to paralyse the intellectual life —
and, in a word, to make mankind a flock of brutes, to
be shorn by the Princes of the Church and the Princes
of the World.
Disowned, let us hope, by the mass of the clergy,
this theocratic spirit will soon be constrained, finally
and for ever, to give up Europe to the genius of the
new times, reconciled with the most sacred traditions
of humanity. The moment is come for the Church to

EDITOE S PEEFACE.

repudiate all fellowship with a sect which has led it
astray from its proper path, and to regain the ground
it has lost in the confidence of men, by actively further
ing all truly christian works — that is to say, all works
of social and intellectual amelioration.
The Revolution of February has opened a magni
ficent field for the Church ; the problem now to be
solved is the Constitution of a Christian
Societt. For eighteen hundred years has Christi
anity been preached to men ; — how to incarnate it in
society is now the problem. PoHtical society itself
invokes the Gospel formula, taking for its motto those
three christian words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
Let the subordinate clergy and the liberal bishops,
casting off the anti-christian and anti-catholic traditions
of Jesuitism, press forward, full of faith, hope, and
love, in the path which is opened to them. The'
mission of true Christianity is now to found universal
Democracy. The Pope has expelled the Jesuits. It remains for
him to reinstal the Papacy in its spiritual and catholic
functions by abdicating all temporal authority. It
is its temporal interests that have corrupted the
Church. So long as the head of the Church shall remain
King of the Roman States, the Catholic Church will
be nothing but a Roman oligarchy. It must again
become a spiritual and universal democracy; and its
general councils must proclaim to the earth the true

EDITORS PREFACE.

sense, the liberating and emancipating sense, of the
Scriptures. A sincere return to the democratic spirit of the
Gospel ; a rupture of that simoniacal alliance which
odiously perverted a religion of freedom and fraternity,
making it into a yoke of oppression for the benefit
of all who use up nations for their own profit ; a formal
repudiation of the feudal, theocratic, obscurantist, and
Jesuitical spirit : such is the price at which the salva
tion of the catholic institution is to be secured.
V. c.
PP.S. July 10th, 1848.— Events follow upon each
other with such rapidity that every day produces in a
manner a new situation.
The day after the Revolution of February, the
Republic was accepted by all in France. Louis Philippe
left behind him neither affection nor esteem, nor roots
of any sort. Rejoicing in his fall, the legitimists said
to themselves that the time of monarchies was passed,
and gave in their adhesion on all sides to the republican
principle, the government of all, by all, and for all.
The grand and vast idea of universal union found
in the language of Lamartine an utterance full of
brilliancy, elevation, and authority.
Unfortunately, narrow categories, language of
injudicious violence, and conquerors' airs, calculated to
lead to the belief that the immense majority of the
d 2

XXX EDITOR'S PREFACE.
French citizens, who were republicans of the morrow,
were about to be governed as conquered populations
by the republicans of the eve ; all those violences of
speech and demeanour, which had not even the logic
of the strong hand in their favour, produced serious
reactionary ferments in the country. The huge folly
of postponing the elections considerably diminished the
democratic element in the National Assembly, which
instead of feeling itself united, confident, and strong,
was from the very outset uncertain, distrustful of
itself, irresolute, and divided.
Hence the critical situation in which we now behold
the republic and society.
A deliberately reactionary party, which would not
have existed, had not its creation and development
been provoked as if on purpose, is rapidly organising.
It is turning to its own account material interests,
the nature of which it is to be bhnd, blind and violent
egotisms, and the resuscitated hopes, enterprising and
intriguing, of the various dynastic factions and of the
theocratic faction.
All these elements constitute a formidable coali
tion, in which intrigue is organising the resistance
of those interests which it can so easily mislead and
impassion. The Jesuit element, that mysterious army at the
service of obscurantism, despotism, and social retro-
gradation, has thus suddenly found allies in those who
but yesterday fought against it.

EDITOR S PEEFACE.

Under the restoration it had on its side in France
only the party of the emigration.
Under the monarchy of July it had indeed enlisted
among its allies the official and satisfied bourgeoisie,
which entered into covenant with it in its retrograde
tendencies. M. Guizot and his rotten majority sup
ported the general tendencies of Jesuitism, and formally
yoked themselves to its cause, by pledging the policy
of France to the service of the Sonderbund.
To-day, a new stratum of French society has passed
over to the enemy, to the fear of progress and of demo
cratic and social principles — a stupid and fatal fear, for
interests can only be saved by their alliance with
sentiments and principles. This new retrogression is
authenticated by this token, that M. Thiers — who is
what is called a tactician, a practical man, a man of
manoeuvres — and his organ the Constitutionnel, have,
with brazen fronts, gone over to the party of which
they had long been the bugbears.
M. Thiers, moreover, maintained a few days ago,
in a committee of the Assembly, amidst the applause
of many liberals of yesterday (liberals now entrusted
with the task of founding the democratic republic),
" that it was very dangerous to develop the instruction
of the people, because instruction led infallibly to com
munism." The anti-democratic coalition is bound up with the
National Assembly, and the compact is signed between
all the parties of the past.

XXXU EDITOES PEEFACE.
Out of doors the movement is being organised by
the insidious arts employed to terrify and blind the
most legitimate interests.
Furthermore, the re-actionists will rapidly use up
all the men of the revolution ; then, when the indus
trial and commercial crisis shall have passed away, they
will again repossess themselves of the powers of the
state, and with the help of all the confederated enemies
of liberty and progress, they will re-establish society on
its Old Principles, " the mischievous nature of the
new principles being definitively proved by the evils
which their invasion has for sixty years let loose on
the modern world."
That is the plan.
It is a general coalition of all fears, all egotisms,
and all intrigues, against the legitimate and regular
development of democracy.
This is literally the very same purpose as that aimed
at by the Company of Jesus ; accordingly, the alliance
has been already concluded with the political repre
sentatives of the Company.
V. C.

INTRODUCTION.

I.
There is no one but has devoted some attention to
the reappearance of the too famous Company of Jesus
on the European stage- Many have rejoiced at the
event ; a greater number have beheld it with deep
sorrow or irritation.
To say the truth, there were various reasons why a
fact of this nature should interest governments and
nations ; for if ever the aim of that audacious Order
could be achieved, every right and every liberty would
be at an end. I do not think I exaggerate in expres
sing myself thus ; on the contrary, I am strongly
persuaded that those who read the disclosures made in
this work will share my opinion.
Let me be permitted, in the first place, to enter
into certain personal details, before I proceed to initiate
the public into the secret I am about to divulge. I
will be as brief as possible.
In 1838, I voluntarily quitted Piedmont, my
native country, went to Switzerland, and settled in

TNTBODDCTION.

Geneva. At that period nothing yet presaged the
ascendancy which the Jesuits were soon to obtain in
the affairs of that republic, and the troubles in which
their intrigues were to involve various other parts of
Europe. Yet I did not hesitate to say openly to a
great number of persons what there was to be appre
hended in that way. I was not believed. My
predictions were universally regarded as dreams. In
vain I repeated to them that I possessed proofs of the
invisible snares and most secret projects of the Com
pany. A contemptuous smile was the answer to my
words. Gradually the face of events was changed, and the
first symptoms of the Jesuit influence began to show
themselves in Prussia.
Every one knows the commotion caused by the
question of mixed marriages raised by the Archbishop
of Cologne, and his ultramontane pretensions. A
powerful party, and celebrated writers, Gorres among
the rest, declared themselves the prelate's supporters,
and undertook the defence of doctrines which had
long been considered dead. At the same period,
pompous announcements were made of the conversion
of princes and princesses, high personages of all kinds,
learned men and artists. Such events were talked of
with amazement in every company.
I happened to be one evening at the house of
Mr. Hare, an Anglican clergyman, when a number

IKTEODUCTION. XXXV
of distinguished foreigners were present. The con
versation ran exclusively upon the subject of these
brilliant conquests, and everybody strove to invent
some hypothesis on which to explain them. From
what was stated of several of the converts by those
who knew them personally, it was inferred that the
real motive of their change was not precisely of a
religious nature. I declared that the conjecture was
not erroneous ; and I was thus led to lay before the
company present the course of circumstances through
which I had become in a manner an initiated
Jesuit. A person who took part in the conversation, and
who was travelling under the title of count, expressed
a strong desire to see some portion of the Secret
Plan, which had been mentioned. At his request, I
called on him next day, and read him certain pages of
the manuscript. He listened with great attention,
seemed very much struck by some passages, and
owned to me that at last he could explain to himself
many enigmas. He asked me to let him keep the
manuscript for a day, in order that he might study it
more at leisure. This I declined ; and then he made
known his name. He was a prince nearly related to
the royal house of Prussia. I persisted, nevertheless,
in my refusal, though he offered me his support, and
even made me some tempting promises.
The prince, somewhat to my surprise, requested

INTRODUCTION.

me to give him a French version of the Secret Plan,
that he might, as he said, have it translated into
German. He recommended me to observe the greatest
discretion, and insisted that I should not compromise
his name. I was to deal only with his son's tutor on
the subject. Furthermore, it was arranged that I
should subjoin an essay on the question pending
between the cabinet of Prussia and the Holy See,
wherein I was to demonstrate that the attempts made
by various prelates, especially their attacks upon the
university system of education, and their growing
audacity in enforcing the old maxims of Rome, were
not a purely local and fortuitous manifestation, but a
fact closely connected with a vast conspiracy, pregnant
with danger to all the powers.
I set to work, and wrote an account of all the
strange incidents through which I had become an
invisible witness of the occult committee in which the
Jesuit plot was concocted. As soon as I had finished
the translation of the plan itself, which I sent off by
instalments, and just as I was about to enter on the
conclusion, I was desired to stop short — the pretext
alleged being the death of the King of Prussia, which
had just occurred. I had even a good deal of trouble
to recover the copy I had sent.
I was soon surrounded with people who obtruded
their advice upon me ; telling me, that if aid was not
afforded me towards publishing, it was for my own

INTEODUCTION. XXXvii
sake it was withheld ; that I ought to beware how I
braved a society known to be implacable — a society
that had smitten kings. " Who are you," they said to
me, " to cope with such a power, and not fear its
numerous satellites?" Then, gliding into another
order of considerations, they would say, " Nothing
can be more dangerous than to initiate the people into
such mysteries. It is enough that they should be
known to those whose position authorises and enjoins
them to frustrate an ambition, which is the more
enterprising and mischievous inasmuch as religion and
blind multitudes serve it as auxiliaries."
These observations would have had less influence
over me, had they not derived weight from the
increasing anxieties of an aged and timid mother.
Besides, my existence then depended on families who
would have been deeply offended , by a publication of
such a nature. All this embarrassed my projects; and
eager as I had been on my arrival to send the Secret
Plan of the Jesuits to press, my many disappointments
led me to postpone its publication indefinitely, though
I could not conceal my disgust and despondency.
During all this time the influence of the Jesuits
had augmented, and the liberals were beginning to
regard it with apprehension. People came to me with
all sorts of solicitations ; and so, notwithstanding my
many disappointments, I was constrained, in a manner,
by events and entreaties, again to make ready for the
press this long-retarded work.

INTEODDOTION.

But other obstacles again delayed it, for everything
seemed to conspire against an enterprise for which, in
a great measure, I had voluntarily expatriated myself.
The persons with whom I had come in contact for this
business sought only their own interest, and wished to
place me in such a position as would have entailed on
me all the annoyances and dangers of the publication
without any of its advantages.
The Genevese government increased my perplexities
by its persecutions. That government of doctrinaires,
or Protestant Jesuits, so deservedly overthrown last
year, conducted itself on narrow, egotistical principles,
and was particularly captious towards strangers. I
was several times summoned before its police on the
most futile pretexts. Unable to prove anything against
me, they took upon them to judge my intentions ;
interpreted my religious and democratic ideas as a
crime, and strove to intimidate me with threats of dire
calamities. On my part I ventured to predict for that
intolerable government a speedy and ignominious fall.
At last I was ordered to quit the country within the
briefest space of time, without any cause being assigned
to justify that arbitrary measure. Thus a final stop
was put in Switzerland to the publication of my work,
which had already been rendered so difficult by all the
obstacles I have mentioned.

INTEODUCTION.

II.
When I came to Paris in 1846 I had no thought
of making fresh attempts, more especially as I was told
I should have great difficulty in finding a publisher.
I applied myself to the composition of a work, now
in a great measure completed, founded on documents
of unquestionable authenticity, and which I should
even have wished to print before the Secret Plan, as
fitted in every respect, by its important revelations, to
secure to the latter the most solid basis in ¦oublic
opinion. But when I was about to publish it, I
received from Geneva a letter informing me of a
monstrous abuse of confidence. The person I had
employed to transcribe my manuscript of the Secret
Plan had copied it in duplicate. He had put the
second copy into the hands of a society, which, strange
to say, had been formed for the express purpose of
trafficking in this robbery. The excuse they offered
was, that since I had during so many years divulged
the secret plan of the Jesuits, the thing had become
the property of the public. Moreover, as I had
transcribed it surreptitiously, it did not belong to me,
but was free to be used by anybody. It will scarcely
be believed that the spoiler even went so far as to
dictate the terms of a bargain to the despoiled, and to
add irony to impudence, since the work had been
printed several days before in Berne, as witness a copy

xl INTRODUCTION.
sent me. The insolent letter he wrote me deserves
to be known.*
What ! the very persons who profess themselves
such uncompromising enemies of the Jesuits, do not
themselves refuse to act on the maxim that " the end
justifies the means." But what has been the result of
their spohation ? That it has been of no manner of
advantage to them. What confidence, indeed, would
there be in a paltry pamphlet, without name or
warrant for its authenticity? The work, too, they
published was but a shapeless abortion, a rough draft
of a translation, very imperfectly collated with the
* Here it is : — "Geneva, Sept. 7, 1847.
"Sir, " After having so long played with us, it is extremely
surprising that you now protest against the publication of a work
containing essentially the disclosure of speeches captured without
permission by your ears, or rather by your eyes, in 1824.
" This protest is the more astonishing after your having yourself
communicated those speeches to hundreds of persons, so as to make
them be regarded as common property.
" Though I consider your protest as insignificant, and as a thing
which at most can only result in giving you trouble and making you
spend money uselessly, yet on the other hand, since my object has
been attained, and since it is from public motives and not for any
private interest that I have done so, I now offer to treat with you on the
following terms : — In case you desire to become the proprietor of this
publication, I consent thereto, on condition that you immediately
furnish the necessary securities for the complete payment of the printer
and of the incidental expenses. I have the honour to salute you.
F. KOESSINGEK.

INTRODUCTION. xii
original, and what is worse, truncated, slovenly, in
correct, and swarming with mistakes. The edition I
put forth is rigorously exact and scrupulous ; I have
long and minutely scrutinized it, and it has been re-
corrected under the eye of guides who have helped me
to convey in French the full force of the original,
which is often hard to translate. I have subjoined to
the Secret Plan elucidations of great importance, and
I have related the circumstances through which it has
come into my possession. Finally, I have brought
forward counterproofs of various kinds, all drawn from
authentic sources, in support of the essential views and
ideas developed in the plan.
The publication put forth by my spoliators is the
more blamable, inasmuch as the manner of its execu
tion has been such as to compromise the fundamental
document. For, I repeat, what authority can it have
without my co-operation, without my name, and the
corroborative proofs that accompany it in the present
volume ? Is it not a culpable and shameful act to
put in jeopardy a matter of such moment? If they
were actuated by no sordid motives, why did they not
apply to me, and offer me the means of giving publicity
to my manuscript in the way necessary to secure its
full effect ? In acting with such bad faith, did they not
expose themselves to see the blow they designed for
Jesuitism turned back upon them to their confusion ?
What was to prevent me from annihilating the result of
their manoeuvre ? Was it not in my power utterly to
e 2

xiii INTEODUOTION.
discredit the story, by attributing it to a freak of my
youth? I will say more. What they have done has put
me in a position, from which it rested only with
myself to derive profit, by proving by letters, ante-dated
a few years, that my design had been to play off a
hoax. III.
Those who have at all reflected on the Order of the
Jesuits, who have studied its history, and have had a
near view of its workings, will by no means be surprised
at its profound artifices and superb hopes. Do we not
see it at this moment in France become the guide of
the bishops, and giving law to the inferior clergy.
M. Henri Martin thus expresses himself in a remarkable
work recently published :
" The clergy, in its collective action, is little more
than a machine of forty thousand arms, impelled by
its leaders against whomsoever they please, and those
leaders themselves are pushed forward by the Jesuit
and neo-catholic congregations."*
Well-informed clergymen have assured me that the
Jesuits were never so well seconded and supported as
they now are. The establishments dependent on them
are very numerous, and increase daily. Their resources
are prodigious. A letter addressed to the Siecle thus
speaks of their progress. Such a letter serves well to
• De la France, de son Genie etde ses Destinies. Paris, 1847, p. 92.

INTRODUCTION. xliii
corroborate what is contained in the Secret Plan. I
will quote the greater part of it : — *
" The hill of Fourvieres, which commands Lyons,
on the right bank of the Saone, is a sort of entrenched
camp, wherein all the bodies of the clerical militia are
echelonned, one above the other, in the strongest
positions ; thence they hold the town in check, like
those formidable fortresses which have been built to
intimidate rather than to defend it. The long avenues
that lead to Fourvieres and the chapel that surmounts
it, are thronged with images of saints and ex voto ; and
but for that industrious city which unfolds its moving
panorama below your feet, you might fancy yourself
in the midst of the middle ages, and take its factory
chimneys for convent spires.
" The exact statistics of the religious establishments
of Lyons, with the number of their inhabitants and
the revenues they command, would form a very curious
book ; but the archbishopric, which possesses all the
elements of those statistics, is by no means disposed to
publish them. The clergy, since the severe lessons
given it by the July event, likes better to be than to
appear ; its force, disseminated all over France, - and
not the less real because they do not show themselves ;
and it can at any moment, as occasion may arise, set
in motion that huge lever, the extremity of which is
everywhere, and the fulcrum at Rome.
" Now, the soul of this great clerical conspiracy, the
* December 17, 1847.

xliv

INTRODUCTION.

vital principle that animates it, is the Jesuits. Every
one knows the well-grounded dislike with which this
able and dangerous order is regarded from one end of
Europe to the other. Yet it must be owned that in
it alone resides all the life of Catholicism at this day ;
and the clergy would be very ungrateful if they did
not accept these useful auxiliaries even while they
fear them.
" All France knows that famous house in the Rue
Sala in Lyons, one of the most important centres of
Jesuitism. At the period of the pretended dispersion
of the order, that great diplomatic victory in which
M. le Comte Rossi won his ambassador's spurs, the
house in the Rue Sala, as well as that in the Rue
des Postes in Paris, dispersed its inmates for a while,
either into the neighbouring dioceses, as aide-de-camps
to the bishops, or as tutors in some noble houses of
the Place Bellecour ; but when once the farce was
played out, things returned very quietly to their old
course, and the Rue Sala, at the moment I write, is
still with the archbishopric the most active centre of
politico-religious direction.
'^That activity is principally directed upon two
points ; by means of the brotherhoods ( confreries ) it
reaches the lower classes,- whom the clergy drills and
holds obedient to it ; by education it gets hold of the
middle classes, and thus secures to itself the future by
casting almost a whole generation in the clerical
mould. Let us begin with the brotherhoods. We

INTRODUCTION. xiv
will say nothing of those that are not essentially
Lyonnese, and whose centre is elsewhere, though they
possess hosts of affiliated dependents here. We will
merely mention by name the Society for the Propagation
of the Faith, whose centre, next after Rome, is Lyons,
and which alone possesses a revenue of four millions
and a half of francs. But the most important, the
one which draws its recruits most directly from this
industrious population, is the Society of St. Francis
Xavier. Its name sufficiently indicates to what order
it belongs ; it is Jesuitism put within the reach of the
labouring classes, and you may recognise it by the
cleverness of its arrangements. The workmen, of which
it consists almost exclusively, are disposed in sections
of tens, hundreds, and thousands, with leaders to each
section. The avowed purpose of the society is to
succour invalid workmen, who, for a subscription of
five sous a-month, or three francs a-year, are insured
medical aid and twenty-five sous a-day in sickness.
Such are the outward rules of the society; but in
reality its design is clerical and legitimist : the two
influences are here blended together in one common aim.
" Another and perhaps more dangerous means of
action is the vast boarding-school which the brethren
of the Christian schools, under the supreme controul
of the Rue Sala, have established at Fouvrieres. This
gigantic establishment,which can accommodate upwards
of four hundred interns, was founded about eight years
ago in defiance of all the universitary laws. Its object,

xlvi INTRODUCTION.
which is distinct from that of the small seminaries, is
to give young men of the middle and inferior trading
classes a sort of professional education, comprising,
with the exception of the dead languages, all the
branches taught in colleges. The complete course of
study embraces no less than eight years. In this
institution, as in all others of its kind, the domestic
arrangements are excellent, and the instruction in
different, being imparted by the brethren. Masters,
fit only to teach little children their catechism, instruct
adults in the highest branches of rhetoric, philosophy,
and the physical and mathematical sciences. In con
sequence, too, of the continual removes of each of the
brethren of the doctrine to and from all parts of
France, any able professors who may have been
formed in Lyons are soon appointed directors in some
other town ; and the system of teaching in the institu
tion, however high in appearance, does not in reality
rise above a very humble level.
" The annual charge is as low as possible, not
exceeding 550 francs, which barely covers the indispen
sable expenses. This low rate of charge, aided by the
all-potent influence of the confessional over mothers
of families, attracts to the institution multitudes of lads
of the middle class. As for the children of the poor,
they belong of right to the schools of the doctrine —
the primitive destination of the order, and one in
which it can render real services. But this is not all:
one of the centres of the Christian schools being placed

INTRODUCTION. xlvii
at Lyons, there was requisite a noviciate house ; and
the order has just procured one, by purchasing for
250,000 francs a magnificent property at Calvire, within
a league of Lyons. The vendor allowed ten years for
the discharge of the purchase money ; but the whole
was paid within eighteen months ; and a vast edifice,
capable, when complete, of accommodating more than
four hundred resident pupils, has risen out of the
earth as if by enchantment. The estimate made
by the engineer who directed the works, and who is a
member of the society, amounted, it is said, to a million
and a half of francs, and it has been exceeded.
" As for the lesser seminaries, of which there are
many in the diocese, we will only mention that of
Argentiere, which contains five hundred pupils, and
that of Meximieux, which has two hundred. Hence
we may form an approximate idea of the immense
action on education exercised in these parts by the
clergy, in flagrant contravention of the university
laws and regulations. The low charges of their
institutions, not to mention many supplementary
burses, give it the additional attraction of cheapness ;
and for those very low charges (about 400 francs)
the Jesuit schools are supposed to afford their pupils
instruction in all those branches of knowledge, Greek
and Latin included, which are taught in those gulphs
of perdition which are called Colleges.
" On the whole, we may reckon at the number of
one hundred the religious establishments intended

xlviii INTRODUCTION.
whether for the education of both sexes, or for the
relief of the distressed. All the suburbs of Lyons
have their nunneries ; and monastic garbs of every
form and colour swarm in the streets. The Capuchins,
however, who were formerly found there, have migrated
to Yilleurbonne ; and the Jesuits, jealous of any rivals
of their supremacy here, are said to have purchased
their retirement at the cost of 900,000 francs.
" If you are astonished at the immense sums which
the clergy here dispose of, recollect that one individual,
Mademoiselle de Labalmondiere, the last scion of a
noble family, has left the church a sum of ten millions,
of which the archbishop has been named supreme
dispenser. Through the confession, by means of the
women, and by all kinds of influence direct and
indirect, the clergy keeps the whole male population
in a state of obsession and blockade. A trader who
should revolt against this influence would instantly
provoke against him the whole clerical host, and would
be stripped of his credit and put under a sort of moral
interdiction that would end in his ruin. The univer
sity, which possesses at Lyons some distinguished men,
a brilliant faculty, and an excellent royal college, is put
in the archiepiscopal index ; and what here as else
where is called freedom of teaching, that is to say the
power of taking education entirely out of lay hands
and committing it to corporations, is the object of all
the prayers of pious souls here, and of all the combined
efforts of the archbishopric and the Rue Sala."

INTRODUCTION. xlix
IV.
The Jesuits have shown themselves in their true
colours in Switzerland, where, merciless as ever, they
chose rather to provoke the horrors of civil war than
to yield, as the christian spirit enjoined them. They
have thereby augmented the hatred and contempt '
with which they are regarded on all sides. So sure
were they of victory, that in their infatuation they
disdained to take the most ordinary precautions.
" Apropos of the Jesuits," said the Swiss correspon
dent of the National at that period, " it will be well
to give you some account of the documents which most
deeply compromised the reverend fathers and their
allies both in Switzerland and in other countries.
It will be seen whether or not the presence of the order
is extremely dangerous to the countries that afford
them an asylum.
" In the first place, there has been discovered at
Fribourg a catalogue in Latin of all the establishments
which the Jesuits possess in a portion of France and
Switzerland, with a list and the addresses of all the
persons connected with them. I have sent you two
numbers of a Swiss journal in which there is an
abstract of this catalogue, drawn up with the greatest
care. You will perceive from it that the Jesuits' houses
have greatly augmented in number in France, since
the pope made a show of promising M. Rossi and
M. Guizot that they should have no more establish-
f

INTEODUCTION.

ments in your country. The chambers will see how
their demands have been derided. France will learn
how she is duped, and what is the occult power that
rules the government. For proof of all this, I refer to
the analysis of the famous catalogue, which you will
not fail to publish.
" There are two other documents, which you can
see in the Helvetic of Dec. 18. The first is an address
of two Fribourg magistrates, the president of the old
great council, and a councillor of state, who humbly
prostrating themselves at the feet of the Holy Father,
recommend M. Marilley for bishop of the diocese, care
fully insisting on the fact that he is most favourable to
the order of the Jesuits. Now that prelate, a consum
mate hypocrite, had been at war with the society, and
gave himself out for a liberal.
"The other document is still more curious and
instructive. It is an address from the deaconry of
Romont (Canton of Fribourg) to the apostolic nuncio
at Lucerne, dated Dec. 20, 1845, and recommending
the same Marilley, a parish priest expelled from
Geneva, to the pope's choice as bishop. The clergy of
the deaconry, labouring hard to refute one by one the
calumnious accusations directed against their protegC,
prove that M. Marilley by no means deserves the
epithet of liberal ; that he is not even a little liberal;
and that far from being hostile to the reverend Jesuit
fathers, he has given them authentic testimonies of his
special veneration and esteem. The most remarkable

INTRODUCTION.

passages of the address from the deaconry of Romont
are those relating to pohtics. Speaking of the CathoHc
association, of which, like almost all the clergy of the
diocese, M. Marilley was a member, his protectors say,
' In 1837 this association wrested by its influence the
majority in the grand council from the radicals, who
were threatening among other things to dismiss the
reverend Jesuit fathers from the canton. So the con
servatives owe to this calumniated association their
majority and their places, and the reverend Jesuit
fathers owe to it their actual existence in Fribourg.'
" Further on, with respect to the old doctrinaire
conservative government of Geneva, the address says,
' Geneva does not choose to be either frankly conserva
tive, because it is Protestant, or openly radical, because
its votes are swayed by its material interests, and by the
potent suggestions of Sardinia and France.' Other
passages manifest the close alliance of the Jesuits and
of the conservatives, both protestant and catholic.
" A fourth document is the report of an inquiry
made in Fribourg by order of the provincial govern
ment as to the reality of an alleged miracle attributed
to the Virgin Mary. A priest and other witnesses
had deposed that a soldier of the landsturm, who wore
one of those medals of the Immaculate Virgin of
which I have told you, had been preserved, on the night
of Dec. 7, from the effect of a ball which had struck
him on the spot coVered by the medal. The
whole is attested by Bishop Etienne Marilley. Now

Hi INTRODUCTION.
the inquiry has rendered the imposture clear and
palpable ; the knavery of the bishop, the priests, and
the Jesuits is laid bare. The matter of this inquiry
will assuredly acquire great publicity.
" The Valais is not less rich in revelations than
Fribourg and Lucerne. The federal representatives
have in their hands all the official documents and the
correspondences respecting the Sonderbund and the
late military events, among others an authentic deed
proving that Austria made the League the present of
three thousand muskets which you know of. These
documents contain proof that the League was a
European affair, and that the purpose was to establish
in Switzerland the forces of ultramontanism and the
centre of re-action ; that what was designed was not
an accidental association, and a defence merely against
the attacks of the free corps, but a permanent League,
and a dissolution of the Confederation in order to the
reconstruction of another which should be recognised,
supported, and ruled by foreign diplomacy.
" We have not exhausted the stock of documents.
Fresh ones are discovered every day."
V.
Enough so far to raise a corner of the veil. The
plot is seen in action just as it is laid down in the
Secret Plan, with which the reader is about to be
acquainted. Its scope, we perceive, is formidable.
Every means is welcome to its concocters that can

INTRODUCTION. liii
forward their success. Their journals, especially the
Univers, strangely mistaking the age, have promul
gated plenty of miracles to sanctify the cause of the
Jesuits in July. Their abominable fraud has not been
able to remain concealed; the press holds up its perpe
trators to contempt. Here then we have it proved
for the thousandth time, that this order, continually
urged by infernal ambition, meditates the ruin of all
liberty, and by its counsels is hurrying princes, nobles,
and states to their ruin. It is its suggestions that
petrify the heart of the King of Naples, in whose
dominions one of the members of the Company has
been heard preaching the most hideous absolutism and
bhnd obedience, as the most sacred and inviolable duty
of the multitude. This is their very doctrine ; and
when they preach a different one, it is but a trick, and
is practised there only where they lack the support of
despotism. Lastly, let us hear the captive of St. Helena
expressing his whole opinion of this order. But be it
remembered in the first place, that it is not for the sake
of right and reason Napoleon declares himself an enemy
to Jesuitism. He feared reason ; right he deemed a
thing not to be realised ; and as for liberty, he could
never comprehend it. " Louis XIV.," he exclaimed,
" the greatest sovereign France has had ! He and I —
that is all."* He even thought that the people should
* Eecits de la captivite de PEmpereur Napoleon a Sainte Helene,
par M. le General Montholon. Paris, 1847, t. 2, p. 107.

liv INTEODUCTION.
not be allowed the Bible* " In China," said he, "the
people worship their sovereign as a god, and so it
should be."\ Now, he felt strong enough, as he says,
to make the pope his tool, and Catholicism a means of
his power. He liked the latter, because it enjoins men
to distrust their reason and believe blindly. " The
CathoHc religion is the best of all, because it speaks to
the eyes of the multitude, and aids the constituted
authority." % In another place he says he prefers it
because "it is an all-potent auxiliary of royalty." §
He admitted all sorts of monks, and thought he could
make something of them, except the Jesuits. On his
rock he speaks of them with nothing but abhorrence,
and is convinced that he could not resist them with
more profound or more decisive means than their own ;
and that wherever they exist, such is the force of their
stratagems and manoeuvres, that they rule and master
everything in a manner unknown to everybody.
" But," says he, " a very dangerous society, and one
which would never have been admitted on the soil of
the Empire, is that of the Jesuits. Its doctrines are
subversive of all monarchical principles. The general
of the Jesuits insists on being sovereign master,
sovereign over the sovereign. Wherever the Jesuits
are admitted, they will be masters, cost what it may.
Their society is by nature dictatorial, and therefore it
is the irreconcilable enemy of all constituted authority.
* Eecits de la captivite, &c, t. 2, p. 159.
t Ibid, p. 269. J Ibid, p. 62. § Ibid, p. 174.

INTEODUCTION. Iv
Every act, every crime, however atrocious, is a meri
torious work, if it is committed for the interest of the
Society of Jesus, or by order of the general of the
Jesuits."*
VI.
The first step in the reform of CathoHcism is the
absolute abolition of this order : so long as it subsists
it wifi exert its anti-social and anti-christian influence
over the Church and the Powers ; and so long as the
Church is filled with the hatred for progress which
that order cherishes, it will only hasten its own decay,
and its regeneration will be impossible.
* Eecits de la captivite, &c, t. 2, p. 294.

SECRET PLAN OE THE JESUITS.

PAET I.
NOVITIATE AND ECCLESIASTIC CAREER.
I.
At the age of nineteen I had formed the resolution of enter
ing the church, and was finishing my studies at the Seminary
of Vercelli. I usually passed my vacations in the company
of Luigi Quarelli, arch-priest and cure of Langosco, my
native place. Incited by an eager thirst for knowledge, I
had, in the course of a few years, completely exhausted his
library ; and often did this worthy man repeat to me, that
so far from learning being of any use to me, it would more
probably be an obstacle to my advancement in the church.
He now began to speak to me of the Jesuits. The power
of this order, its reverses, its recent restoration, the im
penetrable mystery in which it has been enveloped since its
origin, all contributed to exalt it in his eyes. According
to his account, none were admitted into it but such as
were distinguished for intellect, wealth, or station. He
spoke of it as the only order which, so far from repressing
the native energies of the mind, or the tendencies of genius,
did actually favour them in every way. This assertion he
substantiated by many striking examples.
B

a SECBET PLAN
The impression made on me by these conversations was
exceedingly strong. Young, inexperienced, and dazzled by
statements which taught me to regard Jesuitism as the only
resource of a noble ambition, I longed for nothing so much
as to be received into the order. Neither the thought of
abandoning my parents, nor that of the severe trials to
which I must subject myself, could, in any way, divert me
from my purpose.
The cure scrupulously examined my resolution, and
the result being satisfactory, he wrote to Turin, to Father
Roothaan, then rector of a college of the society in that
town, and now general of the Jesuits. The rector, after
having made the customary inquiries respecting me, inti
mated that I might repair to the capital, and undergo the
preliminary examinations.
I therefore took my departure. When I presented
myself to him, he conversed with me for some time, and with
great openness and affability. At first, his object appeared
to be merely to acquaint himself with the extent of my
acquirements, but by degrees he led me on insensibly to
make a general confession, as it were, of my whole life.
I will not here attempt to retrace the details of this con
versation. It would be difficult for me to convey an idea
of the consummate art employed to sound a conscience,
to descend into the very depths of the inmost heart, and
to make all its chords resound, the individual remaining, all
the while, unconscious of the analysis which is going on,
so occupied is he by the pleasant flow of the conversation,
so beguiled by the air of frank good-nature with which the
artful process is conducted.
I have retained but vague and disjointed recollections of

OF THE JESUITS.

all these subtle artifices. One portion of the conversation
however, imprinted itself so deeply in my memory that I will
repeat it, in order to show under what point of view the
present chief of the Jesuits had already begun to regard the
mission and aim of his order.
" And now," said he, after having examined me, " what
I have to communicate to you is calculated to fill you with
hope and joy. You enter our society at a time when its
adherents are far from numerous, and when there is, conse
quently, every encouragement to aspire to a rapid elevation.
But think not that on entering it you are to fold your arms
and dream. You are aware that our society, at one time,
flourished vigorously, that it marched with giant steps in
the conquest of souls, and that the cause of Christ and of
the Holy See achieved signal victories by our means. But
the very greatness of the work we were fulfilling, excited
envy without bounds. The spirit of our order was attacked,
all our views were misrepresented and calumniated, and as
the world is always more ready to believe evil than good,
we came, ere long, to be universally detested.
" Thus, we, the Society of Jesus, were doomed to undergo
the same trials as our Divine Master. We were loaded
with insults, we were driven from every resting-place.
Monarchs and nations entertained with respect to us but
one common thought, that of sweeping us from the face
of the earth. Humiliated, insulted, buffeted, crowned with
thorns, and bearing the cross, we also were doomed to suffer
the death of ignominy. There was not wanting even a
Caiaphas* to sign our sentence with his own hand ; and the
chastisement with which he was soon after visited by the
* Allusion to Clement XIV. (Ganganelli.)

4 SECEET PLAN
just judgment of Heaven, gave rise to a last calumny against
us, which crowned all the others. Our last struggle was
ended ; we died — but though dead, the powerful still trembled
at our name. They made haste to seal up our tomb, and
they set over it a vigilant guard, so that there might not be
the faintest sign of life beneath the stone which covered us.
" But behold what became of the potentates themselves,
during our sleep of death ! Day by day they were visited
by chastisements more and more severe. The world became
the theatre of direful troubles and terrible catastrophes.
A giant threaded (infilzava) crowns upon his resistless
sword, and monarchs were cast down in the dust at his feet.
But the moment of terror soon arrived, in which Almighty
God broke the sword of the man of fate, and called us from
the sepulchre. Our resurrection struck the nations with
astonishment ; and now we shall be no more the sport and
the prey of the wicked, for our society is destined to become
the right arm of the Eternal !
" Thus, a new era is opening for us. All that the church
has lost she will regain through us. Our order, by its acti
vity, its efforts, and its devotedness, will vivify ail ihe other
orders, now well nigh extinct. It will bear to all parts the
torch of truth, for the dispersion of falsehood ; it will bring
back to the faith those whom incredulity has led astray ; it
will, in a word, realise the promise contained in the gospel,
that all men shall be one fold under one Shepherd.
" Henceforward, then, no more disasters ; the future is
wholly ours. Our march will be victorious, our conquests
incessant, our triumph decisive.
"But, once more, do not expect to walk upon roses;
it is right that I should warn you of this. The mission

OF THE JESUITS. 5
which our society imposes on itself is a stern one. We do
not (it is important that you should know this), we do not
aim only at restoring their ancient empire to some fragments
of truth, but at restoring it to the whole Catholic truth.
Thus, there is no pride or pretension that our order does
not ruffle and wound : whence result all sorts of accusations,
which we must support with courage. Bear in mind, when
once the hand is laid to the plough, the only thought must be
how to run the furrow straight. Made animo, then, look
not backwards. You can do much. Besides, I think that
the more you become penetrated with the spirit of the order
— if God, as I trust, grants you the grace to become one
of its members — the more energy you will feel in yourself
for the task which the superiors, and not human caprice,
will assign you. Your superiors alone must be judges of
this, for God always especially directs them, in order that
each one, remaining at the post which is suitable to him,
may most usefully co-operate in the great work, namely,
the raising up of the church, the salvation of the world,
and the union of all sects and parties under the authority
of him who, as the representative of God himself on earth,
cannot but act in the interest of all, on condition, howeveb,
THAT ALL CONSENT TO OBEY HIM."

II.

This discourse, which I have considerably abridged,
excited my imagination, filled me with new thoughts,
and awakened in my heart an ardent faith. My visit to
Father Roothaan, his engaging countenance, the unctuous
b 2

0 SECEET PLAN
phrases that flowed abundantly from his lips, the singular
address he displayed in rendering his conversation always
full of interest— all this had soon subjugated me most com
pletely to the Jesuits.
The reader may imagine what I felt on the occasion
of this memorable interview. I was at the age of enthu
siasm, the age in which all our faculties spring with
undivided purpose towards their aim, whatever it may
be. My mind had remained till then absorbed in a
sort of half slumber. Transported — inflamed for a cause
which I believed to be that of God himself, my sole aspi
ration was to pronounce the vows which were to bind me to
i t for ever.
On learning my decision my father was struck with the
deepest sorrow : nor can I describe the distress of my poor
mother ; but though the strong affection I felt for her had
always given her a great influence over me, this time her
prayers could not change my determination. Luigi di Ber-
nardi, a man of uncommon worth, a priest, anti-monastic on
principle, by whom I had been early initiated into all that is
manly, austere, and sublime in the annals of Greece and
Rome, exerted all his energy and all his knowledge to
change the bent of my mind. All his efforts failed to
shake my resolution, though my gratitude and my respect
for him were boundless. Many friends also beset me, and
added additional gloom in the appalling pictures which
several persons had already traced to me of the order of
the Jesuits. But in all this I saw nothing but pure male
volence, or stratagems devised to change my resolution.
At length my father declared that I should never have
his consent.

OF THE JESUITS. 7
The arch-priest Quarelli, grieved at our approaching
separation, was obliged, almost in spite of himself, to make
use of an argument which he knew would be decisive with
my father and mother, both overcome with anguish at the
thought of losing their only child.
He told them that everything proved the irresistible
force of my vocation, and that my internal struggles were no
less cruel than theirs ; that it was absolutely necessary to
obey the voice which called me, under pain of warring
against God himelf. He reminded them of Abraham, and
of his willingness to sacrifice his only son. " Besides," con
tinued he, " perhaps he will not be entirely lost to you :
perhaps God will permit that you shall embrace him some
times before your death. You cannot live in peace with
your conscience unless you consent, and, be well assured,
the reward that awaits you at your last home will be equal
to the greatness of your sacrifice ; while, on the other hand,
how deep would be your remorse if you persisted in re
fusing to God that which he asks of you !"
To talk thus to my parents was to attack them on their
vulnerable side. Though they were most deeply afflicted,
they consented at last to bid me farewell. My father was
unable to pronounce a single word ; my mother was almost
overwhelmed by grief.
Just at this time Father Roothaan wrote thus to me : —
" Dearly beloved son, I trust that you will follow up
your holy vocation in such a manner that we may never
have to repent — you, of the resolution you have taken ; I,
of having proposed you ; the superiors, of having accepted
you. Your eternal salvation, your solid religious perfection
for the greater glory of God, are and ought to be the first

8 SECEET PLAN
and principal motive for which you desire to enter into
the company. You will need all your courage, as I
told you, when you come to me for examination. In
order to be a good and a true Jesuit it is indispensa
ble to possess a strong heart, and to be ready not only
to labour much, but to suffer much — aye, even unto
death! — to be persevering in humility, in obedience,
in patience, seeking only God, who will himself be merces
vestra magna nimis. Therefore, confortare et esto robustus.
In giving yourself up to the order you place yourself in the
hands of Divine Providence ! Confide yourself wholly to
Him, and He will conduct you safely to port ! Under His
protection we may sing whilst we steer !
" Hasten your preparations so that you may present
yourself here in September,* and I will send you imme
diately to Chieri, that you may there lay, in the novitiate,
the solid foundations of a truly religious and Jesuitical hfe."
A few days afterwards I received from him another
letter, in the following terms : —
" Now, then, you may at once enter the novitiate. Such
is the purport of a letter of yesterday's date, sent me by
the father rector of Chieri. Call at St. Franijois-de-Paule, in
Turin ; if I am not there, you will find me at Chieri, where
the novitiate is. As to the manner of proceeding to Chieri,
you will be informed of it here, at St. Franfois-de-Paule.
Pray for me to the Lord.
" Yours most affectionately in Christ,
"John Roothaan,
" of the Society of Jesus."
* Sic, although the letter was dated the 2nd September (1824.)

OF THE JESUITS.

III.

I set out accordingly. On my arrival, they placed
in my hands the rules which related to this first phasis
of my new existence. I was immediately initiated into
the exercises of Saint Ignatius, and of other saints —
all Jesuits. It is by this sudden and complete immer
sion of the soul that they acquire their unlimited power
over so many young men, unarmed by experience, and
totally without defence, from the unreflecting enthusiasm
which belongs to their age.
The most profound silence, rarely interrupted even by
whispers, reigned in this abode, which was however not
destitute of material comforts. The guardian angel (for this
is the name given to the father attached to each novice)
was accustomed to close the shutters of my windows, in
order that I might remain as much as possible in obscurity.
Thus seated, in partial darkness, he reasoned aloud on the
world, on sin, and on eternal punishment. Conformably
to one of the rules of the founder of the society, he desig
nated those who do not submit in all things to the decisions
of the church, as an army of rebels, angels of darkness,
whom Satan inspires and governs, and against whom battle
must be waged, until the day of final victory by the army
of the faithful, led on by those angels of light and chiefs
of the sacred militia, the Jesuits. As for the enemy's
camp, he spoke of nothing in it but its reeking pestilence
and corruption.
The indispensable complement of these private and daily

10 SECEET PLAN
discourses is weekly confession, comprising an avowal of
every affection of the heart, every sentiment of the mind,
and even of one's dreams. This is the plummet-line always
kept in hand by the superiors, and by means of which they
ascertain what is passing in the very depth of their pupils'
consciences. The miracles of all sorts with which the heads
of the latter are filled are all invented in order to rear upon
supernatural bases a structure of absolute and blind obedi
ence. Under such a system, wherein there is neither con
versation, nor reading, nor devotional exercise which has
not been elaborately adjusted by a mysterious power, in
such a manner as to take possession of both the under
standing and the heart, each individual who has been
wrought upon during a sufficient time, comes at last to
consider himself religiously bound to the total surrender of
his own will.
For myself, I felt my own personality daily diminish
ing, and I blessed this progressive self-annihilation, and
recognised in it the sign of my salvation.
The subject most peculiarly dwelt upon, during my
confessions, was the affection which still bound me to the
remembrance of my friends and relations. I was con
stantly told that it was my imperative duty to tear asunder
these bonds of affection, and stifle these remembrances :
their complete immolation was represented to me as the
most sacred of triumphs. To devote myself entirely to the
order, was the sole object prescribed to me. As long as
there existed within me the smallest trace of self-will, or
of earthly affection, there would be something remaining
of the " old man" which was finally to be absorbed in the
Jesuit. I was by no means astonished that they should

OF THE JESUITS. 11
thus seek to convert me into a new being, for I truly be
lieved that the more I should identify myself with the society
the more I should belong to God ; and in this deadening of
every feeling which might stand in the way of my entire
dedication to the order, I perceived nothing but a just and
reasonable consequence of its directing principle : " that
the fewer ties we have with all that might distract us from
our purpose, the more will be our power to persuade
others to acknowledge that authority which it is the mission
of the Jesuits to proclaim, as the only one upon earth which
is not subject to error."

IV.

Thus far, all went on well. However laborious it might
be, I subjected myself resolutely to the probatoria (the pro
bation which precedes the novitiate). Not that I was
exempt from anxiety and sorrow. Far from it. In hours
of deep depression and anguish, my thoughts recurring to
many a beloved object I had just forsaken, and feeling that
my heart was empty, my mind perturbed, my soul sinking
within me, and even my imagination, hitherto so free,
enchained, I confess that I shrank back with terror and
repented. Never, however, even in those gloomy moments,
did the idea of renouncing the society seriously take pos
session of me. The fact is, there was not a particle of all I
had heard from Father Roothaan, but what I believed to
be true, noble, holy, and more worthy to be followed than
anything else on earth. Moreover, when these mental
struggles beset me, I was told that those very persons who

12 SECEET PLAN
had sustained the like, had afterwards made themselves the
most distinguished in the order for their zeal ; and that
far from regarding such things as proofs of a want of voca
tion, I ought rather to behold in them a mark of Divine
election. " By and by,'' they told me, " when your studies
shall have been completed, the immolation of the ' old
man ' accomplished, and your special vocation determined,
you will only have to unfold your wings without fear of
any impediment to your soaring flight."
This sort of language cheered me, and it is probable that
I should have grown more and more attached to the society,
that I should even have become one of its most devoted
members, but for the incidents which I am about to relate.

My too intense application to the subjects of a gloomy
devotion, and the utter solitude of the probatoria, had
broken down my spirits and my health. The first com
plaint I made, immediately procured me the indulgence of
meat on a fast-day ; and, when I would have refused this
favour, it was in vain that I alleged the trifling nature of
my indisposition. My guardian angel, Father Saetti, of
Modena, solemnly replied to me that I ought to take
especial care of my health, that I was called to be a labourer
in the Lord's field, and that it was by no means the inten
tion of the church to exact too much of those who, having
torn asunder all the bonds of the flesh and of the world,
delivered themselves up to her with devotedness.
Every morning, fasting, they Obliged me, in spite of

OF THE JESUITS. ] 3
my extreme repugnance, to drink a sort of mulled wine,
rather thick, and of a singular flavour, which had the effect of
producing, during the whole of the day, a species of torpor
which I had never before experienced. In vain I refused
this potion; all I could obtain was the permission to begin
with small doses, until I should become accustomed to it.
At length, fatigued by long poring over ascetic books,
and by the meditations which I was required to make
again and again for hours on my knees, without any sup
port, and being tempted by the fine autumn weather to
breathe the fresh air and enjoy the sunshine, I begged my
guardian angel to ask permission for me of the rector to
walk for a few moments alone in the garden. " You have
only," he replied, " to go to him and ask this permission
for yourself; you may be certain he will grant you what
ever favour is in his power."
It was not, however, until two days afterwards that, ex
cited by the splendour of a day more than usually beautiful,
I resolved to make my request.
It was in the afternoon. I quitted my chamber, and
went to the rector's apartment, the door of which I found
open, although the rector was absent. This circumstance
surprised me not a little, as among the Jesuits everything
is conducted with the most exact regularity.
As the novices never address the superior, who has
the direction of the novitiate, otherwise than by his title
of rector, I am unable here to designate him by his name ;
but nothing would be easier than to know it by ascer
taining who was the Jesuit father occupying the direction of
the novitiate house at Chieri in the month of September, 1 824.
This father was without any austerity of manner. I
c

14 SECEET PLAN
had every reason to be gratified by his kindness to me,
and separated as I was from all those whom I had loved,
I began to feel some attachment for him. From my first
entrance into the house, he had even admitted me to a
considerable degree of familiarity, with a view, no doubt,
to insinuate himself into my confidence, all of which,
indeed, he was in a fair way of obtaining. But the
familiarity to which he had accustomed me had, on this
occasion, a result very unfortunate for his speculations.
If he had treated me with that reserve which intimidates
and keeps at a distance, I should never have presumed
to enter his apartments during the absence of the master,
to go from one room to another, and to allow myself to do
what I am about to relate.

VI.

I entered, then, the opened door, and perceiving no
thing unusual in the room, except a small table, covered
with bottles and glasses, in the right-hand corner, I sup
posed that the rector's absence was momentary, and that
he would presently return. For want of something to do,
I sauntered with a sort of lazy curiosity into an adjacent
chamber, where a small library immediately attracted my
attention. Impressed as I was by the holy maxims which
were daily repeated to me, and above all by those solemn
words which began and closed every conversation — AA
majorem Dei gloriam — how should I have doubted but that
I was dwelling among angels ? In fact, it is impossible to
imagine anything more touching than the generosity with

OF THE JESUITS. ]5
which the fathers attribute to each other the rarest virtues
and the most astonishingly miraculous of powers. I was
not far, indeed, from believing implicitly that I was an
inmate of a place peculiarly favoured by a constant com
munion with Heaven.
It was impossible, then, that I should for a moment
conceive the thought that the rooms of the rector of a
novitiate, who, as my confessor, was ever exciting me to a
life of purity and elevation, should contain any books but
those of piety and holiness. Weary as I had grown for
some time of incessantly reading the exercises of Saint
Ignatius, and incited by an irresistible desire to turn over
some other leaves than those, I raised my hand to a shelf
of the library, and joyfully seized a volume. To my sur
prise, I perceived a second row of books behind the first.
Curiosity impelled me to take down the volume which
had been concealed by the first I laid hold on. The name
of the author has escaped my recollection, but it was, I
think, a philosopher of the last century. I should have
looked at it more deliberately, had not a third row of books,
behind the second, struck me by the peculiar style of
the binding. What was my astonishment when this title
met my gaze, " Confessions of the Novices ! " The
side edges of the book were marked with the letters of the
alphabet. Could I do less than seek for the initial of my
own name 1
The first pages, written, probably, a few days after my
arrival, contained a rough sketch of my character. I was
utterly confounded. I recognised my successive confes
sions, each condensed into a few lines. So clear and accu
rate was the appreciation given of my temperament, my

lb SECEET PLAN
faculties, my affections, my weakness and my strength, that
I saw before my eyes a complete revelation of my own
nature. What surprised me above all was the concise
ness and energy of the expressions employed to sum up the
characteristics of my whole being. The favourite images
I found in this depository of outpourings of all sorts from
the heart of ingenuous youth, were borrowed from the
materials used in building — hard, fragile, malleable, coarse,
precious, necessary, accessory ; a sort of figurative language
which has kept fast hold on my memory. I only regret that
I could but glance with the rapidity of lightning over the
pages that concerned myself; yet this glance sufficed to
reveal to me .the object of such a work. An idea may be
formed of it from the passage I am about to cite, and of
which I have retained an indelible remembrance.
" The amount of enthusiasm and imagination with which
he is endowed," said the text, " might in time be made very
useful in varnishing our work. His want of taste for the
grotesque (sic) in religion* will do no harm, but it proves
that his talent must be employed in recommending and
exalting, to the more delicate consciences, all that is pure
and ennobling in religion. He would spoil all if we
were to let him set to work on the clumsier parts of the
edifice ; whilst he will greatly aid its advancement if he is
* Father Saetti, knocking at my door one morning, according to
his custom, I did not immediately open it. " Why this delay ?" he
asked me. I replied that I could not open the door sooner. He then
reminded jne that, in all things, the most prompt obedience was the
most perfect ; that in obeying God we must make every sacrifice, even
that of a moment of time. " One of the brethren," he continued,
" was occupied in writing, when some one knocked at his door. He
had begun to make an o, but he did not stay to finish it. He opened

OF THE JESUITS. 17
employed exclusively in the more delicate parts. Let him
be kept, therefore, in the upper regions of thought, and let
him not even be aware of the springs which set in movement
the vulgar part of the religious world.
" It is important that he should always have near him,
in his moments of depression, some one to cheer him
with brilliant anticipations. But should his ardour, on the
contrary, lead him too far, some discouragement or dis
appointment must be prepared for him, in order to mortify
him and keep him in subjection."
Not an atom of what I had, as a matter of conscience,
revealed to my guardian angel, or confessor, was omitted
in this register. When I recollect what sweeping induc
tions were drawn from the trifles which I had considered
myself bound to communicate, I cannot wonder that such a
system, so based on profound study of character, pursued
with so much assiduity and constancy, and applied on
so vast a scale to individuals of every age and every con
dition, should place in the hands of the Jesuits an almost
infallible means for attaining the end which they have pro
posed to themselves, with such extraordinary determi
nation. It may be imagined what were the reflections aroused
within me on the discovery I had made. In an instant I
the door, and on returning to his seat, he found the o completed, and
all in gold! Thus you see how God rewards him who is obedient."
I received this story with a burst of laughter, at which he appeared
much scandalised. " What !" he exclaimed, with an alarmed face, "do
you not believe in'miracles ? " " Most certainly I do," replied I j " but
this one is only fit to tell to old women."
This was, no doubt, repeated to the superior, and gave rise, I
imagine, to the secret remarks quoted above.
c 3

18 SECEET PLAN
recalled all the sinister statements which had been made to
me respecting this celebrated society. But none of these
thoughts had time to fix themselves in my mind, so eagerly
was I incited by the desire to know more. Agitated, car
ried away, by a dizzy curiosity and an increasing anxiety, I
seized a volume entitled, Confessions of Strangers. I
hastily glanced over a few lines, here and there, and the
small portions that I read induced me afterwards to believe,
that everything in this order is done conformably to the
rules of the little code, known by the name of Monita
Secreta, or Secret Instructions. It was, in fact, a collec
tion of notes upon persons of every class, of every age,
rich men, bachelors, &c. Here again were circumstantial
details — propensities, fortune, family, relations, vices and
virtues, together with such anecdotes as were calculated to
characterize the personages. It is only in cases of excep
tion, as I have since learnt, that a Jesuit remains long in
the same place. If he be allowed to continue his sojourn
there, it is only when the superiors are convinced of the
incontestable utility of the influence which he exercises.
Whenever a Jesuit, particularly' one of moderate abilities,
has used up the resources of his mind in any particular
place, and when he seems to have nothing new to produce,
the regulations of the order require that he shall be re
placed by another who may, in his turn, be remarked and
admired for a longer or a shorter time. In these frequent
changes there is another advantage : the new-comer, enter
ing upon the sacred office of his predecessor, as soon as he
has learnt the names of the persons who choose him for the
director of their conscience, can, by means of the Register
of Confessions, furnish himself, in a few hours, with all the

OF THE JESUITS. 19
experience acquired by his colleagues. This artifice en
dows him with the infallible power of surprising, confound
ing, and subjugating the penitents who kneel beside him ;
he penetrates them most unexpectedly, and, in a manner
unprecedented, introduces himself into the most hidden
folds of their hearts. It cannot be told with how much art
the Jesuits profit by the astonishment they thus excite, and
how adroitly they turn it to the advancement of their work-
Thus, I have met with rich bigots, old men, and often with
young persons of the weaker sex, who boldly maintain that
the greater number of these reverend fathers are actually
endowed with the spirit of prophecy.

VII.

I was, meanwhile, disposed to make further and bolder
researches. The book which I next opened was a register
of Revenues, Acquisitions, and Expenses. In my feverish
impatience I soon quitted it for another, entitled, Enemies
of the Society. At this moment I was interrupted by a
noise which I heard, and scarcely had I time to replace the
volumes T had disturbed, when I distinguished the sound
of numerous approaching footsteps, as if several persons
were about to enter the apartment. Then only I began
to feel the danger of my presence in the closet.
Until then I had been wholly absorbed, and hurried
along, as it were, by a whirlwind. But the discoveries I
have related proved to be but the prologue to a drama
infinitely more serious, and which I am about to retrace.
As soon as I was aware that the rector was returning,

20 SECEET PLAN
along with several other persons, I held a rapid debate
within myself whether I should leave the inner room, and
cross the other in their presence, or remain hidden as
I was. But, in order to render my narrative more clear,
I ought here, perhaps, to relate a fact which can alone ex
plain why I had found the door of the apartment open.
I learnt afterwards that a rich nobleman and courtier* had
come to pay a visit to the Jesuit fathers at Chieri. I had
myself a few days previously heard a rumour of the ex
pected arrival of some fathers from a distance. At this
period, the Jesuits were beginning to plant some roots in
Piedmont, of which they meditated the conquest; and I
doubt not that the superiors of the society resident at
Chieri wished to offer a flattering reception to this high
personage. Their conversation had, probably, run upon
the work which they proposed to undertake in that country.
I understood, at least, from some of their expressions, that
they congratulated themselves on having interested their
noble visitor, and trusted that they had acquired in him
a powerful supporter. There seems every reason to sup
pose that the fathers, desirous of pleasing him, had, in their
excess of politeness, accompanied him to his carriage, where
the conversation and the parting compliments had been
prolonged more than a quarter of an hour, whilst it had
occurred to no one amongst them that the door of the
rector's apartment was left open.
What might be the number of the fathers I cannot
* The Marquis of Saluces, brother of the Count of Saluces. I
had not named him in the manuscript which has been stolen from me.
My plunderers have added, in their Berne publication, a verbal indis
cretion to their actual theft.

OF THE JESUITS. 21
exactly report. To judge from the noise of voices, there
might be at least eight or ten of them.
As to myself, my perplexity may be better conceived
than described. I was bewildered. What was I to do ?
Remain ? But every moment I might expect to be dis
covered, and then! Should I open the door, and break
in upon their eager conversation ? But I was too much
agitated, too much oppressed, by what I had just read ;
besides, what I had already overheard of their projects,
their eager animation, and the freedom of their speech, all
terrified me. I trembled at the bare idea of encountering
their inquisitorial gaze. A fearful reaction had instan
taneously taken place within me. The Society of Jesus
was suddenly revealed to me in darker and more repulsive
colours than those under which it had formerly been depicted
to me. Confounded, paralyzed, and utterly unable to come
to any determination, I remained motionless. . . . Far
from being fatal to me, this loss of time was the circum
stance which saved me.

VIII.

Whilst they were thus conversing together with con
siderable vehemence, all on a sudden, as if they had dis
appeared, the noise of their voices ceased, and a dead
silence ensued. An electric shock could not have produced
a greater revulsion of feeling than that I experienced ; and
the door of the room, in which I was, being a little open,
as it had been from the first, my very pulses seemed to
stand still during this pause.

22 SECEET PLAN
Yet were I again to be submitted to such a trial, I
know not whether I should again be capable of the resolu
tion which then rose within me. I was composed, as it
were, of two beings. I felt, at the same time, all the
timidity and all the rash boldness of a child. A sort of
fascination inspired me with a daring thought, leaving me
at the same time perfectly aware of the danger of my
situation. Others may be able to explain this mystery ;
for myself, I only state what occurred to me. I tell what
I dared to attempt, and what I effected, without seeking
to conceal the terror by which I was shaken during its
execution, and which left an impression upon me that
lasted more than a twelvemonth. Certain it is that I soon
experienced, in the midst of my trembling fears, a sort of
boyish exultation, a feeling of joy and triumph at the idea
of being initiated into secrets, the mysterious and awful
nature of which I was led to infer from the revelations of
the library, the words which struck my ears, the opinion I
had conceived of the power of the Jesuits, and the remem
brance, which these circumstances so vividly recalled, of
all that I had heard in their disfavour. But let me not
anticipate. Up to this time, I had been endeavouring to collect all
my courage, in order to present myself before the assembly,
and attempt to go forth, excusing myself to the rector, if,
as was most likely, he should interrogate me ; and, pro
bably, I should have finished by taking this step, had the
confused conversation continued much longer. The sudden
silence, the idea that I was discovered, put an end to the
resolution I was about to take. At the very moment when
I expected to see the door opened, the incident which

OF THE JESUITS. 23
took place changed my situation, and rendered it critical
in the last extreme. At the first words I heard, and which
I am about to relate, I felt with terror that I was, in fact,
witness of a council which held up before me the two
grand perils between which I had to choose. But the
danger, if I presented myself, was immediate though un
known, whilst it seemed to me that in temporizing there
was some chance of safety. This latter plan, too, was the
easier from its inaction ; it left me a ray of hope that I
might yet escape undetected, and I remained therefore
motionless, awaiting my fate. I will now relate the words
which almost immediately broke the awful silence.
I do not profess to give with literal accuracy, in each
expression, the allocution of the Jesuit who filled the office
of president on this occasion ; but I pledge myself that the
sense is faithfully and accurately reported : the words,
which in a moment so grave, and in the midst of such
profound attention, fell slowly and emphatically on my ear,
remain indelibly imprinted on my memory.
" You will excuse me, dear brethren '' — (an imperative
gesture of the president himself had doubtless produced the
silence which had been so startling to me) — "you will excuse
me if I thus interrupt you. You are aware that we have
no time to lose. To-day, as already resolved, we will enter
into a general view of the interests and the plan of action
by which our society is at present to be guided. Hitherto
our discussions have related only to local affairs. We must
now define the principles which are, henceforward, to regu
late our conduct. The men with whom we have now to do,
are totally dissimilar to those of past times. The plan
which we are now to lay down must be calculated to meet

24 SECEET PLAN
present as well as future obstacles. And shall not we," he
added, with a tone of concentrated haughtiness, " with our
united efforts, be able to do as much as — nay, more than
was done by one single man, in a few years, to the astonish
ment of the whole world 1 Hold yourselves ready then,
you who have sufficient understanding to throw light upon
the important questions which we have to resolve.
" You have, before your eyes, the list of those points
which form our chief object.
" What is most important for us is, that our materials
should augment, and that a book be ultimately made from
them — I will not say a large book, but such a book, as
may become, though small in volume, a vast fund, wherein
shall be concentrated the experience of thousands, for the
benefit of all those whom we shall initiate into our work. For
you all know that since quiet is restored, and the genius of
war is fettered, the mind of every nation is at the disposal
of him who shall most adroitly take possession of it.
" But let us not deceive ourselves. However good our
old swords may be, yet seeing the struggle which awaits us,
it is not enough to sharpen them ; we must above all things
modernize them.
" We must first decide, then, what course to follow
with the multitude who have been bewildered and fascinated
by such fine-sounding words as 'right,' 'liberty,' 'human
dignity,' and so forth. It is not by straightforward oppo
sition, and by depreciating their idols, that we shall prevail.
To prepare for men of all parties, whatever may be their
banner, a gigantic surprise, that is our task. (Creare a
tutti i partiti, qualunque sia la lor bandiera, una gigantesca
sorpresa, ecco la nostra opera.)

OF THE JESUITS. 25
" Let our first care, therefore, be to change, altogether,
the nature of our tactics, and to give a new varnish to
religion, by appearing to make large concessions. This is
the only means to assure our influence over these moderns,
half men, half children.
" We will first, then, take a review of the arsenal of our
forces. The present meeting shall be the pregnant mother
of our future proceedings (seance mere), wherein we will
concentrate all the ideas we have formed upon the epoch,
so as to turn them to the aggrandisement of the church.
Here are the minutes of the three preceding meetings,
which you may all consult at your leisure. Broad margins
have been left in order that you may note down your reflec
tions, your rectifications, and even your objections, should
such present themselves to your minds ; and above all, your
new views on the difficulties we shall encounter, and on the
best means of vanquishing them. In this manner we shall
become more and more enlightened on the grand design of
our order, and on the course which will most promptly and
most surely accomplish it.
" Bear ever in mind that our great object, in the first
place, is to study deeply and bring to perfection the art of
rendering ourselves both necessary and formidable to the
powers that be."

IX.
It almost took away my breath to find the worst that
had been told me of the Jesuits thus suddenly and un
expectedly confirmed by what I had just read and heard.

26 SECEET PLAN
To open the door now, and to present myself before them,
would have been the act of a madman. All that remained
for me was to decide what I should do if I were discovered;
and I thought my only possible resource, if I heard them
approach the door, would be to stretch myself on the
ground as if I were in a fit. I felt, in fact, as if I were on
the point of being precipitated headlong down a precipice.
A salutary diversion drew me out of this state of ex
treme anxiety ; there was a movement and a sound of
chairs ; they were evidently taking their seats at the table.
Here was a respite ! I breathed again. The person who
had already spoken now uttered, in a simple and familiar
tone, the following words, which suddenly inspired me with
the feelings and the resolution of which I have spoken
above. " I should wish," said he, " that nothing should be lost
of what we are about to say. I desire exceedingly that
all our ideas may be committed to writing, so that others
may have opportunity to criticise, develop, or improve
them. Let us, therefore, deliver them clearly and delibe
rately, in order that our friend the secretary (Vamico nostro,
il secretario) may lose nothing of what is said."
To hear this, to observe near me a small table furnished
with writing materials, and to resolve to play myself the
part of secretary, was the work of an instant.
From the commencement of my studies, first from
caprice, and afterwards with a special motive, I had in- ¦
vented for my own use a system of abbreviations in writing.
I had only thought, at first, of procuring myself a little
leisure during the dictation of the lessons, and thus being
able to amuse myself, with all the vain-glory of a schoolboy,*

OF THE JESUITS. 27
in watching my fellow-students painfully writing down
what I had long since finished. The indulgence of this
diversion sometimes, indeed, induced the professor to
require me to prove, by reading the dictation, that I had
really written it. But I afterwards turned this species of
stenography to more account, because it enabled me to
enjoy furtive reading during the lessons. And the effect of
it remains to this day ; for, although I no longer make use
of this system, I find it difficult to write without many
abbreviations, so that my handwriting is, unfortunately for
my correspondents, singularly illegible. Besides, those
amongst the Jesuits whose native tongue was not Italian
naturally spoke with slowness. Hence I had no difficulty
in writing down all that was said. I was thus occupied
until the close of the day ; a quarter of an hour more, and
daylight would have totally failed me.
I will not attempt to describe my sens-ations whilst thus
occupied. I felt as if I had taken a prodigious leap. Still
very young (I was only nineteen), simple and confiding, I
was confronted, wholly unprepared, with the most daring
and profound machinations which men, such as the chiefs
of the Jesuits, were capable of devising. The veil with
drawn, I beheld myself face to face with one of the
most mysterious powers which has ever been known to
reduce to system, on a vast scale, the art of subjugating
all sorts of passions — the passions of the mass, and the
passions of sovereigns — to the obtaining of a fixed and
immutable purpose.
Thus, scarcely daring to make the slightest movement,
I was able, through the partly-opened door, to hear dis
tinctly every word. I listened to the discourses of eight or

28 SECEET PLAN
ten of the most energetic chiefs of the society, who, having
laid aside, on this occasion, their unctuous language, and
honied phrases of holiness, boldly reasoned upon sects,
parties, opinions, and interests, weighed both obstacles and
resources, and built up a colossal edifice of delusion, before
which Machiavel would have bowed his head.
This was a rude trial for an understanding so youthful
and unprepared as mine. Besides this, the singularity of
my situation — listening to and writing down the words of
invisible personages, whilst I knew that the sword was
suspended over me by a single thread — occasioned emotions
so violent, that I cannot, to this day, recal them without a
nervous shudder.
My readers' own feelings, as they peruse what follows,
will enable them to judge what I must have suffered.

X.

A certain impression, which I welcomed as a hope of
safety and of Divine protection, seemed to come upon me,
that this singular situation, which I had neither sought
nor foreseen, was not the effect of chance. Besides, my
occupation absorbed me so deeply, that I had sunk into a
sort of calm — a calm inwardly troubled, it is true, and, as
it were, convulsive. But when I perceived that the sitting
was about to draw to a close, all my agitation was renewed.
A deep terror took possession of all my senses ; after what I
had heard and what I had done, I could not look for any
mercy. At the noise which followed, when all the assembly

OF THE JESUITS. 29
rose from their seats, my knees knocked together, and
drops of cold perspiration fell from my forehead.
Meanwhile, however much I resembled a condemned
criminal whose hour of execution has arrived, I was not
so wholly mastered by terror but that I had some lucid
moments. I took advantage of the noise produced by
their mutual congratulations to thrust my manuscripts into
my stockings, and felt somewhat relieved when they were
thus concealed. Afterwards, when the bottles were un
corked, and the glasses were jingled, I exerted all the little
force I had left to ease my torpid limbs ; for the posture I
had been obliged so long to maintain had cramped my
whole frame, especially my neck and my legs. Happily, the
noise was now sufficient to allow me to stretch my limbs,
and let my blood return to its natural circulation.
This relief obtained, and the noise in the adjoining
room having again subsided, the chief who had already
spoken, addressed the following observations to his col
leagues, who listened. with the renewed attention which his
words seemed always to command.
" Where is the revolutionist who, as soon as he becomes
engaged in any plot, is not obliged to risk his fortune and
his life? As for us, we have nothing of the kind to fear.
On the contrary, those who load us with favours, to whom
we owe these spacious mansions where we hold our meet
ings in perfect safety, not only confide to us their sub
ordinates and their families, but put themselves into our
hands." These last words, uttered in a slightly ironical tone,
excited an approving murmur, which induced the speaker
to add : —
d 2

30 SECEET PLAN
" But let us not trust too much to the singular advan
tages of our admirable position. Let us rather take
extreme care to avoid the least false step, so as to arrive
safely at the result of our efforts."
After these words there was an explosion of enthusiasm
— toast followed toast ; but nothing of the precise meaning
of their noisy conversation reached me. The only words
I heard distinctly were these which one of them, evidently
English or Irish by his accent, pronounced in a grave
sonorous voice, accenting each syllable impressively : " Et
erit unum ovile, et unus pastor."
Continually in fear of being discovered, I expected
every instant to see the joyous scene of which I was the
unknown witness, change into a scene of death. I looked
anxiously around me — not a corner where I could conceal
myself. I heard the rapid beating of my heart ; my fate
seemed darker than the night whose approach rendered my
thoughts still more gloomy. What a position ! I at once
desired and feared a change, whatever it might be. I
desired it, that I might be released from such cruel con
straint ; I feared it, for what might befal me ! All at once
a fortunate accident roused me from my stupor — the house
bell rang. I heard these words, "Come, let us to supper;''
followed by these others, " We have earned one, and a
good one too."

XI.
As soon as I could make out that they were movin» to
the door and were really going, I was seized with an agita-

OF THE JESUITS. 31
tion of quite a different nature from that which I had
endured before. I cannot possibly express what I felt
at this moment, when, listening attentively, I acquired the
certainty that the room was becoming empty. It seemed
to me that an overwhelming weight, which had oppressed
me during half the day with a mysterious terror, was
instantaneously taken away, as it were, by an invisible
hand. Thenceforward, full of courage, I did not doubt that God
had assisted me till then, and that he would continue to
assist me.
As soon as the sound of retreating steps had completely
died away in the corridors, I crept softly into the apartment.
- Even there I could not help casting a look on the table round
which the assembly had been seated. The temptation was
too strong for my curiosity not to overcome my fears. The
first thing that struck me was some great books in the
form of registers, with alphabeted edges. The sight of them
explained to me a noise I had heard at the moment when
the Jesuits entered. However, no use had been made of
these books during the conference.
Although at that hour I could scarcely see to read,
yet I would not lose the opportunity of casting a rapid
glance into these volumes. I found that they contained
numerous observations relative to the character of distin
guished individuals, arranged by towns or families. Each
page was evidently written by several different hands.
Beside these enormous volumes, I saw three unbound
manuscript books, two in Italian, and one in French, all
thickly set with marginal notes. If I had not been tor
mented with strong apprehensions, I could have employed

32 SECEET PLAN
some precious time in looking through this mass of writings.
But I had incurred peril enough, and however great the
attraction, it was necessary to resist it, and depart without
more delay.

XII.

What activity in this order ! — what power of combina
tion ! — what boldness of views ! — what fecundity of means !
But also, what pride to imagine it possible, even with all
these appliances, to delude, ensnare, mystify, and quell
this rebellious age, which becomes each day more clear
sighted to comprehend these plans, and perceive the defini
tive object of these manoeuvres.
Jesuitism, indeed, has long lain under the most terrible
suspicions. Fra Paolo Sarpi, a man of great capacity, of con
summate experience, a monk himself, and who, during a
long life, had studied this amphibious sort of corporation
(for it does not declare itself decidedly either ecclesiastic or
monkish), calls it in his usual laconic language, " The
secret of the court of Rome, and of all secrets the greatest."
" Of all the religious orders," said likewise the formid
able Philip II. , "that of the Jesuits is the only one which
I cannot in the least comprehend."
At the present day this society continues to be an
enigma, but its meaning is on the point of being found
out. One day during the last few years I opened the
Revue des Deux-Mondes, and great was my surprise on

OF THE JESUITS. 33
finding there details very similar to those which I have
just recounted, and of which, as I have already said, I made
no mystery on my arrival in Switzerland. It is, neverthe
less, possible, that the information contained in the following
lines proceeded from another source: —
" The provincial houses correspond with those of Paris ;
they are also in direct communication with the general,
who resides at Rome. The correspondence of the Jesuits,
so active, so varied, and organized in so wonderful a man
ner, has for object to furnish the chiefs with every infor
mation of which they may stand in need. Every day the
general receives a number of reports which severally check
each other. There are in the central house, at Rome, huge
registers, wherein are inscribed the names of all the Jesuits
and of all the important persons, friends, or enemies, with
whom they have any connexion. In those registers are
recorded, without alteration, hate, or passion, facts relating
to the lives of each individual. It is the most gigantic
biographical collection that has ever been formed. The
conduct of a light woman, the hidden failings of a statesman,
are recounted in these books with cold impartiality ; written
with an aim to usefulness, these biographies are necessarily
genuine. When it is required to act in any way upon an
individual, they open the book and become immediately
acquainted with his life, his character, his qualities, his
defects, his projects, his family, his friends, his most secret
acquaintances. Can you not conceive, sir, what paramount
practical advantages a society must enjoy that possesses this
immense police register which embraces the whole world 1
It is not on light grounds I speak of these registers, it is
from one who has seen this collection, and who is perfectly

34 SECEET PLAN
acquainted with the Jesuits, that I derive my knowledge of
this fact. It suggests matter for reflection for those
families who give free access to the members of a com
munity in which the study of biography is so adroitly
cultivated and applied."
I was forced, though with regret, to quit the table ;
besides, the darkness prevented my reading profitably.
I was under no difficulty about leaving the room ; I knew
that the door opened on the inside, and that I should only
have to shut it gently to reach the corridor. I thought it
best not to go to my room, as it must have been shut up
during my absence. What I most dreaded at that moment
was to meet any one, for I was convinced that during this
absence of half a day I had been anxiously sought for.
The best expedient I could think of was to go and place
myself in a latticed pew in the church, in which I
attended mass every day accompanied by my guardian
angel.

XIII.
Alone there, and in some degree safe, I had leisure to
feel the full effects of the fatigue of body and mind I had
endured. All my ideas had in fact undergone a complete
revolution, which, had it been effected slowly, would not have
had the serious consequences of which I am about to speak ;
but it had taken place with extraordinary violence ; the tree
had been torn up suddenly by the roots and cast upon the
furious waters of a torrent. I will not attempt to describe
such a situation ; at times I appreciated the event in all its

OF THE JESUITS. 35
reality ; at others the burning of my brain was such that I
did not doubt I had been the sport of some Satanic vision ;
I was present once more at the scene which I had
witnessed, but it was now so exaggerated that I fancied I
heard spectres or demons conversing together.
Under a load of such different impressions of fear, of
astonishment, my intellectual and moral strength broken
by toil and constraint, after having yielded myself up to
a maze of gloomy and agonizing thoughts, it was a good
thing for me that I ^sank into a deep sleep. It must
have been about nine or ten in the evening, when I was
suddenly awakened by some one shouting out my name.
Mechanically I came out of my pew, and was still rubbing
my eyes when I know not how many fathers came round
me. I was instantly overwhelmed with questions. I was
obliged to pause some moments to collect my ideas ; and
then I could find nothing better to say than that I had felt
unwell — that everything fatigued me — that the slightest
noise tortured me — and that I had retired there to be
alone. But all this was far from satisfying them. Father
Saetti remarked, that not only he had been where we then
were, but that he had knocked at every door, even at that
of the rector, without being able to find me.
In fact, during the meeting I had heard the door open ;
and so long as the whisperings lasted, and until it was
shut again, I had felt a cold shudder run through my
frame. I replied, therefore, that it was true I had not been
constantly there ; that I had been absent for a quarter of

36 SECEET PLAN
an hour or so, and I mentioned a place to which I had
been obliged to go.
The embarrassment manifested in every word I spoke
increased their suspicions. The fathers, irritated rather
than appeased by my replies, continued, under different
forms, to repeat the same interrogations.
The guardian angel took; the trouble to inform me, in
an ill-hurr.oured tone, that at first he had believed I
had gone to make my request to the rector, but that my
absence proving so long, he had changed his opinion. And
as though he feared being accused of negligence, he justified
himself in an eager and serious tone.
" It was impossible for me to suppose," said he to the
rector, " that even if you had received him you would
have kept him so long — above all to-day, when, on account
of the meeting, you had told me there would be no recep
tion. It was only after having been more than once to
inquire of the porter and of the lay brothers, after having
importuned everybody, that I began to suspect he might
have run away. It was then at the risk of disturbing your
meeting, not knowing what to do, I came and knocked at
your door. Before supper, I hastened to inform you of his
disappearance, and, had it not been to obey you, I should,
for my own part, have judged it perfectly useless to go
calling him through the corridors as I have just done. I
can scarcely believe my eyes at seeing him there now."
There would have been no end to all this, if, wearied
with so many questions, and making a bold effort, I had
not begun to complain bitterly, groaning out that they
tortured me, that I was exhausted , with suffering, that I
was dying.

OP THE JESUITS. 37
An aged father, whom I recognised by his voice as
one of those who had spoken during the meeting, suddenly
cut short these puzzling interrogatories. " Let me see,"
said he, taking hold of my hand and feeling my pulse,
whilst the rest stood keenly watching me in silence ; then,
after a few moments of serious thought, " Poor lad !"
said he, " he is in a burning fever. To bed with him
immediately ! let the physician see him at once ; I never
in my life saw any one in such violent agitation ; he is in
a tremendous fever." This was sufficient to put an end to
their suspicions.

XIV.
My first care, on being conducted to my room, was to
endeavour to undress without assistance. I contrived, not
without difficulty, to lay my stockings aside without any
other person touching them. The physician, who soon
arrived, confirmed the opinion already pronounced on the
serious nature of my attack.
Wholly engrossed by the secret in my possession, as
soon as I was left alone, notwithstanding the darkness and
the deplorable state I was in, I opened the edge of one of
my waistcoats with a penknife ; I then took my manu
scripts, reduced them into small squares, and placed them
carefully within the lining, so as to make no show that
could betray their existence. I was obliged, however,
to defer till the morrow the task of stitching up the waist
coat. When my health was in some degree restored, and I
E

38 SECEET PLAN
had recovered my composure, I communicated to the rector
my determination to discontinue my studies for the novi
tiate. In this I was guilty of signal imprudence, and
from that moment my intention of quitting the establish
ment was represented to me as an inspiration of the devil.
The pertinacity with which they strove to detain me,
against my will, was so much the more odious to me, as
they protested that all they sought was the welfare of my
immortal soul. I found myself compelled some time longer
to champ the bit in silence.
The day of confession arrived. I had hitherto obeyed
a rule which prescribed that the penitent should reply
aloud to the questions of his confessor — a more efficacious
means, it was said, of advancing in humility and of render
ing the act of confession meritorious. This time I paid no
attention to it. The rector remarked this, and severely
reprimanded me. The fact is, that he never failed on the
Saturday evening to place his chair against that very door
which, on the day when I took my notes of the sitting,
had remained partly open, and he seated himself in
such a manner that my voice was necessarily directed
towards the door. I was, meanwhile, kneeling on a sort
of footstool, and my face nearly touched his. The know
ledge I had acquired had rendered me suspicious. The
care which he took to exhort me to speak louder, whilst
the usual custom in confession is to whisper, called my
attention to the door which was in front of me, and
I examined it as carefully as my situation would permit.
I perceived that it was slight, and composed of a
number of narrow battens, with many small interstices
between them. Of course, in my new frame of mind I

OF THE JESUITS. 39
could not help supposing that some mystery was hidden
behind that door — that, perhaps, on the same spot where
I had written down the proceedings of the meeting, on that
very table, so well furnished with writing materials, a
secretary took notes of all that was weekly elicited, by
questions cunningly contrived so as to search out the
inmost hearts of young men who would have scrupled to
dissemble, in the solemn act of confession, even their most
fugitive thoughts.

XV.

Let me now give an account of the contrary effect
which was produced on me, in my present state, by those
very things which had previously wrought upon me, as it
were, by fascination.
The devotional books I was made to read, the sighs
and lamentations I heard uttered for the multitude of souls
whom the world beguiles and corrupts, and, above all,
these maxims, " That it is only by sacrificing our inclina
tions that we can advance towards perfection; that inferiors
ought to listen to their superiors as if God spoke by their
lips ; that when we have become as a wand, or as a lifeless
body in their hands, then only we have attained the height
of obedience; and that this short life cannot be better
employed than for the triumph of the church, and in
seeking to bring all to her." These books, these sighs,
these maxims appeared to me as nothing else than the
means of an abominable deception.
Nothing annoyed me so much as the pains they took

40 SECEET PLAN
to embue my gait, my gestures, and even my looks with a
certain air of austerity, and to prune my habitual language
of certain free and artless expressions, with a view to im
pose others upon me, of a honied, specious, and sanctimo
nious nature. To meditate for ever, in such a place as this,
on the eternity of punishment, everlasting felicity, and
the duty of putting off the old man and putting on the
new, and to pass the beads of a chaplet daily through my
fingers, were exercises incompatible thenceforward with the
new life which I had received in that very place. But
what consummated my disgust was to be compelled to par
ticipate in conventional groanings, and in a pious loquacity
of which it is impossible to form an idea. How, indeed,
could I have continued to be at all deceived as to the
nature of these practices ? I was now aware of their
purpose. They hoped, by means of all their trash of
hollow and heartless prayers, their fictitious ecstacies, and
chimerical communion with God, to galvanize my imagi
nation, to suppress a portion of my being, and by marring
my reason to obscure and mutilate my understanding, so
that they might at length become its absolute masters.
The traces of the crisis through which I passed have
been so profound, that no religious phraseology, however
grand, has ever since been able to impose upon me. So
far from being, in my estimation, a warrant of solid piety,
a profusion of set phrases induces me rather to inquire
whether it is not employed as an instrument of political
views, or of self-interested speculation. I have become
more and more averse from that heavy formality which
almost everywhere stifles the fruitful principles of the
gospel ; and I have good right to disapprove of and detest

OF THE JESUITS. 41
it, since I early encountered the most venomous of reptiles
under its thick foliage. I know, indeed, of no better rule
for judging of men and things than that given by Jesus :
" A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor an evil
tree good fruit. By their fruits ye shall know them."
Convinced that the rector would never cease to oppose
my departure, I matured a project of flight, and I chose
for its execution what I thought the most favourable hour
of the afternoon. I went immediately to the very hotel at
which, a short time before, I had dined with the arch-priest,
the day of my entrance into the novitiate. From thence I
sent to the establishment for whatever belonged to me.
One of the fathers immediately came to me, and exerted all
his eloquence to convince me that I had committed a
heinous fault ; but it was in vain he protested that salvation
is scarcely to be attained by those who mingle in the
world's ways, whereas if we die in the society it is assured
to us, according to the promise of St. Ignatius — I was no
longer the man to give heed to such fables. Abstaining
from all imprudent disclosures, and avoiding every symptom
of rancour, I at length dismissed my persevering visitor,
and now I thought only of returning to my parents. A
physician, whom I found it necessary to consult, advised
me to avoid the motion of a carriage, and to travel rather
by boat upon the Po. It is astonishing how the eager
desire to quit this place, and the joy of breathing the
free air, took away all feeling of the indisposition under
which I was still labouring. But scarcely had I proceeded
six or seven leagues by water ere my illness increased so
much, that when I was landed at Casala I was considered
to be in danger. I was therefore compelled to remain at
e 2

42 SECEET PLAN
that place until I was able to be removed to Langosco,
my native town.
Amidst so many trials it was, however, a consolation
to me that throughout this perilous affair I had avoided
the worst of all evils, that of betraying myself. In the
height of the fever, brought on by all I had gone through,
every word I uttered had some confused reference to the
meeting of which I had made a minute. I had to strive
against this tendency of my disorder, and so great was the
struggle, that I suffered from the effects of it for more
than a year. The strangeness of the event, and the fear
of betraying my own share in it, had deranged my whole
being.

XVI.

It is important that I should touch upon other annoy
ances to which 1 was subjected as soon as it was known
that I had left the Jesuits. No one was more visibly
hurt at my abandonment of the novitiate than was my
former friend the cure. My brief abode at Chieri, my
escape, the complaint against me addressed to him by the
superior, and, more than all, my extreme reserve with the
Jesuits, from whom I declared, however, I had never
experienced anything but good treatment — all these things
were to him totally inexplicable. Those who compared my
former enthusiasm with my present icy silence, accused me
of inconsistency, and harassed me with questions ; and the
necessity under which I was placed of answering evasively,
contributed not a little to make it appear that I was in the

OF THE JESUITS. 43
wrong. But the greatest grief I felt on this occasion
was that he who had hitherto loved me as his son, so that
we could not pass a day without seeking each other's
society, now shut his door against me, declaring, with
indignant severity, that for the future he would have
nothing to do with me. This was my old friend the cure.
And in fact he had witnessed in me so much resistance
overcome, so many sacrifices made, so many ties, and those
the dearest, broken, that he could not but consider my
vocation as a strong and decided one. It appeared unpar
donable in his eyes that I should have no reason to allege
for the suddenness of the change, none to justify my flight ;
and nothing could exasperate him more than the utter apathy
I showed with regard to the Jesuits, after having been one
of their most ardent admirers ; an apathy which I could
not disguise, although it rendered my conduct still more
enigmatical. All this kept us asunder during several
years, and even when our reconciliation at last took
place, he could not refrain from treating me as inconstant,
unreasonable, flighty, and paradoxical. In fact he only
consented to receive me again on condition that not a word
should be said on all this affair.

XVII.
I will now give an idea of the conduct which I was
obliged to adopt, in order to make my way in the clerical
world. I pursued my theological studies, and very natu
rally the pages I possessed were the frequent subject of my
meditations. Instead of being influenced by official

44 SECEET PLAN
instruction, I soon became sensible that, in my case, it
only served as an antidote against itself. I thus preserved
my thoughts from pursuing the common track. But a
crowd of reflections were awakened within me on all that I
saw, and these I was absolutely forced to suppress. To
form an idea of what all this cost me, it would be necessary
to make a close acquaintance with life in a seminary.
Reciprocal mistrust is the first lesson taught there;
servility is recommended as the height of virtue ; espionage
is noble, everything is pardoned to him who practises it,
whilst the greatest implacability is shown towards him who
dares to call it a base occupation. The doctrine of pride
is also carried to its greatest height in the opinion which
the priest is taught to form of his own dignity. He is told
to consider himself as no less superior to the laity than man
is to the brute. He is told that he must not be familiar
with the people ; that he must maintain a certain distancein
order to be the more imposing, and the better to inculcate the
superiority of the church, or (which comes to the same
thing) of the clergy. The students in these ecclesiastical
establishments, almost all of the poorer classes, shiink from
no sacrifice, because they are sustained by the hope of
improving their condition. Yes, all that is sought, with
such concentrated eagerness, under the semblance of this
plausible mechanism of worship, is, in plain truth, a position
more or less brilliant — a trade, in fact, by which to live.
Such is the mainspring of this machinery, and it does not
fail to keep all in movement. And to say the truth, who
ever has eyes to see and ears to hear, can feel no doubt
that this is the means employed to influence, modify,
transform, render subservient, or stifle, if need be, opinions,

OF THE JESUITS. 45
ideas, and systems. So that the greater number of young
men, who are brought by instruction to admit these ready-
made convictions, and who are incapable of a free and
magnanimous resolution, easily lend themselves to certain
functions in the Catholic hierarchy, and each works at his
appointed hour, and in his appointed place, with surprising
readiness and regularity.
When my eyes had once begun to penetrate all these
combinations, and their unavoidable results, I perceived
within myself symptoms of another revolution. Every
amusement was insipid to me ; and my soul, early awakened,
and yet imprisoned in a little world, an epitome of all that
is stirring in the great world, set itself to work secretly to
discuss a multitude of questions, delicate in their nature,
and difficult to solve. I was in a situation every way
exceptional. I was like a person who is placed behind the
curtain during a scenic representation, and who witnesses
the play of the wires. Thus, the pomp and show of
religion, its fetes, liturgies, solemnities, and devotional
practices, inspired me with nothing short of repugnance.
But forced to submit to circumstances, with my eye fixed
upon a multitude of figures, and on the concealed springs
which put them in movement, I shrank, pensively, within
myself. This, however, I will say, that notwithstanding all
the obligations which I felt were imposed upon me by my
situation, neither the sermons at chapel, nor the weekly
gymnastics to which I was forced to resign myself, in order
to be one of the actors in the insipid exhibition of high
mass, nor the act of confession and its monthly certifi
cates, nor all the constraint imposed by constant espionage,
operated in the same manner upon me that it did upon

46 SECEET PLAN
others. It roused within me a rebellious feeling, instead of
rendering me docile to receive the common stamp.
Alone, as it were, amongst a great number of fellow-
students, almost unconnected with them, on account of my
eccentricity and isolation, I was compelled to have recourse
to whatever change or occupation I could procure, in order
to render my situation supportable. I ransacked all the
works that came within the limits of the prescribed rules,
in the hope of appeasing my thirst of knowledge, and for
want of larger resources, my mind was absorbed in reason
ing and reflection. I deeply studied (and this was the
source of much reproach to me) a Latin Bible, divided into
small volumes, one of which I always had about me.
Meanwhile the orchestra poured forth its anthems, the
altar shone resplendent with gold, the bishop enthroned
himself with his scenic adornments ; they knelt, they
bowed, they waved the censers, they chanted, they stunned
the ears, and dazzled the eyes; whilst I, in order to detach
myself, as much as possible, from all this mechanical mum
mery, gladly abandoned my seat at the feast, always fur
nished on days of extraordinary ceremony, to those who
were well contented to take my place ; that is to say, to
any of those beings as fond of these ceremonies as they
were stupid and greedy.
My antipathy for these material forms of worship be
came generally perceived, and produced considerable scan
dal. I felt, meanwhile, an increasing ardour in the study
of the Prophets and of the New Testament, in order to
acquaint myself perfectly with the type of doctrine and
the plan of redemption which they contain. If I con
sented, from time to time, to play a part in the numerous

OF THE JESUITS. 47
exhibitions which are indispensable in every grand Catholic
solemnity, I did it with so bad a grace, and with such
evident repugnance, that my fellow -actors were both
amused and angry ; so extremely susceptible are priests in
all that relates to their ceremonies.
Such was the effect upon me of the event which I have
related ; and I was compelled to maintain a daily and
hourly struggle with the desire I felt to communicate it.
Notwithstanding all my reserve, however, involuntary
glimpses of revelation from time to time escaped me, like
flashes of lightning, and excited surprise and alarm in
some for whom I had the greatest respect and love ; so
that they began to look upon me as an inexplicable anomaly,
and I became conviriced that my only hope of safety was
to preserve the most rigorous silence.

XVIII.
My studies being terminated, I applied for ordination.
And now I was made sensible of the obstacles I had to
expect. I observed in all those who directed the semi
nary, not excepting the rector himself, a determination to
stop my progress. I begged of them to inform me what
were the motives of their refusal, and to say in what my
conduct had given them offence ? They replied, that I
had no taste for religious ceremonies, and that, consequently,
I had no vocation for the church ; that I read too much,
and that they could not understand me. As they persisted
in their refusal, a canon, highly placed, who had long been
my confessor, a man of a singular and complex character,

48 SECEET PLAN
procured me an introduction to Grimaldi, archbishop of
Vercelli. When I represented to him the deplorable
ignorance and the scandalous immorality of many of the
pupils of the seminary, who had been received into holy
orders by the influence of certain personages, and even by
that of certain ladies, whilst those who were questioned as
to my conduct had not a word of reproach to bring for
ward, he was obliged to intrench himself behind a custom
which exists of never accepting a candidate who is
opposed by his superiors.
I recount these details in order to show that the
superiors with whom I had to do were unable to compre
hend my character. They were anxious to interdict me
from ever entering into the Catholic sanctuary ; but they
were unable to find an effectual pretext. The archbishop
owned himself, at length, dissatisfied with mere suspicions,
vague accusations, and gratuitous assertions of the difficulty
of ascertaining my tendencies.
One of the many proofs I could furnish, that the sin
gular secret of which I was possessor influenced all my
views and directed all my proceedings, is, that as soon as 1
had succeeded in obtaining ordination, I took my departure
for Turin. In one of the intervals of the secret conference, during
which the Jesuits relaxed themselves by a little familiar
conversation, I had heard the theologian Guala spoken of
as an ecclesiastic very serviceable to their plans. No
sooner, then, was I at liberty to pursue my own projects,
than I endeavoured to procure an introduction to him.
He instructs a chosen band of young priests, in the
capital of Piedmont, whom he trains up for confessors,

OF THE JESUITS. 49
and he conforms, in all things, to the views of the Jesuits,
whom he considers as models of perfection. His morality
is theirs.

XIX.

What most struck me, on my entrance into this con
gregation, was the chief himself. Small of stature, of great
activity, with a most penetrating eye, inflexible with the
little, and supple with the great, I beheld him every morning
besieged, both at his own residence and at the confessional,
by the most influential and the most distinguished persons
of both sexes whom the city possesses.
Every week, at an appointed time, priests, young and
old, crowded into a vast hall, and a conference took place,
in which this theologian and his colleagues, all spiritual
directors of the highest families, conducted the discussion
of cases of conscience. For myself, all my attention was
applied to study the tactics employed to furnish young con
fessors with rules not only different, but absolutely opposed
to each other, and to teach them how to use them. I
acquired also the clearest conviction that the supreme art
of the confessional is, to utilize for the church, that is, for
the clerical hierarchy, sins and crimes of every species.
Casuistry, like a Proteus, for ever displayed itself to my
eyes under varying colours. The waving willow branch
is not more flexible than are these doctors in their princi
ples of morality.
Every young priest is at liberty to play, by turns, the
part of confessor and that of penitent. In the latter case,
i

50 SECEET PLAN
assuming the character of bigot or libertine, or acting the
part of statesman, marquis, countess, or man or woman of
the lower classes, he simulates the passions and adven
tures of all ages, sexes, and conditions. I listened with
particular attention to the mentors, aged men of great
experience, when they corrected the apprentice-confessors ;
not a word did I suffer to escape me of the many which
revealed, in all its sinuosities, contrasts, and searching sub
tleties, all subservient to views of interest and domination,
the nature of the language which they were to employ with
the several classes of society.
But it is from a number of anecdotes, from conversa
tions, from words let fall in public, or confidentially, from
manuscripts which were only confided to trustworthy per
sons, that I acquired the certainty that the hidden designs
of the Jesuits are executed by the aid of a multitude of
adherents, who are entirely ignorant of the power that acts
upon them, but are governed by others, who appear to
know something of it, but in different degrees.
This same theologian, who had at his disposal benefices
small and great, from the humblest offices up to mitred
ones, succeeded, with great skill, in presenting himself to
my selection when he learned that I was engaged in the
choice of a confessor. My confession, genuine at first, was
soon changed into a sort of conversation that had no rela
tion to it, as a religious act. He, nevertheless, required
that, every Sunday, the priests whose director he was
should not fail to kneel before him at the hours when the
church was most crowded : it is not difficult to guess the
motive for such an exhibition.
He little suspected, however, that instead of studying

OF THE JESUITS. 51
me, as he proposed, he was giving me ample and continual
subject for the study of himself.
Everything had, indeed, concurred to enable me gradu
ally to penetrate the system which was carried on. I was
not imposed upon by the numerous equipages which crowded
round his door, and by the assemblage of persons of conse
quence, and ladies of rank, who waited upon him.
In this place, where the Jesuits, thanks to their devoted
auxiliary, train up the clergy according to their views, I
was more successful in my researches than I could have
hoped. I was even so fortunate as to surprise miracles
in their very germs — to learn how they are wrought up
and brought to perfection — how they are introduced on
the scene, and used as a lever for the accomplishment of
ulterior projects.
I might have established myself in this congregation,
and have counted, if I had chosen to make my court to
him, on the credit of so powerful a protector. He did all
in his power to inoculate me with his own ideas ; but
quackery, which in general deserves only contempt, ought
to be more than despised in the church. An attendance
of one year on this able and wealthy casuist, was enough
to enable me to appreciate not only himself but his troops
of adorers. I now determined to quit this place, in order to
pursue my investigations on a larger scale. I therefore
abstained from returning, with the others, at the end of the
vacation.

52 SECEET PLAN

XX.

I will not conceal a strong temptation, which, for a
while, diverted me from the path I had laid down for
myself. Seeing the rapid elevation of certain individuals of
wretched abilities, who seemed to defy me as incapable of
rivalling them, I was more than once on the point of making
use of the secret of the Jesuits, as a sort of itinerary, in
order to arrive, by a shorter way, at a respectable position
in the ecclesiastical career.
This temptation did not last long, though I was often
taken hardly to task by my father and his friends, sometimes
because I devoted myself to the study of the bible and of the
fathers of the church (a study which, I was assured, would be
without any utility either immediate or remote); sometimes
because I had declared my fixed determination never to
aspire to any appointment or any honour whatsoever.
Thus circumstanced, I felt that I must renounce my design
of future expatriation, or make up my mind not to shrink
from any kind of mortification. Happily for me, as my
ardour increased to explore the foundations upon which
Catholicism is built, my eyes became gradually opened, and
I discerned more distinctly in what a mass of dogmatical,
moral, and historical errors I had been brought up. This
led me to conclude that it was not only a small portion of
the Catholic hierarchy, as I had previously supposed, whose
infection was dangerous, but the whole hierarchy itself,
which, by its doctrines and by its aim, perverted the pre
cepts of Christ, and pursued a course entirely repugnant to

OF THE JESUITS. 53
His teachings. And, in good truth, although the Catholic
church, inscribing in its calendar, and in the breviary of its
priests, the names of the doctors of the first six centuries,
constitutes them — (strange fiction!) — the columns of the
church, declares them its organs, and worships them as its
saints, we may, nevertheless, boldly affirm, when we know
these fathers more intimately than by their names, and
when we have weighed their writings, that they all, one
after another, bring their portion of gunpowder and place it
under the edifice of degenerated Catholicism ; and in such
abundant quantity, that there is a thousand times more than
enough to blow up the whole and reduce it to dust.

XXI.

The examination which I thus made naturally inspired
me with the desire to make another, equally useful and
important. I desired to know all that passed in other seminaries, in
the different brotherhoods, in the cloisters, in tbe houses of
the cures, but above all, in the dwellings of the superior
clergy. Thus, there is no labour which I was not willing
to undertake in order to penetrate all the springs and all the
combinations by which, even in our times, though it be not
in the same manner as formerly, the Catholic organization
can boast of being endowed both with a boundless elasticity,
and an inflexible rigidity that no other has ever possessed,
or perhaps ever will.
On this account, I do not, therefore, regret the pains I
took. r 2

54 SECEET PLAN
I could not, however, fail to perceive that, in conse
quence of the social condition of my country, I should at
last become exposed to unpleasant consequences, should the
least suspicion be entertained as to the twofold direction of
my inquiries. I thought it necessary, on this account, to
carry on, under a literary veil, my dogmatical and historical
researches, and above all, those which I carried into the
the domain of contemporary religion. I have always had
an inclination for poetry and the fine arts. Availing myself
therefore of this tendency, I let it be generally understood
that the cultivation of letters was my ruling passion. This
expedient, far from being an obstacle to the exploratory work
which I had undertaken, furnished me, on the contrary, by
the intercourse it procured me with persons of all classes, with
numberless opportunities of appreciating the progress of the
occult ideas of the Jesuits, whilst I seemed to be amusing
myself with matters of trivial import.
Monks of every hue came frequently and eagerly to visit
me, for sake of the sermons which I dictated to them.
Assiduous reading of every kind had rendered this sort of
improvisation easy to me. These men were open-mouthed
beyond all conception, and they made me the depository of
all they knew. Good easy men they were for the most
part, but never having passed the bounds of monkish
instruction, they were profoundly ignorant of the true nature
of the system by which they were passively swayed. Each
of them, in fact, might be regarded, in his degree, as a
compendium of what passes within the cloister, and of the
doctrines which are there taught.
I strove to make myself acquainted with the methods
prescribed to them in order to become good confessors.

OF THE JESUITS. 55
Some of the oldest, and the most noted for strictness in the
confessional, told me what strange concessions are made by
the Jesuits to certain consciences ; and their anger was
sometimes aroused when they related to me the efforts, too
often useless, which they were forced to make against such
a powerful means of seduction.
In this manner I gradually acquired clearer views, not
only as to the Christian scheme, but also as to that no less
mysterious enigma, the purpose of modern Catholicism. I
saw it unfold itself by degrees, and I became convinced that
both in the secular and regular clergy, and in the higher
and lower classes of society, a metamorphosis was taking
place in accordance with the views of the Jesuits.
How many phrases of the secret conference, which had
appeared to me as mere momentary ebullitions, and flights
of Utopian hyperbole wholly out of place in times like ours,
recurred forcibly to my memory when facts themselves
came forth as commentaries upon them ! As yet unlearned
in the complication of human affairs, I had long regarded
as impracticable the mode of action which the Jesuits had
proposed to themselves in their secret meeting, in order to
get the mastery over both people and aristocracy, by
bringing them under the influence of the most opposite
doctrines. But experience, acquired in the world of
the great and in the world of the little, convinced me
that I had been mistaken in classing this method amongst
chimerical conceptions.

56 SECEET PLAN
XXII.
I frequently had occasion to appreciate the incomparable
talent displayed by the Jesuits in making tools of young
girls, silly women, domestics, devout ladies, and old men,
towards the accomplishment of unlooked for results. How
ever small may be each success they obtain, they use it to
obtain greater still. How often have they, by means of
such instruments, overthrown their surprised and astounded
adversaries. How many individuals, left stationary notwithstanding
their capacity, and witnessing with irritation and disgust
the rapid and unmerited elevation of others to honourable
and lucrative appointments, have 1 seen at last enrol them
selves among the adherents of the Jesuits ! This miracle
is followed by another. As no one likes to keep up an
incessant struggle with an obstinate and vigorous enemy,
the rage by which they were tortured up to the very
moment when they yielded, becomes appeased ; their secret
feelings of scorn and hatred die away, and at last they grow
zealous for a cause which formerly inspired them with in
dignation. Thus, the secret of this society consists in
subduing, either by caresses or by the weariness of useless
resistance when caresses have failed, the more enlightened
of the middle classes, and in threatening them in their
means of existence.
The influential classes, under the persuasion that their
interests can nowhere be safer than in the hands of the
Jesuits, place them there, little suspecting the marvellous
skill with which they change the very favours which are

OF THE JESUITS. 57
bestowed upon them into so many springs to advance a
cause whose success would be followed by the ruin of those
classes themselves.
The following are the conditions — few, indeed, but
peremptory — which they take care to enforce in every
country where they are favoured by the government.
They insist that people shall confess to them, and par
ticipate as frequently as possible in the festivals of their
churches ; that they shall augment the number of their
adherents, become children of Mary, praise the order
always and everywhere, and stick at nothing in order to
be useful to it. It is only on these terms that their pro
tection can be obtained.
All who know the mask it was necessary to assume, in
France, under the fallen dynasty, in order to assure success
in any career, have no need to be told these things. Be^
sides, do not the apologists themselves of the Jesuits avow
that the latter have always possessed, in an inconceivable
degree, " the art of spreading and accrediting the ideas
which are subservient to their views, and that of compelling
the great ones of the earth to concur in the execution of
their projects."*

XXIII.
It was with great unwillingness that I resigned myself
to remain in a country where I witnessed the daily in-
* La Verite sur les Jesuites, et sur leurs Doctrines, p. 73.

58 SECEET PLAN
creasing triumph of dissimulation and hypocrisy. Had not
my presence been necessary to my father, whom it would
have been criminal to forsake in his almost continual state
of infirmity, I should have gladly made every sacrifice in
order to escape the spectacle of the abject servitude to
which the clergy was already reduced, and which the laity
was beginning to partake. I waited with a feeling like
suffocation until I should be free. No sooner, then,
had the death of my father taken place, than I made
the necessary preparations to expatriate myself, taking
care, meanwhile, that no one should suspect my real in
tentions. I determined, however, to take a last farewell of my
friend the cure, and of the instructor of my early years.
Each of them, the more tenacious as he was entirely igno
rant of my views, blamed my aversion for an advancement
in the church, which was the object of so much eager
ambition to others. When I announced to them that they
would, in all probability, see me no more, they deplored
what they were accustomed to call my inexplicable ob
stinacy. The singular determination which I took drew upon
me, still more than my retreat from the Jesuits, the re
proach of inconsistency.
A twofold permission was necessary for my departure.
I went to Vercelli, where I presented myself to the Lord
Archbishop d'Angennes, who gave me an invitation to
dinner. As some ostensible motive for my departure was
necessary, I informed him that I was about to place my
self as instructor in an English Catholic family. Where
upon he gave me, of his own accord, a letter of recom-

OF THE JESUITS. 59
mendation to the police, so that there might be no difficulty
as to their granting me a passport.
I must here remark, before I take leave of this epoch
of my life, that belonging as I did to that portion of the
clergy which was reputed liberal, I should have paid dearly
for my principles had I committed any one tangible indiscre
tion ; for there is nothing in that unhappy country which
is attacked so mercilessly as new ideas, whether religious
or political, more particularly when they are professed by
ecclesiastics. I was, however, sufficiently fortunate to quit
Piedmont without having become the object of any perse
cution, or even disapprobation.

XXIV.
No sooner did I find myself in the beautiful land of
Helvetia, than the recollections which belong to it crowded
on my mind. I thought, in my simplicity, that I should
now find but one standard, and all hearts universally de
voted to liberty — to that liberty which the gospel proclaims
and consecrates, and of which it is the great charter to the
human race.
But, as I have already hinted, a number of facts con
curred to open my eyes speedily to a state of things which
I had been far from anticipating. The explanations given
in the introduction render it unnecessary that I should
enter here upon the details of my sojourn at Geneva, upon
the disappointments which there awaited me, and upon the
lectures on the Secret Plan of the Jesuits which I had

60 SECEET PLAN
occasion to deliver to a number of persons there. Amongst
the reflections suggested by these lectures, there is one
which I consider worthy to be noted.
It was observed to me, that the father of whom I have
already spoken, he who opened the conference by an
address to his colleagues, expressed himself like one having
authority. He evidently took the lead, and all the others
showed much deference for him. His expressions and his
deportment would seem to indicate that he was himself the
restorer of the occult society, and that he directed it as
chief mover ; for neither did his language nor that of the
others give the slightest indication that he was in any way
dependent on any superiors.
It thus appears probable that the president of the
meeting at Chieri was the general of the Jesuits.
Now, at this period, the general of the order was no
other than Father Fortis, the same who, when Pius VII. con
ceived the project of introducing some innovations into the
articles of the Jesuitical constitutions, repeated these memo
rable words, " Sint ut sunt, aut non sint."
It is to this reply, first addressed to Clement XIV. by
Father Ricci, general of the company, that Archbishop de
Pradt alludes, when, recapitulating his ideas on this invinci
ble society, he thus expresses himself: —
"Heavens! what an institution is this! Was there
ever one so powerful amongst men ! How, in fact, has
Jesuitism lived ? How has it fallen ? Like the Titans, it
yielded only to the combined thunderbolts of all the gods
of the earthly Olympus. Did the aspect of death damp its
courage ? Did it yield one step ? Let us be what we are,
it said, or let us be no longer. This was truly to die

OF THE JESUITS. 61
standing, like the emperors, and according to the precept
of one of the masters of the world."*
Before I close this portion of my history, I ought,
perhaps, to reply to certain scruples.
The double case of conscience to which I am about to
refer, has been discussed in those ecclesiastical conferences
of which I have already had occasion to speak, as means of
forming the apprentices to the confessional.
Supposing that some one knows, either by private
intelligence or as an accomplice, that there is a plot to set a
town on fire, may he, notwithstanding his oath of secrecy,
give information to the authorities, in order that they may
take the necessary measures of prevention ? Would it be
lawful for the confessor, who might be informed of the fact,
to take, notwithstanding the sacramental seal upon his lips,
the needful steps to prevent so great a catastrophe ?
Supposing that a conspiracy existed, the success of
which would bring ruin on a kingdom, might it, in spite of
all imaginable oaths to secrecy, be revealed by a conspirator,
or by the confessor himself ? Yes. I have heard it laid
down by the most profound casuists, that where the general
good is in question oaths are in no way binding in such
cases as these.
Now, besides that I am bound by no promise, I may
boldly affirm that it is not an individual that is here at
stake, or a town, or a kingdom, but the far more important
interests of civilization and of the gospel itself, which is
alone able, by the force of truth, to transform this
vicious civilization, and to substitute for it that Kingdom
• De Pradt, On Ancient and Modern Jesuitism, quoted in the pamphlet
entitled La Verite sur les Jesuites, p. 271.

62 SECEET PLAN
of God whose coming we daily invoke in our Christian
prayers. I may, I think, safely add that there is not a single
person placed in like circumstances with me, who would not
have been, like me, impelled by the force of a multitude of
incidents, whose rapid succession left me not a moment for
reflection. Embarrassment, agitation, indecision, terror, by
turns incited and restrained me, and compelled me to act
like a man whose eyes are blindfolded, and who knows not
whither he is going. In fact it was impossible for me to act
otherwise than as I did ; and I will add, in order to conceal
nothing, that it would have been equally impossible for me
afterwards to resist the yearning I constantly felt to search
into everything that had the slightest connection with those
Jesuitical revelations which were ever present to my mind.
What I am, intellectually and morally, all my researches and
all my ulterior labours, all the materials which I possess —
my whole life, in short, resolves itself into the sudden and
terrible enlightenment which so early flashed upon me, and
which communicated to all my energies an irresistible impulse.
It might be objected that it would be more prudent, on
my part, not to provoke, by the publication of this secret,
irreconcilable hatred, and perhaps, even revenge. But
have I not undergone the most painful sacrifices in order
to keep myself free and independent? When the
Almighty had released me from the only tie which bound
me to my country, did I not quit it solely with a view to
render public that which I had rigorously abstained from
communicating even to my most intimate friends, from
motives of prudence, and from well-founded fears ? And
when I arrived in Switzerland, did I not pass for a vision-

OF THE JESUITS. 63
ary when I began to announce the plots which the Jesuits
were ripening, and the dangers which were about to arise ?
And now, perceiving, to my great surprise, that on one
side a reaction is already taking place, and that, on the
other, a certain class of interests, either from blindness or
irreflection, is inclined to mix itself up with the interests of
the Jesuits, little aware of the nature of the allies it seeks,
or of the fate which attends all who make common cause
with them, I feel more urgently than ever that this pub
lication is incumbent on me.

XXV.
A phenomenon to which I am bound to call attention,
because its immense importance is not sufficiently appre
ciated, is the alliance, which is now more firm than ever,
between the high clergy and Jesuitism. I say, that
neither its extent, nor its consequences, are sufficiently
apprehended. And yet, who will deny that it has been
the character of Jesuitism from its origin to its suppres
sion, as Clement XIV. attests, continually to foment in
the bosom of universities, parliaments, clerical bodies, and
religious corporations, a succession of discontents, divisions,
quarrels, and discords ?
The remarks contained in the following extracts from
an anonymous pamphlet, published at Geneva, seem to me
to have been called forth by the knowledge of a Secret
Plan, already divulged in that place.
"All around us," says the author of the pamphlet,
" far and near, in Switzerland, in Germany, in England,

64 SECRET PLAN
and more particularly in France, Catholicism, which had
for some time bowed its head beneath political storms and
warlike operations, now rises up, more hostile, more
threatening than ever, and boldly proclaims its design to
extirpate from the bosom of Christianity what it calls the
heresy of the Reformation.
" In particular, an association founded by a cure of
Paris, for the conversion of heretics, under the title of
Congregation du Sacre Cosur de Marie, has obtained the
sanction and concurrence of all the Romish clergy. Hum
ble and obscure in its origin, it has risen, in an incredibly
short space of time, to colossal proportions, its adherents
now amounting to 2,000,000. These are disseminated
through all the countries of the globe, and have taken a
vow to co-operate in person and in purse in the propaga
tion of Catholicism. They spare neither publications, nor '¦
intrigues, nor money, nor even miracles, in order to gain
their end. The gazette of the Simplon informs us, that
the contributions of the two cantons of Valais and Soleure
alone, have amounted this year (1842) to nearly 900,000
French francs. It is easy to imagine what might be done
with such resources, could money create faith.
" Geneva could not fail to be one of the most attractive
points to the Congregation, and in this place, in fact, it
numbers many active associates. The rapidity with which
the Catholic population daily increases within our walls,
is, without any doubt, the fruit of this association, and
already the foreign press proclaims this triumph.
"A wind," continues the same pamphlet, "has blown
from Rome, even over those writers who have hitherto
remained most indifferent to religious interests ; it is impos-'

OF THE JESUITS. 65
sible not to recognise, in the malevolent absurdity of those
attacks, which are renewed again and again, and almost
word for word, the result of a vast concert, in which
the hired performers obey, without perhaps being
aware of it, the powerful and concealed instrument
which gives them the key, from behind the curtain of
the Alps."
It is, then, an acknowledged fact that there exists a vast
concert, in which the paid performers obey, almost un
consciously, the powerful and hidden instrument which
gives them the key, from behind the curtain of the Alps ;
and it is even admitted that the many attacks we witness,
far from being the effect of chance, are, on the contrary,
evidently made with a view to certain remote projects.
But who is there that cares to investigate the nature of
these remote projects, and the means which may be em
ployed to realize them ?
All however agree in attributing to the Jesuits an
extraordinary political influence. It is generally admitted
that boundless power, absolute supremacy, is the object of
their ambition. Their rule of action, that " the end jus
tifies the means," is become proverbial. And who doubts
that the end so sought is evermore this same boundless
power and supremacy ?
The progress of this order being known and acknow
ledged, it would be folly not to suppose that it has abun
dantly provided itself with baits of every description, in
order to secure such an immense number of co-operators
of all classes and parties, even those the most opposite by
nature. And yet, no one has ever come forward with a view to
g2

66 SECEET PLAN
investigate the means which the Jesuits are so industriously
employing for the accomplishment of their ends. It is
however easy to understand that the vast and formidable
association, described in the above extract, is destined to
be employed as a powerful lever, and to be directed, as
time shall serve, to different points.
If this Congregation du Sacre Cosur did not ultimately
connect itself with the plan about to be exposed, we
might have refrained from here quoting a fragment of
its regulations, published in several journals. But the
Siecle, after having examined not only the bases upon
which it stands, but also its tendencies, thus accurately
defines it : —
" An occult government, organized in a hierarchical
manner, to the furtherance of a political and religious
reaction." It was impossible that the regulations of this new
corporation should long remain a secret ; once discovered,
they were soon published. The following are among the
articles : —
" It is not only in its object that the Catholic Association
differs from the work of Catholicism in Europe, but also in
its mode of existence, and in its means of action. Its
hierarchical organization will not be determined for the pre
sent. Divine Providence will counsel us in this matter!"*
" The general assembly to be the principal instrument
of the association —
" It would represent, in a certain degree, the institution
of the cardinalate. It would serve as intermediary between
• Chap. V., De I' Organisation hierarchique, p. 34.

OF THE JESUITS. 67
the central directory, and the inferior grades of the
hierarchy. " The greatest discretion is recommended to the members
of the Catholic Association, no one of whom shall ever reveal,
on his own authority, directly or indirectly, to any person
whatsoever, the existence, the means, or the rules of the
association." *
" As the association has absolute need of pecuniary
resources, in order to pursue its end, and fulfil its object,
one of its fundamental rules is the existence of an annual
subscription, levied upon each member, the amount of
which shall, each year, be fixed by the chapter." j
" Every novice admitted into the association shall swear
to combat to ihe death the enemies of humanity. His every
day, his every hour, shall be consecrated to the develop
ment of Christian civilization. He has sworn eternal hatred
to the genius of evil, and has' promised absolute and un
reserved submission to our Holy Father the Pope, and
to the commands of the hierarchical superiors of the
association. The director, on his admission, has ejaculated,
' We have one soldier more.'" \
These words suggested the following reflections to
another journal : — " We are, therefore, warned. A crusade
is organised ; it has its secret chiefs, its avowed purpose,
its trained soldiers."
The work is, as yet, scarcely begun, and the chiefs of
the league consider themselves already sufficiently strong to
• Chap. VI., De V Organisation hierarchique,j>. 37.
t Chap. VI., p. 38.
t Chap VI., p. 42.

68 SECEET PLAN
address the government in the terms which one power
employs towards another. What will they do when their
strength shall have increased ?
See how the editor of the Univers, a paper known to
be the organ of the bishops of France, begins a letter which
he addresses to the Minister of Public Instruction : —
" This year, sir, you shall have no vacation ; nor shall
your successor, next year, God willing : for the Catholics
will allow no intermission to the war which they are deter
mined to wage against instruction by the state." *
The same letter concludes in these terms : —
" If you know the hour of our defeat or of our degrada
tion, secure your treasures. Down goes all when we are no
more. Twenty empires sleep in the graves which they had
dug for us."
I am inclined to believe that most of the writers who
in our day profess to uphold the cause of Catholicism,
derive their inspiration in various degrees from the spirit
of the famous Company.

XXVI.
To revert to the occult plans which I expose to the
public, I have only to entreat that this matter be not
lightly examined. Now to judge it with sagacity, de
mands some acquaintance with the mass of writings with
which the advocates of monastic institutions and of the
* Liberte d' Enseignement, letter to M. Villemain, Minister of
Public Instruction, by L. Veuillot, editor of the Univers.

OF THE JESUITS. 69
Jesuits have inundated us. Such a course of reading
could not fail to convince every candid mind that there
really exists a secret understanding to propagate, in a
devout and pathetic tone, the most unworthy falsehoods.
In fact, the religious orders would have us believe that,
setting aside a few weaknesses incidental to human nature,
their mission has ever been one of pure beneficence. All
the calumnies which have been directed against them
have sprung from heresy and impiety, actuated by jealousy
and rancour. Consequently, if nations would seek to emerge
from the factions and troubles which agitate them, they
must repent of their ingratitude and return to their ancient
saviours; "for," say they, "as long as the disastrous
principle of free inquiry was unknown, and men suffered
themselves to be guided by the principle of authority,
all was harmony and peace ; but once the principle of
infallible authority was assailed, the whole world became
the theatre of all sorts of evils and disorders.'' What
incredible efforts have they not made to prop up this
gigantic falsehood !
Even a cursory inquiry into these manoeuvres and
artifices, can hardly fail to manifest that the prime mover
of all this wonderfully assiduous labour is a power which
works in secret, which combines all the subordinate move
ments, which chooses and applies its means according
to circumstances; and which spares neither flattery nor
bribes in order to enrol in its service those individuals,
whether writers or men of action, who may be able to aid
the work.
I do not conceal from myself all that I have to fear in
thus rending the veil which has been so carefully drawn to

70 SECEET PLAN
conceal projects, the extent of which, I verily believe, is un
known to the mass of the Jesuits, as well as to the bishops,
the cardinals, and the pope himself. But, God is my wit
ness that the motive which animates and sustains me is
the desire to prevent a mistake fostered and propagated
by the most Machiavelian policy, and which would entail
the direst calamities on human society.
I submit to men of cultivated understanding, who can
reason and judge impartially, the secret conversations I am
about to relate. Especially do I refer the matter to those
who have studied not only the art by which the Roman
theocracy has raised itself to so high a degree of power, but
also the writings, the tactics, the acts and achievements of
that order, which has, since its establishment, been the
most subservient to its despotism. If my readers keep
themselves free from the influence of a preconceived system,
and from the prejudices of their position, whatever it
may be, I doubt not that they will discern, on a cool
examination of the whole plan, that it is redolent
throughout of the most subtle and profound spirit of
Jesuitism. I can, indeed, have no dearth of materials to dissipate
all uncertainty, and these I owe to the ardour of investiga
tion of which I have already spoken, and which was con
stantly inciting me to investigate every incident which had
the slightest bearing upon Jesuitism. But what has most
astonished me has been this : to find in books and journals,
the organs of conflicting opinions, not only isolated ideas,
but series of ideas, closely identified, both as to style and
subject, with those of the meeting, as it is about to be
described ; and this identity is so striking, that I ask myself :

OF THE JESUITS. 71
Must not these books and articles be the work of individuals
belonging to the knot of the initiated, or, at least, to the
league ? If it has not been in my power to collect a suffi
cient number of facts to give to the Secret Plan which I am
publishing an irresistible character of authenticity — for,
after all, every one knows that conspiracies of this nature,
being destined to remain a mystery, never transpire but by
some remarkable chance ; — yet, in the impossibility of ful
filling conditions which are, in fact, inadmissible, I cannot
suffer to escape me the only kind of proofs which, in such a
case, it is reasonably permitted to require.
These proofs will, then, be brought forward in the latter
part of this work, and those readers who will take the pains
to examine them will know how to place a just value on the
language which the Jesuits and their official apologists have
borrowed from the true advocates of progress — a language
which they are now employing with singular audacity. It
will be proved by irrefutable arguments that civil and
political equality, freedom of worship, of education, and of
association, are in their hands weapons of war, and nothing
more.

XXVII.
It was at the time of restorations of all sorts that
Jesuitism also was restored. At the period when the Holy
Alliance was formed, the pope determined that he also would
create a rampart for himself, against the encroachment of
new ideas ; he therefore evoked, from the depths of its
mysterious retreats, the most skilful and enterprising of

72 SECEET PLAN
orders, that he might by its aid unite and consolidate not
only all the orders, but the clergy of different countries,
and the episcopacy, in a Theocratical Holy Alliance, of
which the object would be not less fatal to the people than
to the governing powers themselves.
" Pius VII.," as M. Henrion remarks, " at length
recovering his liberty in 1814, recalled the religious orders
to more active life. They have, subsequently, sent out new
ramifications into many countries, and the venerable tree,
which had been cut down nearly to the ground, shoots forth
new branches, and is already adorned with abundance of
foliage, which gladdens the eyes of Christians. In France,
the change which took place in our political system in the
month of August, 1 830, having consecrated, in an especial
manner, the liberty of association, there is no doubt that the
monastic state will speedily rise up from its ruins."*
There will be no stability, according to the same writer,
there will be no repose for society, if it refuses anew to be
directed by monastic institutions. These would naturally
range themselves under the leadership of Jesuitism. How
should it be otherwise ? Does not this order hold in its
hands the plan of battle ? Does it not train the combatants ?
Does it not direct them to the point to be attained ? Why,
otherwise, has the education of your youth been confided to
the Jesuits ? Why have they alone been judged worthy to
initiate the clergy in the art of confession ?
"It is impossible," continues their apologist, "that the
Company should not know how to take its stand, and to
adapt itself to the exigencies of the present state of things,
* Histoire des Ordres religieux. Paris, 1835, vol. ii., p. 125.

OF THE JESUITS. 73
that it should not know how, as formerly, to become popular
by answering to the true wants of the period."
The Jesuits make one promise which is very singular,
that of " acting only in the face of day, lest suspicious and
impious men should mistake for intrigue the pious subterfuges
and the sublime secrets of humility." What, indeed, could
be more excellent than the work which they propose to
accomplish 1 To extirpate the genius of evil ! to lay the
foundations of Christian civilization ! But this is only to
be done on condition that the people deliver themselves,
bound hand and foot, to the Company of Jesus.
We find in the same author the following reflec
tions : —
" In the moral world evil never walks abroad without its
attendant good ; and it is very favourable for the Jesuits
that they should have been restored in 1814, at a period
when the people, delivered from a long-standing European
war, remained a prey to principles equally false in religion
and politics. The crisis came ; and it could be nothing
short of divine inspiration which suggested to Pius VII.
the thought of rallying around the apostolic throne a
society so formed to trample down error.
" It was not, however, until 1823" (a date to which I call
particular attention) " that the Roman College, which had
passed into other hands since the fall of the Jesuits, was
restored to them by Pope Leo XII. Several towns in Italy,
the Duke of Modena, the King of Sardinia, and Freiburg
in Switzerland, also welcomed the members of this reviving
company. The King of Spain restored to them all their
property, houses, and colleges, which had not been sold.
In France they opened establishments for public instruction

74 SECEET PLAN
at St. Acheul, Dole, Bordeaux, &c, &c. Francis II.
received them in Gallicia, where they devoted themselves
to instruction in the colleges of Tarnopol, Starzawiz, and
Janow, and to active missions elsewhere. The company
possesses colleges in England also, and in the United
States of America."
M. Henrion, the friend and confidant of the Jesuits,
doubtless knows, as well as any one, what is the end which
they propose to themselves ; and in one single line he thus
betrays it : — " It is," says he, " the annihilation of a double
class of principles to which the people are a prey — principles
equally false in religion and in politics."
They would then destroy all the ideas which the French
revolution has bequeathed to the world ; in other words,
they would abolish free inquiry, in order to bind every
conscience with the chains of Catholic authority ; they
would strike down the principle of liberty, the source of
all justice, in order to build up again the tyranny of times
gone by.

XXVIII.
I deem it important here to bring forward a fragment
of the text, too little known, of the bull by which Pius VII.
restored the Jesuits in 1814. This pope, whose spirit,
happily for humanity, the accession of Pius IX. has
banished from the Vatican, declared that the Jesuits were
indispensable to the safety of the world and to the well-
being of the nations, and that he considered he should be

OF THE JESUITS. 75
neglecting one of his most urgent duties if he suffered the
church to be longer deprived of their aid. He goes even
further, and declares that they alone are competent to
direct the faithful, the inferior clergy, and the bishops
themselves. In short, he constitutes and consecrates them
as the indispensable rowers of the mysterious Bark, the
title by which the popes are accustomed to designate the
Catholic church.
And lastly, in order that nothing may be wanting to
an apotheosis so extraordinary, Pius VII. proclaims, in the
face of nations, that under their guidance the bark of
Catholicism will assuredly be saved, whilst without their
care and protection it must inevitably founder.
Had we not then abundant reason to affirm that every
thing contained in these avowals is of immense importance,
and calls for the closest attention ?
And yet, so far from having allowed myself to exagge
rate, I have closely paraphrased the following words,
extracted from the bull of Pius VII., Sollicitudo omnium
ecclesiarum: —
" We should believe ourselves guilty," it is there stated,
" of a very heavy offence before God, if, amidst the many
pressing wants under which the public weal is suffering, we
neglected to bring forward for its use the salutary help
which God, by a singular providence, has placed in our
hands." And whom has he selected to bring to the public weal
this salutary help ?
The Jesuits !
"On account," adds this same pope, "of the waves
which continually toss the bark of Peter, he should esteem

76 SECEET PLAN OF THE JESUITS.
himself as highly culpable, if he rejected the robust and
experienced rowers who offer themselves to him to quell
the force of these ever-threatening waves."
And the simple and significant reason which he gives
is this : —
"That it may not be swallowed up in inevitable
shipwreck."

END OF PART I.

PAET II.

THE SECRET CONFERENCE.
It will be as well, before giving the account of the Secret
Conference, to make some observations which may tend, as
far as possible, to compensate to the reader for the want of
what the tone and manner of the living voices have left for
ever present to my memory.
I will first remark, that the list mentioned by the chief,
and in which were set down the special points to be dis
cussed, proves that everything in these meetings was
arranged in the most precise manner.
If the reader carefully considers each discourse, he will
perceive that each person has his own peculiar and dis
tinctive style. The voices of the several speakers served
me, instead of their faces, to know them one from the
other ; each one had peculiarities which I have not forgotten.
One of the fathers, the second who spoke, and whom I
heard no more afterwards, surprised me by a most singular
pronunciation. I had never heard a voice so slow and
smooth, and oily. At the same time, no other speaker
was more prolix and diffuse, yet he was listened to with
the greatest attention. He was almost the only one who
occupied himself exclusively with the people, showing by
h 2

78 SECEET PLAN
what baits it may be taken. Between this phlegmatic
orator and all the others the contrast was striking ; it was
only at rare intervals that he became a little excited. At
last, however, when he communicated a dialogue of one of
his penitents with a companion, entirely to the honour of
the Jesuits, he expressed himself with such unexpected
animation as elicited a burst of merriment and great
applause. Another, whom I call the Irishman, is remarkable
for a caustic and impetuous wit; he seemed possessed
with fever. The Roman Jesuit is less vehement, but blunt
and plain spoken ; sometimes in a degree amounting to
coarseness. The two Frenchmen exhibit a quite different
character ; one of them makes himself especially known by
the ideas which he attacks with most eagerness, by the
reminiscences his allusions awaken, and by his inva
riably clear and precise manner of expressing himself.
The rector of the novitiate distinguished himself by a
certain factitious pomp and gravity pervading all he said.
He seemed made on purpose to ape wisdom, and make
an exhibition of it. Father Roothaan had no occasion to be
curbed from time to time, as happened, I thought, now
and then to the Irishman ; there was no fire, no acrimony,
in the terms he employed ; he expressed himself with
gentleness, though occasionally with warmth ; it must be
confessed, however, that under his unctuous accents he
conceals a propensity to violence and persecution.
There was one anomaly which I know not how to
account for. The individual, whom I suppose to have
been the general at that time (the same of whom I have
said that he suddenly interrupted the promiscuous conver-

OF THE JESUITS. 79
sation), opened the meeting with an address in very pure
and eloquent terms, which my memory is far from having
faithfully rendered ;* yet when all were seated and silently
attentive round him, all his expressions seemed heavy,
turgid, and inflated. There was something false and
embarrassed in his voice. Subsequently, however, he re
sumed all the promptitude and facility which he had at
first displayed.
Though the persons present at the conference were
few, they are about to appear before the reader presenting
temperaments and characters essentially different ; some
impetuous, some calm, others constantly grave. And yet
the kind of work which was to be common to them all,
far from tending to place these different characters in pro
minent relief, was rather calculated to merge all their
individual characteristics, and reduce them to one standard
type. In fact, it is only in assemblies, where there exists
an opposition of principles and interests, which gives rise
to free and contradictory debates, that each one, drawn
out by circumstances, shows himself under his own pecu
liar features. Here, nevertheless, notwithstanding the
unanimity of the meeting, the genius of each appears
sufficiently striking to be easily distinguished.
None but those who have seriously studied Jesuitism,
in the past as well as the present, and who know its spirit
and audacity, will be able fully to understand all the mean
ing conveyed in the least of their words, without being
astonished at the pride which devours them, or at the
schemes which they meditate. Yet I believe it would
* It has been seen that I have quoted this introduction only from
memory.

80 SECEET PLAN
require more than that to be able to apprehend the whole
scope of their desires. It would be necessary not only to
be acquainted with all their rules and their secret statutes,
but with all the former discussions which led them to
resume the weaving of that web of which I am about to
show a few threads, and which, at the present day, must
have extended immensely. It would be necessary likewise
to consider the education these fathers had received, the
preparatory influence to which they had been submitted,
as well as the degrees through which they must have past
before they could be judged worthy of becoming members
of this committee which may be regarded as the last term
of initiation. In fine, they were all under the empire of
principles and ideas which had been discussed in the three
preceding sittings, or in confidential conversations. All they
did was necessarily connected with these antecedents ; con
sequently, being ignorant of the latter, it is very possible we
may mistake certain passages, or comprehend them but
superficially. Let us enter at last upon the conference. When all
were seated, and silence established, the president began to
speak as follows : —

I.

" Dear brethren, our weapons are of a quite different
temper from those of the Caesars of all ages ; and it will
not be difficult for us so to manoeuvre as to render our
selves masters of all the powers already so much weakened.
We need fear no lack of soldiers, only let us apply ourselves

OF THE JESUITS. 81
to recruiting them from all ranks, and from all nations, and
drilling them into punctual service. But let us, at the same
time, be vigilant, that no one suspect our designs. Let
every one be persuaded, whilst consecrating to us his
labour, his gold, or his talents, that he is employing them
in his own interest.
Ours be the knowledge of this great mystery: as to
others, let them hear us speak in parables, so that, having
eyes, they may not see, and having ears, they may not hear.
Let us labour more diligently than all who have un
dertaken to raise great hierarchical edifices, and let our
labour be in earnest !
You well know that what we aim at is the empire of
the world ; but how are we to succeed, unless we have,
everywhere, adepts who understand our language, which
must yet remain unknown to others.
Doubtless, you have not forgotten our ancient Para
guay. It was but a very limited trial of our system, in a
small corner of the globe. In these latter days, we need a
new code, we who have undertaken to work so mighty a
change — to make everything bend beneath the irresistible
hammer of our doctrines, so that all shall become as stone,
iron, gold, and adamant, for the gigantic building into
which we will force all men to enter.
Let every individual, therefore, yield up an entire
obedience. Let him plight inviolable vows in one sole
convent ; and let the pope — but a pope of our own forming
— be its perpetual abbot !
No ; Catholicism must no longer remain a mutilated
power : has it not, within itself, means innumerable to
overthrow and to raise up ? Can it not re-erect itself, con-

82 SECEET PLAN
quer, destroy, rebuild, and so Machiavellise itself, that the
world can by no means escape it? Let us hasten our
work, before the people become enlightened ; as long as
they remain opaque and material, we can make of them an
instrument of conquest. But do you not perceive how
information is already spreading 1 Woe to us if so many
noble countries do not soon become our conquest, and if
millions of men, robust and ignorant, lend us not their
herculean arms to extinguish the malign star which
threatens us ! But the more time we lose, the more prob
lematic does our success become.

II.

The president having ceased, the father with the soft and drawling
voice began to speak: — *
Yes ; let us incessantly and unweariedly propagate our
doctrines amongst the people; warmed by the fire of these
doctrines, they will become changed for us into thunderbolts
to strike down these haughty kings, who, instead of in
clining their heads before the church as submissive sons, do
her the favour to accept her as a satellite, who is good for
nothing but to save them from almost inevitable ruin.
To this people, discontented and born to suffer, let
us incessantly repeat : —
• Here follows in the original the obscure and embarrassed com
mencement of this father's discourse. " Sopra le populazioni, sopra,
di ette, unga giammai stancarcia operiamo per mezzo delle nostre doe-
trine ; impeniouche si e solo forti ficandole e scaliandole alle nostre
fiamme che ce le cangieranno in fulmini."

OF THE JESUITS. 83
" You are wretched, deeply wretched, we know it but
too well ; and who can deplore your lot more sincerely than
we do? Do we not know that you earn your bread by the
sweat of your brows ; but the greatest of all your evils is
that you are ignorant of their true source. Oh, did you
but know this, a great step would be already made towards
delivering you from the only enemy who has plunged you
into this vast abyss of misery. Know then, that all your
wretchedness dates from the execrable day on which a
renegade monk, in order to indulge his vile passions, dared
— oh, horror! — to unite himself with a nun whom he
snatched from her convent.
" Ever since that time, the Almighty has not ceased to
roll the waves of his vengeance over the earth ; peace has
taken flight ; the Holy Father has, with grief and indigna
tion, beheld his children desert the sacred portals, and
heard them insolently exclaim, ' We break thy bonds, we
contemn thy precepts; thou art no longer our master.'
Cursed and excommunicated, they have since wandered in
barren and dark places^ In vain the vicar of Jesus Christ
has striven to recal these miserable prodigals ; delivered
up to their errors and their wilfulness, they have despised
his offers of pardon.
" Behold the portrait of these rebels who have rejected
him whom God put into his own place to govern all things.
Listen to this psalm : God asks, ' Why do the heathen rage,
and the people imagine a vain thing?' And thus God
answers himself: ' The kings of the earth set themselves, and
the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and
against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds
asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth

84 SECEET PLAN
in the heavens shall laugh : the Lord shall have them in
derision.' " If then the justice of God visits the earth with so
many chastisements, it is that he may punish its ancient
revolt. Wonder not, if to avenge himself on these apostates,
and on the kings who have sustained them, he excites
against them all the rage of their subjects : for you are not
ignorant that during the space of three hundred years a
frightful monster, the revolutionary hydra, has been un
chained, and ceases not to threaten to devour them.
" O golden age of the church ! O surprising miracle !
who would believe it, were it not as true as it is sublime 1
When nothing could tame the pride of those sovereigns
who crushed the poor and the weak, so strongly recom
mended by Jesus Christ to his vicar, he, a simple old man,
extinguished with a word all this pride, as a light may be
extinguished with one impulse of the breath. In those
days the spouse of Jesus Christ was without spot or
wrinkle. She shone as the springtide sun, which warms and
makes the earth fruitful. It was not until after the days
of the pretended Reformation that our holy mother beheld
her children suffering from indigence and from hunger, and
that she deplored her inability to help them. Alas ! it is
but too true that this plague was no sooner spread over
the earth, than all justice, all charity, and every good
thing grew less and less, in proportion as the respect for
the vicar of Jesus Christ diminished. It was not thus in
the days of the church's prosperity, when her fathers, her
learned doctors (compared with whom the most distin
guished men of the present day are but as worms), were
always careful to recommend an obedience without bounds

OF THE JESUITS. 85
towards the common father of the faithful, the successor of
Saint Peter ; and never did they pronounce his name with
out bending the knee. Saint Bernard, although the pope
had been his disciple, never wrote to him without having
first prostrated himself on the earth.
" Do you, let me ask you, show this respect each time
that you speak of the vicar of Jesus Christ ? No ; it is
but too plain, it is but too true, that the best amongst you
have lost your reverence for holy things. Ah ! if God
granted you the grace to comprehend what it is to occupy,
on the earth, the place of God himself, with what fire
would you not feel yourselves inflamed ; what would you
not attempt and brave, in order to free your sole benefactor
from the yoke of the impious ! Without doubt, the Al
mighty could immediately effect this himself ; but it is his
will that your own right arms should deliver you from
your enemies by a heroic victory ; since the glorious good
which will result from it will form the recompense of the
poor and the oppressed, and of all those who groan in
subjection. Do you not remember with what constancy
the faithful Israelites resisted the perfidious Canaanites ?
Courage, my children ! for you also have to take possession of
a promised land, which will pour forth for you every species
of delights to refresh your wearied souls ! Awake !
arise ! unite yourselves in a fraternal bond, which will
strengthen you against every obstacle, if you wish, indeed,
that the future should be yours. Have you ever reflected
that if the heavens are become bronze, as it were, above
your heads, God has permitted it, to punish your guilty
negligence. Madmen and fools that ye are ! you allow
that His Holiness, he who represents God upon earth, should

86 SECRET PLAN
be held in slavery ! But the finger of your heavenly Father
has written the decree, that your own degraded lot shall be
lengthened out as long as the degradation of your terrestrial
father shall endure, he at whose feet every one who
hopes for salvation ought to cast himself. In vain, be
assured, does the pope seek to bless you — in vain does he
raise his voice to do you justice ; he is surrounded, like
Christ himself, by scoffers and hardened sinners, who reject
his word. " Nevertheless, all these erring sinners are your breth
ren ; you are not to hate them in your hearts — by no
means ; but it is the will of God that you should employ
every means to induce them to accept of pardon, to recall
them to the fold, where, when they have once entered it,
the very wolves are transformed into sheep.
" Listen, listen ! we will give you spiritual eyes.
" Where are the princes, even amongst those of our
religion, who have dared, and who still dare, to concern
themselves with the things of God ?
" Behold wherefore the impious one has invaded the
church ; behold wherefore she, chained and enslaved, can
neither speak nor claim obedience. The Anointed of the
Lord, and the other anointed ones, his ministers, are every
where treated without respect, and denied all authority.
Their privileges are suppressed, their rightful property is
torn from them, their honour is eclipsed, their character
calumniated, and they are almost virtually annihilated.
" The prophecy is thus nearly accomplished. We have
already long beheld the man of sin, the son of perdition —
Antichrist, in a word — set up above him whom every one
ought to adore and venerate. He clearly shows by his

OF THE JESUITS. 87
desires, by his pride, by his persecution of the clergy, and
by his insatiable ambition, robbing that which belongs to
God, and trampling under foot all that is sacred and divine —
he clearly shows that he sits in the temple of God, and that
he would even be regarded as God himself.
" Happy the time when this crowned dragon was
muzzled by the church, when strength was wanting for
him to accomplish his sacrilegious ravages ; but at length,
alas ! he has succeeded in possessing all the earth, by the
aid of a troop of apostates, and by the prodigies of his
infamous seductions. Behold the source of all your ills.
It is from this revolt against the church that so many
amongst you are unable to contract a marriage without
exposing himself to a thousand vexations. Thus is verified,
not only that text which foretells that Antichrist would
forbid to marry, but that other which says that the faithful
would be compelled to abstain from a variety of delicate
meats, which God has created for all, and not for the enjoy
ment of an exclusive few.
" O sublime institution of Jesus Christ ! O confession!
source of such infinite good ! It is by thee that our ears
become acquainted with the miseries of those whose lot
is ceaseless toil, and of their many unnatural and unjust
privations. Hence it is that confession, which lightens
for you the weight of so many griefs, becomes hateful
to your oppressors. They would deprive you of it, because
it is your solace and your refuge. By means of con
fession, in fact, how many directions we are able to give
you, how many councils which, if you profit by them, will
assuredly conduct you safely into port! By its means,
how many secrets you can depose in our bosoms ! secrets

88 SECRET PLAN
which you could not elsewhere reveal without a thousand
dangers !
" Poor friends ! if you would only abide by our instruc
tions, ifyou would consent to place yourselves, with one accord,
as instruments in our hands, you would no longer have to
toil for the productions of the earth, in order that others may
enjoy them to your exclusion.
" But do you truly desire to erect your heads towards
heaven ? If you do indeed desire it, begin by enforcing
respect for him without whom the poor will never be
respected." This is the language I employ with them ; and after
having thus indoctrinated my conscripts, I give them a
history of the Crusades, rousing them by the picture of
this great movement of many nations ; and in order to
bind them to our league, I say to them : —
" What an impulse, my brethren ! What sacrifices !
what martyrdoms ! And yet there was not one of these
soldiers of Christ who looked for any temporal advantage to
himself. They had but one desire — to redeem from Turkish
hands a simple stone, an empty sepulchre, and to breathe
their last sigh on holy ground.
" Poor people ! if you had eyes to see, you would per
ceive that there is now something worse than Turkish
infidels to combat ; something more than a simple stone to
defend with your breasts. He in whom Jesus Christ
continually dwells, whom he has established as his repre
sentative, he whom the angels proclaim as the doctor of
doctors, the infallible, the supreme chief of all the monarchs
of the universe, he claims your zeal, your arms, your
devotion, and it may be, your life.

OF THE JESUITS. 89
"A psalm which you often sing thus speaks to the
blessed who fight for the Eternal, and destroy his enemies,
root and branch: 'Be of good cheer, and singing holy
songs, arm yourself with the two-edged sword, to exercise
vengeance upon the heretic nations, to chastise the un
believers, to fetter their kings and their nobles, to execute
against them the judgment which is written ; for such is the
glory reserved for all the saints,' that is to say, for all good
Catholics. " O may these sacred sparks kindle at the bottom of
your hearts ! Cherish them for the great day which is,
perhaps, near at hand; propagate them in the minds of
your children, of your husbands, of your wives ; and, finally,
be assured that the day of triumph for the holy cause of
God' will be that in which, all your tears wiped away, you
will make the very heavens resound with your shouts of joy !"
Such language as this never failed of its effect : aroused
and excited by such words, the hearers almost always go
forth burning with rage.
I will repeat to you a conversation which I had once
the satisfaction to overhear. A penitent of ours said to his
comrade —
" John, it is only the Jesuit fathers who are men ; all the
others are stupid fools." "How so?" "Because it is
only they who can see to the bottom of things." " What !
do they understand our hardships, and can they find a cure
for them ? " " Have I not often told you so ! Go and open
your heart to them, tell them everything, listen to them,
and you will learn certain things. I swear to you, you will
soon know more than all these philosophers who make such
an uproar." " What is it they tell you, then 1" " Go and
i 2

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ask them yourself, and you will soon know the truth ; you
will know why the world goes on so badly, and what we
must do to set it to rights."

III.

It was this anecdote, related in a tone of pleasantry, contrasting
strongly with that maintained during the other part of the discourse,
which excited the hilarity and the applauses already mentioned. The
next speaker I recognised by his voice as the rector.
Still, it is upon the great that we ought particularly to
exert our influence. We ought to bring them to believe
that in a period stormy as this is there is no safety for them
but through us. Let us never relax in our efforts to penetrate
them with the idea that they can only hope to obtain any
great results by subjecting to us the consciences of their sub
ordinates, and those of the common people, so that we, or
those, at least, who follow our counsels, may wholly direct
them. If they are satisfied with the service it is in our
power to render them, by the discovery of secrets which
our peculiar position enables us alone to penetrate, then
in return (for their own sakes be it clearly understood, and
if they desire a time to arrive when there shall be no more
revolts and revolutions to trouble them), let them not be
sparing in such praises of us as are likely to make an impres
sion on powerful members of the Protestant body, and to lead
them to conclude that we alone possess the art of con
solidating governments, since it is our mission to correct
whatever remained imperfect and unfinished in the middle

OF THE JESUITS. 91
ages, in consequence of the fatal disputes between church
and state.
But since they may object certain acts of ours which are
not free from a seditious appearance, we must do all in our
power to colour and disguise these acts, so that they may not
be too glaring. We must give them to understand that if we
act thus it is because we are intimately persuaded that the
cause of evil, the bad leaven, will remain in the world as
long as Protestantism shall exist ; that Protestantism must
therefore be utterly abolished, since inquiry in religious
matters creates and propagates inquiry in other matters.
The admirable order of things which (we must tell them)
it is our object to establish, can only exist on condition that
the people shall be forced to move round these two axes,
monarchy and the church. We must prove to them that
we alone, with the other orders, and the clergy (the clergy,
be it understood, under certain conditions), are capable of
being more effectually useful to them than all their armed
forces. And why ? Because compression, far from chang
ing the heart, only inflames it the more ; whereas the most
violent and obstinate finish by yielding to religion, when
she acts upon them with confession for her auxiliary, and
ecclesiastical pomp for a bait.
Let us moreover take all possible pains to convince them
that they ought not to grudge the wealth possessed by the
religious bodies, or that which we are constantly accumulat
ing, for these riches are necessary to us; without them we
could execute no great enterprise.
"Weigh well," let us say to them, "weigh well the
present advantages we can offer, and those still more
considerable which are to follow, and you will see that

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each of your favours will in the end be restored to you a
hundredfold." But what we must, above all things, endeavour to make
apparent to them is this, that the ancient struggles between
the church and the state are no longer possible, these two
powers having learnt that there is nothing to be gained by
transgressing their respective limits. From whence it
follows that governments, protected by the wonderful pro
gress of diplomacy, will be for ever secure from all abuse
of anathema, and all attempts at usurpation, and may, with
all confidence, leave to the priesthood the entire direction of
the faithful. Besides, let governments learn that all our
sacraments, confraternities, ceremonies, little books,
&c, &c, are infinitely less to be feared than these
pestilent journals of all sorts, which are good for nothing
but to excite the worst passions ; that it is infinitely more
safe for the multitude to sink back into the legends of the
middle ages, which will chain down their imaginations to the
worship of past times ; whilst, on the contrary, if we once
suffer them to place a foot on the first step of the ladder,
they will speedily mount to the top, and be seized with
the vertigo of revolution, which immediately renders them
unmanageable ; they will inquire and examine, and the
more they learn the more their pride and insubordination
will increase. Yes, let governments admire what we are
able to do with the people by means of these " Lives of
Saints" and all these miracles ; we are able to perpetuate
their infancy until they shrink with terror from what others
long for with a frenzy almost incurable.

OF THE JESUITS. 93

IV.

The style of thought and imagery, and the accent of the next speaker,
evidently denoted that he was from Great Britain. I shall call him
the Irishman. In my opinion (he began) we ought not always to
repress certain bold tongues which mock at legends ; on the
contrary, it is well that there should be men who cast some
ridicule on that immense apotheosis of Papacy which we
are accustomed to make in Oriental language. This sort
of license does us no harm, so long as it is confined to the
higher classes, and remains unknown to the people : a cer
tain tolerance on this point makes the world more inclined
to trust us, and serves to lull suspicion in the minds of your
gilded phantoms (larve dorate) as to our ultimate projects.
But if this mockery went forth into open day, so as to
unseal the eyes of the vulgar ; or if some keen and pene
trating spirit, drawing aside the corner of the veil, should
point out the corrosive side of our doctrines, we must then
make every effort to cover this audacious wretch with
infamy, or denounce him as a dangerous conspirator,
deserving of exemplary chastisement. Setting aside such
extreme cases, it is rather to our advantage than otherwise
that there should be here and there some cavillers at our
vast dogmatic system ; for whilst free course is allowed to
a few sarcasms (alcuni scherni)* on these matters, our
tendencies are left unquestioned, we are allowed full liberty
* Perhaps he said scherzi, jests.

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and opportunity to propagate our doctrines and to extend
our conquests day by day.
In order to render Catholicism attractive, let us strive
to enlist in her cause the foremost statesmen and historical
writers of our own times. Let us employ them to deck the
past in golden hues ; to sweeten, for us, the bitter waters of
the middle ages ; and help us to captivate mankind by the
most alluring promises. Who knows but the day may come
when the vaunting songs of the antagonists of Catholicism
shall prove to have been swan music ? Let us suffer all
these various labourers to go on working for us ; when the
evening comes we will pay them, unlike the master in the
parable, in good money of the middle ages (in buona moneta
del medio evo) — of those middle ages which, in their fervent
admiration of antiquity, they now so eagerly extol.
In good truth, our times are become strangely delicate !
Do they flatter themselves, then, that no spark still smoulders
in the ashes round the stake to kindle another torch?
Fools ! all they can do is to hate us ! They are far from
dreaming (d'aver sentore, literally to scent) that we alone
know how to prepare a revolution, compared with which
all theirs have been, are, and will be but pigmy insurrections.
In calling us Jesuits they think that they cover us with
opprobrium ! They little think that these Jesuits have in
store for them the consorship, gags, and flames, and will
one day be the masters of their masters !
Excuse this warmth, my dear colleagues ; at another
time I will enlarge upon the immediate causes which fill me
with indignation, and arouse all my energies against this
envious and fractious race. I will now return to the point
from which I digressed.

OF THE JESUITS. 95
It is highly important to us that we should seem to
offer large guarantees to every class of society. To the
aristocracy of Protestant lands we should thus address
ourselves : —
" The Roman hierarchy alone is able to gain you the
victory ; but this is on condition that she finds an echo in
your own souls. It is by your efforts that the people must
be collected into their former fold ; when safely there, the
impetuous torrent will no longer ravage your domains, you
will see that submission will be restored, and the bad spirit
which threatens to root up and destroy all things, shall
itself be rooted up and destroyed. Your fathers turned
everything upside down, the remedy must be not less
energetic than the evil. Call upon all those over whom
you have influence to listen, and address them boldly in
some such words as these: —
" ' Protestantism is an aberration. It has engendered
nothing but miseries and innumerable catastrophes.
" ' It is a religion lopped of its members, it is not even
a skeleton. " ' Catholicism alone presents a harmonious whole.
Where there is no confession, no pope, no attractive form
of worship to address itself to the senses, no rallying point,
no all-powerful and ever acting controul, all must needs be
scattered like sand. We offer ourselves to your example,
as the first to prostrate ourselves before the guides of our
conscience, the first to reject the apostacy of our fathers !
Let it be our common task to join together what has been
rent. To the great work then ! Aid us ! follow us ! '
" In this way the mass of the people, fascinated by your
words and your example, will feel their souls stirred

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within them, their habits will be gradually changed, and at
last with one impulse they will fall on their knees before
our common mother."
Furthermore, dear friends, we must foresee all things,
especially objections, that we may be ready to answer them
off-hand, and without hesitation ; for we can never succeed
unless we have first, individually and collectively, made
ourselves thoroughly conversant with our subject in all its
bearings. Let each of us, therefore, hold himself bound to
note with scrupulous fidelity, not only the arguments which
are brought against us, but also the nature of the interests,
fears, desires, and even the mixture of ideas, serious, extra
vagant, or mystic, which are arrayed on the other side ; so
that our answers, and our manner of considering their ideas,
may astonish and bewilder them, and thus lead them captive
to our cause.
" Reflect," let us say, closely following them up,
" you are not surely so blind as not to see what is passing
around you. Lay hold on the anchor of safety which
Rome offers you, if you indeed believe it strong enough to
resist so many impetuous waves. The torrent is constantly
widening and gaining force. The loss of even a single
moment may afterwards be to you the source of vain
regret. Call upon those who alone are powerful to save
you, by raising against these raging waters an insurmount
able and eternal barrier. Alone (non contando che su di
voi), what could you do against the impending catastrophes ?
Take refuge, then, with us ; come with minds prepared,
and we will teach you to tame this mass before whom you
are now trembling ; we will enable you to associate these

OF THE JESUITS. 97
people in the gigantic work of their own metamorphosis —
a work which could never be executed but by the aid of
expedients such as ours."
I know, by experience, that this sort of language is of
certain efficacy. No sooner shall a few of these person
ages be converted, than others will imitate them ; and
when there shall be, by these means, a few breaches made
in Protestantism — whether these conversions proceed from
genuine motives, or whether they be determined by advan
tageous offers, which shall not be spared if the person be
worth the trouble (ne vol la pena) — we may certainly
reckon that the people, allured by these conversions, will
not long resist the yoke of pure authority, and then we
shall know how to make them pull steadily. For, I would
not have it lost sight of that our chief concern must be to
mould the people to our purposes. Doubtless, the first
generation will not be wholly ours ; but the second will
nearly belong to us, and the third entirely. Yes, the
people are the vast domain we have to conquer ; and when
we are free to cultivate it after our own way, we will
make it fructify to the profit of the impoverished granary*
* Here two words escaped me. I thought I heard the two
syllables rito, and I imagine that the words pronounced must have
been granario impoverito. It was a movement of hilarity, mingled, as it
struck me, with some murmurs, which rendered these words unin
telligible. But the Irishman, it is evident, took little pains to veil his
thoughts. He had just compared the people to a vast plain, destined
to be conquered and ploughed. It is become almost proverbial in
Italy, and I heard it said by several aged priests, " that the granary of
the holy city is impoverished." This is an allusion to the enormous
loss on indulgences, dispensations, fyc, which Protestantism and modern
ideas have occasioned to the treasures of the Vatican.

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of the holy city. We shall know how, by marvellous
stories and gorgeous shows, to exorcise heresy from the
heads and hearts of the multitude ; we shall know how to
nail their thoughts upon ours (inchiodare sui nostri i di lei
pensieri), so that they shall make no stir without our good
pleasures. Then the Bible, that serpent which, with head
erect and eyes flashing fire, threatens us with its venom
whilst it trails along the ground, shall be changed again
into a rod as soon as we are able to seize it ; and what
wounds will we not inflict with it upon these hardened
Pharaohs and their cunning magicians ! what miracles will
we not work by its means ! Oh, then, mysterious rod !
we will not again suffer thee to escape from our hands, and
fall to the earth !
For you know but too well that, for three centuries
past, this cruel asp (crudele aspide) has left us no repose ;
you well know with what folds it entwines us, and with
what fangs it gnaws us !
We may recognise in this language a mind embittered and rankling
with resentment against the English Bible Societies. He must often
have encountered them in his path, and felt enraged at their influence.
His savage expressions were received with a dry and forced laugh,
quite different from the spontaneous gaiety before exhibited.

V.
The next who spoke seemed, from the tone of his voice, to be
advanced in years. I can make no guess as to his country. His
manner was grave and sedate.
My brethren, as to the Bible, be advised by me. For
our greater good let us avoid — let us carefully avoid this

OF THE JESUITS. 99
ground. If I may tell you, openly, what I think of this
book, it is not at all for us ; it is against us. I do not at
all wonder at the invincible obstinacy it engenders in all
those who regard its verses as inspired.
You are aware that, when once entered upon theolo
gical studies, we must of necessity make some acquaintance
with the Bible. For myself, although in company with
numerous fellow-students, mere machines accustomed to
confound the text and the commentary, as if they were
one and the same thing (an illusion which, to confess the
truth, is extremely useful to us), it was yet impossible for
me, endowed as I was with some capacity for reflection
(as proved by my presence here, amongst the small number
of the elect) — it was impossible for me, I repeat, to be so
absurdly credulous as not to distinguish the text from the
commentary, by which its sense is almost always distorted.
In the simplicity of youth I fully expected, on opening the
New Testament, to find there laid down, totidem Uteris
(in lettere cubitali), the authority of a superior chief in the
church, and the worship of the Virgin, the source of all
grace for mankind. I sought with the same eagerness for
the mass, for purgatory, for relics, &c. But in every page
I found my expectations disappointed ; from every reflec
tion that I made resulted doubt. At last, after having
read, at least six times over, that little book which set all
my calculations at nought, I was forced to acknowledge
to myself that it actually sets forth a system of religion
altogether different from that taught in the schools, and
thus all my ideas were thrown into confusion (ne rimasi al
sommo seompaginato).
The penetrating eye of my confessor perceived the

100 SECEET PLAN
agitation of my mind, and I was consequently obliged to
disclose to him my distress and difficulty. " Ah, reverend
father!" I said to him, " I expected to find in the New
Testament each of our different dogmas fully developed and
dwelt upon in accordance with the value and importance
which we are accustomed to attribute to them. What is
my surprise to find there nothing at all like what we deem
the most essential in our doctrines."
Without allowing me to proceed any further, he in
quired, " Have you communicated your thoughts to any of
your fellow-students ?" " No," replied I, " I have suffered
much — -but alone." "That is well," he said.
From that moment he kept me apart from all the other
students, and having repeatedly sounded my conscience to
its very depths, he one day addressed this question to me,
" My child" (I was at that time about twenty-three years
of age), " if I were to place in your hands the Geography
of Ptolemy, or that of Strabo, who lived about two thousand
years ago, and if I were to say to you, Point out to me in
these books the name of a single city of all those which
have been since built, what would be your answer ?" " I
should say that it was impossible, since those cities did not
then exist." "Exactly so; and the case is absolutely the
same with the New Testament — the book of primitive
Christianity — as with the Geography of Ptolemy or Strabo.
All you seek there had its rise at a far later period."
At these words of my superior I looked upon him with
stupefaction. He pressed me affectionately to his bosom,
and said, " Do not distress yourself; you shall be a young
man set apart. You are worthy to penetrate further than
others. Jesus Christ himself, as you must have remarked,

OF THE JESUITS. 10]
spoke to the multitude only in parables ; but, in private,
he interpreted these parables to the apostles, saying to
them : ' To you it is given to know the mysteries of the
kingdom,' that is to say, to possess the key of these secrets ;
but he carefully avoided using this language to the vulgar.
Do you think a child in the cradle is equally advanced
with a grown man ? No. In like manner this book is but
the embryo of the church. Forms,- new doctrines, the
hierarchy, the power of the popedom, all these great things
which have transformed the church into an ocean, as it
were, have been the effect of gradual progress, a progress
which has often, indeed, been impeded, often interrupted,
but which we are destined to bring to its consummation."
Afterwards, in order to neutralize my impressions, he
placed in my hands Dupuis, Boulanger, Volney, Voltaire,
and some other writers. By this means, and by degrees,
a new order of ideas was established in my mind, and I
became in the end capable of rising to the loftiest views of
our order.
I have related this anecdote, which is entirely personal,
merely to put you on your guard against too much confi
dence in reckoning, like the heretics, upon a book which
unfortunately abounds in arms against us, not for us.
Consequently, let us lay down this principle : in public
to act as if we had nothing to fear from such a book, but
rather as if it were favourable for us ; in private, to describe
it as dangerous and hurtful, or, where this would not be
prudent, to declare that it is the germ, of which Catholicism
is the complete and majestic development. We shall thus
provide ourselves with an arsenal a thousand times better
stored than the biblical arsenal of Protestantism. We shall
J 2

102 SECEET PLAN
thus elude a crowd of difficulties, and at tbe same time
keep up the controversy between ourselves and the Pro
testants — the very thing we want ; for as long as the
present state of things continues, as long as the mass per
ceive that our disputes lead to nothing decisive either way,
they conclude that if there had really been anything in the
Bible which positively condemns us, it would, in the course
of three centuries, have made itself fully apparent.
Meanwhile, let us be watchful to place our best work
men in the most important points. While these good
automata aid us to lay stone upon stone, under the direction
of our initiated members, our edifice will rise on founda
tions so solid as to withstand all shocks hereafter.
As to our texts, let us select them from the old
legends of the Bollandists. Should certain of our practices
or doctrines be questioned, why then let us heap miracle
on miracle, let us repeat the old ones and make new, so
as to throw a glittering veil over the pope, the Virgin,
purgatory, mass, our ecclesiastical vestments, our medals,
our chaplets ; let our miracles be like an inexhaustible water
course, keeping up a perpetual motion in each wheel of our
immense machine.
Let the heretics and the philosophers cry out against us
as they may, we will take no pains to silence them, we will
make no reply ; so they will tire themselves out, and in the
end they will let us alone. At the same time, I am quite
of opinion that we ought, by every possible means, to
secure the aid of modern thinkers, whatever be the nature
of their opinions. If they can be induced to write at all
in our favour, let us pay them well, either in money or
in laudation. Provided that the universal edifice goes on

OF THE JESUTTS. 103
constantly increasing, what matters it to us what workmen,
or what implements, are employed ? There are some who
have become very zealous Catholics because, as they say,
we know how, with our images, our paintings, our wax
tapers, and our gold, to produce a highly picturesque effect
in our chapels ! Others are converted because ours is the
only church which possesses a pool, always ready, in which
he who is soiled by sin may wash himself clean !
Thus, you perceive that we are provided with an
infinite number of baits, to take all sorts of people; be it
ours to become expert in the choice and in the use of
them.

VI.

He ceased. The speaker who succeeded him appeared younger.
I cannot say whether he was an Italian or not. Our language is
pronounced in so many different ways, that it is difficult to judge of
a speaker's native country by his accent, more especially when we
cannot observe his features. This speaker began by unfolding some
perfidious theories, and his style was at first feeble and careless. I
was astonished at his incoherence, hut by and by he was put on his
mettle by an interruption, and his style suddenly became terse and
compact. I know that we are accused of fearing the Scriptures ;
wherefore I am, at this very time, occupied in composing
a little book, in which I point out a very easy method of
enriching our oral instructions and our writings by Scrip
ture texts. For example : —
" Whosoever hates not his mother, his father, his
brethren, his sisters, and who is not prepared to sacrifice

104 SECEET PLAN
for the church whatever he possesses, is an unworthy
disciple of Jesus Christ."
" If the church is a visible body, the simplest common
sense requires us not to deny it a visible head."
" The Catholic people is successor to the people of
God ; consequently heretics and philosophers are the
enemies we are bound to exterminate, and the powers
which do not yield obedience to the Holy See are so many
Pharaohs." " As, under the Old Testament, the voice of the
tabernacle was the voice of God, so, in like manner, the
voice of the pope is the voice of God, under the New
Covenant." I might quote to you a thousand other examples, with
their application ; but the specimen I have just offered
you will prove that we also, as well as the heretics, can
present ourselves with a phraseology altogether Biblical.
As to our manner of proceeding with Protestants of all
sorts, it must necessarily be very varied. My advice is
this, that we should keep a register of the most obstinate
and dangerous amongst them, and chiefly of their ministers.
This register, in which their individual characters should
be noted, would serve to warn our missionaries of the rocks
and quicksands in their course ; they would know before
hand with whom they had to do, whom to avoid, and whom
to venture upon, according to the measure or the particular
nature of their respective talents ; this would be of
admirable use in sparing us many defeats and unfortunate
mistakes. For my own part, in addressing those who appear less
hostile and more manageable, I argue thus : — " Is it not

OF THE JESUITS. 105
apparent that we alone combine all the advantages that
your sects possess separately. You can, therefore, lose
nothing by your conversion ; you gain, on the contrary,
the advantages of becoming spectators of such imposing
solemnities as must needs, sooner or later, captivate your
very hearts.
" Our church styles itself catholic, or universal ; this is
why it employs sensuous vehicles proportioned to the
intellectual faculties of each individual. Look upon
Catholicism, then, as opening to mankind the most splendid
feast. You know in what consists the merit of a table —
in being laden with dishes adapted to every taste, and in
displaying all the most delicious productions of the earth.
Now, all men are not constituted alike. One man sees
God through the medium of the fine arts and poetry ;
another can only discern him under a gloomy and austere
aspect ; a third beholds him in a sweet and radiant
atmosphere ; and others see him through the cloud of
dim and mystic reveries. For all, however, there is one
centre of unity, namely, Jesus Christ ; and on this point
we have not a shadow of disagreement with you. What,
then, should hinder you from entering into the most perfect
communion with us ? Would it not be folly to require that
all men should arrive at the same point by one single
road, when it is the property of a divine religion to lead
them thither by a multitude of different ways ? Perhaps
it may be repugnant to you to see God in the man to
whom you confess yourself, in order to obtain absolution ?
But consider that a people left to itself, unrestrained by a
visible power which supplies the place of the invisible,
would soon become brutified, forgetting the horror of sin ;

106 SECRET PLAN
or, on the other hand, would become desperate, no longer
hearing a voice which says, ' I am God who absolve
thee.' " You would prefer, would you not, that a friend
should be your priest? Enlightened minds seek the
commerce of enlightened minds ; well, doubt not that
Catholicism offers you a multitude of priests, who, knowing
with whom they had to do, would never dream of imposing
acts of humiliation upon you. As to our devotional
practises, it is not necessary to take a part in them, further
than for the edification of the simple (per V edificazione dei
simplici). The church has too much perspicuity not to
know how to make a discreet use of many of her different
rules, so as to adapt them to all shades of intelligence, from
the depths of ignorance to the heights of genius. Since
her table is so richly provided, would it not be absurd that
this very abundance should be the source of dissensions ?
No ; restraint of this kind has never entered into the spirit
of our system. Unity, that good thing beyond all price, is
dear to us, but we know that sacrifices must be made in
order to preserve it ; we know that reciprocal tolerance is
necessary in the different guests seated at the same religious
banquet, where the choice of meats is free, without any one
having the right to constrain his neighbour ; and, by this
touching and amiable forbearance, all are equally nourished
and satisfied.
"Remember St. Paul, who forbids us to despise the
weak ; who will not that he who believes himself permitted
to eat meat should trouble another who believes that by
eating herbs only he renders himself agreeable to God.
It is to you, Protestants, that St. Paul addresses himself

OF THE JESUITS. 107
when he says, ' Destroy not him with thy meat for whom
Christ died.' Would that he had added, ' Destroy him
not in exacting proudly that he should conform to your
individual taste.'*
" There are to be found in the kingdom of God different
lights — from the pale light of the smallest star to the
brilliant glory of the sun.
" Apply this same spirit to different doctrines ; to that,
for example, which gives you so much offence by placing
all power in the hands of the pope. Doubtless this doc
trine may be so explained to educated minds as to
place it in a more elevated point of view, and even to
give it the appearance of something rational and just ;
but, for many reasons, it must be preached to the common
people in all its downright crudity (in tuttala sua crudita
materiale). " By degrees, as you are capable of comprehending the
extended and noble views of our church, you will also
perceive why she canonizes such totally dissimilar indi
viduals — the being absorbed in an eccentric mysticism ;
the man who daily disciplines his body till the ground is
sprinkled with his blood ; and him who has revelled in
luxuries and pleasures, when his position rendered them
* There would be no end if we were to point out the continual
efforts of the reverend fathers to wrest the meaning of the texts they
quote. St. Paul, having to do with weak consciences, accustomed to
ascetic maxims, and wishing still to respect them, without prejudice to
the new principle he was labouring to establish, thus speaks : — " For
one believeth that he may eat all things ; another, who is weak, eateth
herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let
not him who eateth not judge him that eateth." — Bom. xiv. '2, 3.
Things are greatly changed since St. Paul's time.

108 SECRET PLAN
attainable and legitimate. The reason is simply this, that
human nature is multiform.
" All things are good, all things are holy, when they
are in their right place, and when men do not seek to
intrude upon every one their own exclusive principles. Is
it difficult to perceive that this mode of conduct is both
generous and sublime ?"
After having thus argued, but at greater length, I
change my tactics ; I analyze Protestantism even to its
most trifling details. I show from whence it came forth ; I
display its shameful variations, the pernicious example it
has given, the consequences of its freedom of inquiry, and
its miserable outward dryness, betokening its inward sterility.
Then I exclaim, " See one of our grand processions ! every
one occupies his peculiar rank ; for our church, even in
her grand solemnities, loves not to eclipse the honour due
to any state or condition.
" You are astonished, perhaps, to see us adore the
Host, surrounded with glittering magnificence. We, too,
are not ignorant that God is everywhere ; and that He
demands the heart alone, is not a discovery of your pre
tended reformers. But tell me, I pray you, when have the
people been able to comprehend all these chimerical
abstractions ? Has there not at all times been need of
certain signs to serve as steps, as it were, by which men
might ascend to the ideal of religion ?
" Thus the church, perceivingthat the Lord's Supper, in
its primitive and vulgar simplicity, was ill adapted to excite
devotion in the people, decided at last to concentrate upon
the Host, by the mass, as upon a palpable and perceptible
point, all the splendour they could give it. The church

OF THE JESUITS. 109
has signally succeeded, by means of frequent exhibitions
of the august sacrament, and by the pomp of her cere
monies. The multitude, carried away by what is visible, is
moved and softened, and adoration succeeds to admiration.
" Without these Catholic means, is it not to be justly
feared that the number of those who never raise their hearts
towards God would increase to an alarming extent ?
" On the other hand, the enlightened man, the true
philosopher, who has really no need of these material forms,
would not, surely, attempt to impose his own spiritualism on
beings whose destiny it is to remain material and gross.
He will be content with admiring the ingenious resources of
Catholicism, and he will thank God for having enabled the
church to find means so adapted to awaken the piety of the
stupid and ignorant mass.
" Thus, under the roofs of our temples, children and
men* tend to the same point, thanks to the divine and
inexhaustible fecundity of the true church, which, as St.
Paul says, makes itself all things to all men, in order to
gain, if it be possible, the whole world, without, however,
sacrificing the truth, by thus temporising."
* Under the name of children the father no doubt designates the
lower orders, whom they design to keep under the yoke of superstitious
practices ; whilst by men he means those who disdain these practices,
but who, adroitly veiling this, deserve the name of true philosophers.
I have known priests, and even Protestant ministers, who reject many
doctrines which they publicly preach ; amongst others, everlasting
punishment; and these, they say, Scripture authorises them to reject,
but they maintain them as a check upon the people.

1 LO SECEET PLAN

VII.

From the first words of the discourse which follows, I had no diffi
culty in recognising the unctuous voice which had put so many
insidious questions to me, during my examination. This was the
present general of the company, Father Boothaan. I felt at first
considerable agitation, so that I lost two or three phrases, which were
however unimportant, and which I have supplied in order to complete
the sense. The most fatal thing that could befal us at the present
moment, would be the change from a gay, glittering, scenic
religion, to an argumentative Christianity, opposed to pomp
and show, an iconoclastic spirituality ; I mean by this term,
a faith destructive of Catholic forms. You all know that
these are the powerful shield which covers our plans. But
if the poetic charm should ever be broken, if people
should begin to seek inspiration in the apostles, or in the
primitive apologists, then our bark, beaten by impetuous
winds, would run great risk of sinking, with all the immen
sity of its treasures. Revolt would become general. The
glorious edifice, the work of so many ages, would be assailed
and torn to pieces by thousands of profane hands. It would
become the order of the day to trample under foot all that
might fall under the reproach of being borrowed from idol-
atory. This time, there would be no mercy shown, nothing
would be spared. Discouragement and terror would then
stalk through our ranks, for we could not rely for the
suppression of these movements on the strong hands of
certain powers, which we had not yet sufficiently engaged in
our interests. As soon as the fatal word should have
gone forth, that nothing had any value in religion but

OF THE JESUITS. Ill
what is spiritual and biblical, the hierarchy would instantly
fall to the ground. All hope would be over for the priest
hood, when the people should acknowledge no other guide
than a little book. To whom should we then turn, on
whom should we found our expectations, in a desertion so
general ; what remedy should we seek to cure so horrible
a malady in the blood ? (per guarir nel sagnue un si oribile
male.) Not that there is the least symptom of the approach
of such a danger. On the contrary, Protestantism is
becoming decomposed ; it is falling to pieces ; we are
beginning to gain from it some men of note, and there
are even some high personages whom we have succeeded in
convincing that, if they continue to uphold Protestantism,
they are lost.
But it is not enough for us to be aware of a great
apathy amongst our ancient enemies ; we must do all in our
power to augment it.
The proof that faith in an abstract being is powerless
to constitute a solid and durable union — that it cannot form
a vast body which shall be animated, as it were, by one
mind, is, that scarcely three hundred years have passed
since the first effervescence, and Protestantism is already
wearing out and sinking into decay. Yes, we are destined
to insult its last agfbnies, to march over its broken skeleton
and its scattered bones ! Oh ! let us hasten this dissolution
by our strong and united efforts ! Let us preach to the
timorous Protestants that deism and incredulity are corrup-
ing their various sects, that God is, at length, weary of
heresies, and that he is now, in our days, about to exercise
upon them his terrible and final judgment.

112 SECRET PLAN
Let us, meanwhile, carefully avoid entering into an
open and serious strife with the Protestants. We could not
but lose ground by it ; and it would call too much attention
to the subject. People who are greedy of novelty would
be enchanted to see such a combat opened. Let us prefer
a secret war, which though less brilliant, is more sure to
bring us the advantage. Let us shun too much light. Let us
content ourselves with pulling down the stones of the Protes
tant citadel, one by one, instead of venturing to carry it by
storm. This would be neither prudent nor useful. Let us
pour contempt upon this inglorious, naked, cadaverous
religion ; and let us exalt the antiquity, the harmonies,
and the wonderful perfectibility of our own.
But we must, above all things, be provided with a store
of arguments to parry the objections which the Protestants
are so prone to bring forward, and which are founded on
the vices and crimes of the ancient clergy and the popes.
A difficult theme, I admit, and one which merits a special
theory ; for after all, what have we to allege sufficiently
adroit, subtle, and cogent, to enable us to retire with
honour from these discussions with which we are so often
pestered ? If we could but meet them armed with some
good replies, the question might, at least, be maintained in
suspense. You well know that the ground upon which thei
Protestants are most harassing, is the middle ages, which
they are pleased to call the dark ages. Unfortunately, on
this subject our best writers do but too often furnish our
adversaries with arms against us !
O Rome ! how many anxious toils, how many pangs of
mortification, dost thou cost us ! What an overwhelming
task it is to have to suspend a veil of glittering embroidery

OF THE JESUITS. 1 ] 3
between thy chaos and the nations!" — (un ricamo brillante
tra il tuo chaos ed i populi .')
(These words came forth like a flash of lightning. It is impossi
ble to give an idea of the contrast between this sudden burst, and the
usually calm and smooth manner of Father Boothaan.)
" We have, however, one source of rejoicing . we cherish
at the bottom of our hearts this principle, that whatever
does not unite with us, must be annihilated ; and we hold
ourselves ready to make, as soon as we shall have the
means, an energetic application of this principle. Protes
tantism, on the contrary, completely disarmed itself when
first it preached the doctrine of toleration, and declared that
to persecute for the sake of religion, is a violation of the
gospel. O yes ! this is well for those who are satisfied with
small things, but not for us who aim at greatness which
shall eclipse and annul all other greatness.

VIII.

The Irishman here took up the discourse so promptly that he
seemed to have been waiting impatiently for an opportunity to break
in. There was no speaker whom I found it so difficult to follow.
I will tell you, brethren, by what means we can mould
and train up the true Roman Catholic in the midst of the
heretic sects. With devoted bishops, and with a clergy
whose tactics have been perfected by a serious course of
study, we may prepare for the people such instructors as
cannot fail to accelerate the progress of our ideas. All will
go well with us, provided we can obtain that the Catholic
k 2

114 SECRET PLAN
from his very childhood shall abhor the breath even of a
heretic, and shall firmly resist all insinuations, all books,
and all discourse of a religious cast coming from them ;
carefully preserving towards them, at the same time, a
polite and gracious manner. In other words, he must make
a show of much sociability towards the Protestants, hut he
must avoid all intellectual contact or communion with
them. This is what we must inculcate as the only
condition of success in every exercise of our ministry,
whether by catechism, confession, or conversation. This
is our only chance for reuniting what is broken, strengthen
ing what is weak, and magnifying what is small.
Every bishop must rigorously act upon this principle —
be gentle, but inflexible. Let him know how to assume
the demeanour of a lamb, if he would spread around him a
perfume of sanctity which shall win all hearts ; but let
him also know how to act with the fierceness of a raging
lion when he is called upon to protect the rights of the
church, or to reclaim those of which it has already been
despoiled by the tyranny of governments. If the bishops
and the clergy, however, know how to do their duty, these
rights shall all resume their paramount supremacy.
One of the dangers upon which our system may strike
is the policy of Protestant governments. They have
assumed the art of affecting a desire to do us justice, and
profess even much condescendence towards those whom they
disdainfully denominate Papists. It is their design to break
down an isolation which it deeply imports us to maintain ;
were they to awaken sympathy and efface the limits of
separation, our plan would be ruined to its very base.
My brethren, let us defeat such manoeuvres, cost what

OF THE JESUITS. 115
it may, by manoeuvres more skilful and more active. I
will name one which I have sometimes known to succeed,
and which I consider efficacious. The confessional must
be our field of action, wherein we must undeceive all who
are in danger of being taken by so perfidious a bait. Let
us convince the faithful that silence towards us is a crime ;
that it is fear and not good-will that actuates their tyrants ;
that he who has penetration enough to see through these
wiles, so far from believing that there is affection and
kindness in them, perceives nothing but a deep design to
weaken our force and to loosen our bond of religion.
These governments are well aware that an alliance with
Catholics would, sooner or later, enable them to dispute
the right of Catholic princes to govern populations which
have nothing in common with them. We must, therefore,
repeat to the faithful at the confessional, and this under the
seal of the most scrupulous secrecy : — " Refrain sedulously
from sacrificing all your future hopes to a vile temporary
interest, or you will prepare for your children a worse
slavery than your own ! Heresy is on the watch, to see
you bow your heads under the yoke of her execrable doc
trines. Remember that, in former times, it was the custom
to cover with flowers the victim which was led to the altar.
Woe to you if you fall into indifference ! For then the
mound which protects you will be broken up, and you, pure
waters as ye are, will pass away into a pestilent and fetid
lake! " Reflect, that if you give way you are lost. Would
you really suffer yourselves to become the dupes of men in
power, who seek only to deceive you ? The exaggerated
respect which you show for their seeming virtues, the silly

116 SECEET PLAN
esteem for their persons with which they seek to inspire
you, will be your ruin. The caresses which they lavish
upon you kill your faith ; for what is the purpose of
their intrigues ? To render you base and irreligious.
P'or us, who penetrate beneath their outside seeming,
our strict duty in the confessional — in this sanctuary,
where nothing but truth is spoken — in this tribunal, which
is the inviolable asylum of the church, and which heresy in
her craftiness would gladly destroy — in this sacred spot,
where we occupy the place of God himself, our strict duty
is to enlighten you on your true interests, on your rights,
and on the character which you ought to assume in order
to escape their snares."
We know but too well, dear brethren, how many stones
are scattered over those mixed and bastard countries.
Let us take the trouble to search for these stones and
collect them — it may be slowly and painfully — into one
heap. Of this heap we will form one mass, one huge rock,
which shall daily become more ponderous, more rugged,
more irresistible, until its whole crushing mass shall fall
upon the head of heresy !
Let us also send abroad our mysterious words,* which
shall cast forth vivid flashes of our doctrine, to dazzle,
attract, and draw converts together. We want some of
these burning brands to put themselves into contact with
such as are nearly or quite extinguished. Let us multiply
the pious hands which will busy themselves in seeking out
* He no doubt meant by these words the eloquent speakers amongst
them, and he adds the epithet mysterious in the same sense as the pre
sident, who says, a little further on, " Inviluppati di misterio dai pie
fino al capo, restiamo impenetrabili.,t

OF THE JESUITS. 117
these lifeless logs, heaping them together, and re-lighting
them. It is the Protestant revolt which has thus scattered
them, and left them to grow cold. Let them, I say, be
again collected into heaps, and let the bishops and the body
of the clergy reanimate these vast Catholic braziers ; let
them inflame them without ceasing, for small flames rapidly
become great ones, and great ones become fearful confla
grations ! Yes, yes ; let these avenging fires unite, and
become one vast furnace, until at length we shall have no
more need to envelop them in mystery ; and then the
destroying element shall purge out the wicked, and fitly
baptise all sects, until the church alone is left standing
above tlieir ruins.

IX.

The accent of the next speaker betrayed the Frenchman.
All that our friend has been saying is perfectly just.
Nothing ought, in fact, to distinguish us in appearance
from other men, provided we bear always in our hearts the
programme of our deliverance. We must seek to work up
all things together for the triumph of our church, and
thus we shall prepare for our descendants a magnificent
destiny. Yes, the Catholic's exterior may be sociable, but let him
not the less cherish within him concentrated rage and uncon
querable antipathy. The final success of our work depends,
I do not hesitate to say, on the realization of this type.
But to find men capable of realizing it, to multiply

118 SECRET PLAN
them, to cover all Europe with them — how is this to be
accomplished ? He who shall rightly answer this question
will merit altars and statues. Worthy will he be that we
should ascribe miracles to him, and that we should declare
him the celestial patron of the people, the man who shall
solve this arduous problem. What must we do to recruit
such an army, organize and discipline it so as to make it
exclusively subservient to the triumph of our ideas ?
To isolate those whom we may have gained over, to
allow them no other aliment than the bread and wine of
our table, and by degrees transform them into raging lions
— this must be our main pursuit.
We have, however, an immense variety of motives
and interests with which we may work. To certain men,
we must offer bribes of earthly good ; to others, we must
promise crowns of eternal life ; some may be incited by the
progress of the general welfare ; others are capable of
desiring to promote the glory of the church, and the spread
of the true faith over all the earth.
Could we but flatter ourselves with the hope of seeing
the political and the religious lever both swayed by one
hand, as in the middle ages and in remote antiquity!
Nevertheless, we have incontestible means of influencing
all classes. In fact, what system has ever existed, in any
age, so powerful as the church to multiply or change means
of action ? It is true that the religious orders are at this
moment broken, and almost morally annihilated ; but still
they exist as bodies, and all we have to do is to reanimate
them with the breath of our own life.
This is what we must also do for confession ! May
this institution endure as long as the sun ! As long as it

OF THE JESUITS. 119
continues to exist, I defy all earthly powers united to deal
Catholicism a mortal blow !
Could we but complete this institution ! for it is per
fectible. As yet it is but in its infancy. Could we but
imbue all the clergy with a knowledge of its secret virtue !
What a prodigious empire might it not acquire to the
church ! What an immense source of profit ! What store
of souls it might gain over to us ! What partizans ! What
treasures ! What an innumerable army it might place at
our disposal, and what superiority it would assure us in the
day of battle !
Should we not have found the fixed point desiderated
by the mathematician of Syracuse ?
Confession ! What scope for genius beneath its im
penetrable mystery ! Gentleness and terror there play
their part by turns. Volumes might be written on the
power and the uses of this instrument, which are as mani
fold as the various affections and propensities of human
character. It ought to become in our hands the miraculous
rod wherewith to terrify Egypt, its Pharaohs and its minis
ters, until Protestantism, which has itself lopped off its own
right hand, shall have fallen an easy victim to us.
As for the Protestant aristocracies, we must neither
he open with them, nor yet veil ourselves so as to excite
their suspicions. It may be even necessary sometimes to
risk an avowal, if by an avowal, adroitly let slip, we can
find means to strike a master stroke. For example, we
might address them in some such terms at these : —
" Yes, certainly, our methods for sounding the hearts
of those who are confided to us, and above all of subjugating
the sentiments of the young, may appear startling; but

120 SECRET PLAN
examine the subject a little, and you will acknowledge that
if you were to imitate us, your governments would be more
stable. Only lend us a helping hand, and we will show
you how to come at the statistics of each individual head.
In this respect, at least, we are your masters. In your
religion you leave people's minds to themselves, which pro
duces, as you well know, all kinds of revolutions and many
catastrophes. Adopt confessors. Let your youths submit
their thoughts, from their earliest years, to a director of
their conscience. Think of the immense influence of prin
ciples which men of the sanctuary deposit in a youthful
breast ! Show yourselves favourable to that clergy which,
bending over a soul thus subjected, reads it as if it were an
unsealed letter. The clergy would be grateful to you.
Let it have an interest in serving you, so that it may warn
you opportunely when the tide is rising or falling in each
country, and enable you to turn public events to your own
profit. Doubt not that if this alliance of religion with politics
could be brought to bear on the whole human race, the
latter would universally become as wax in your hands, to
mould it as you pleased, and stamp it with your own seal."
It is needless to say that language like this is not to be
proclaimed from the house-tops ; it is to be adroitly insinu
ated into the ears of such as might be of vast utility to us,
when struck by such glimmerings of light. Let them once
begin to fall in with these ideas, and help to bring them
into vogue, and then it will of course be our task to trans
form these stout auxiliaries into our very humble servants
(in servi umilissimi).
I shall soon be prepared to lay before you an elaborate
paper on this subject, which I have here but slightly touched.

OF THE JESUITS. 121

The Jesuit who spoke next expressed himself in the purest Italian.
Nevertheless, the construction of his phrases, and the lucid precision
of his method, induced me to think that he also was French. The
cast of his phrases was so much after the French manner, that I had
scarcely an effort in translating his speech.
Tbe stiff-necked heretics of whom he speaks are the Protestants of
the higher classes, not the vulgar.
It is chiefly as to the anarchic tendencies of free inquiry
that we should attack those stiff-necked heretics, and I have
often spoken to them thus : —
"If there is anything utterly inexplicable to reason
able people, it is your conduct. You allow free inquiry
in religion ; is not this equivalent to permitting, legitimiz
ing, nay, even provoking it, on all political questions also ?
If you admit of so great a licence in a matter altogether
divine and immutable — a matter so profound and abstruse
as religion is, even for the learned few — is it not the height
of inconsistency to hope to enslave the minds of men by
forbidding them all inquiry into a subject so thoroughly
human and variable as politics ? On the one hand, you
expect to exercise sovereign and unquestioned authority,
whilst, on the other, where God and the church are at
stake, you assist in shaking off the yoke of an authority a
thousand times more sacred and more necessary ! Surely
it would be impossible to conceive a contradiction more
palpable and absurd.
" Its consequences are obvious. When, for mere tem
poral advantages, several princes had encouraged the revolt
L

122 SECRET PLAN
against the church, the same disaster soon fell upon them
selves. They had to endure, in their turn, an examination
still more severe than that to which Rome had been sub
jected — an examination of their dynastic rights, their codes,
their actions — an examination which took place by the
glare of a fearful conflagration, and which sent them to
perish ignominiously on the scaffold like highway rob
bers. " Such are the fruits of free inquiry. If it multiplies,
everywhere its pestilential pulpits, the usual effects will
inevitably follow. Hence I draw the following conclu
sions : —
" If ever the aristocracy of our church shall be laid low,
all other aristocracies will perish likewise.
" If ever the Catholic church be decapitated, all other
monarchies will share the same fate.
" If ever the purple of our cardinals be profaned and
torn into rags, all other purples will be rent in like
manner. " If ever our worship be despoiled of its pomp and
grandeur, there will be an end of every other pomp and
grandeur on earth.
"We will not flatter you as courtiers do ; we will tell
you the whole truth, in the hope that, for our mutual
benefit, you may arrive at these simple and sure conclusions :
if the Roman church lives we shall all live with her ; if she
perishes, none of the grandeurs which have hitherto, in
fact, been supported by Catholicism will survive the down
fall of that infinite grandeur, the foremost of all, and before
which the universe has so long prostrated itself. But if,
on the contrary, you make common cause with us, in the

OF THE JESUITS. 123
endeavour to rally the people around the ancient banner, if
your arms, whilst they yet may, drive them back to their
forsaken ways ; then, in the place of infinite disorders, we
shall have the union of the two powers, which shall go
on daily increasing until it become perfectly consolidated.
" Give us, then, your sympathies ; turn your faces
towards us ; throw discredit on Protestantism ; and let
Catholicism, enthroned by your aid in the opinions of our
times, lift up her head, spread her dominion over the whole
world, and completely subdue it. And this will inevitably
take place, if men of high station will fearlessly declare
themselves converted ; provided (and this is very important)
that their change can in no way be attributed to motives of
interest. "Can you, indeed, deny that the present rage for inno
vation has arisen from the movement occasioned by
Protestantism in throwing the Bible before the senseless
multitude ? The first thing, therefore, to be done is to
bring them back from the Bible to Catholic authority, which
retrenches from this book only what is hurtful, allowing
free circulation to those portions of it alone which ensure
good order.
" How conies it to pass that so many shallow minds make
bold to fashion their own set of opinions ? Is it not because
you have abolished all subjection to the tribunal of con
sciences, which alone watched over the thoughts, and put
a bridle on the lips ? Consequently, this tribunal must be
restored, and in order that every one may respect it, the
great must be the first to bow down before it ; nor will this
submission in any way humiliate or abase them. Amongst
the precious advantages to be derived from it, is not their

124 SECEET PLAN
part a rich one ? You can little imagine what the church
has in store to reward services of such importance."
Here a slight murmur of derision caused a moment's interruption.
" For, when once our renovated cult shall have regained
all that heresy has snatched from it, Catholicism, which
disdains the paltry spirit of Protestantism, will open wide
the gates of her temples, that each rank, each estate, may
there shine in its respective place. Being herself great,
she naturally sympathizes with all that may add to her
splendour. Those are madmen or fools, who, by their
scheme for despoiling the churches of whatever could give
them an imposing aspect, have made the nakedness of
poverty conducive to that other mania of universal equality.
" Lend us then, we implore you, your aid to put down
every obstacle to the mutual understanding of the two
authorities — the church and the throne. It is only when
these two authorities shall be regarded as divine dogmas,
and when they mutually sustain each other, that they will
have sufficient power to sweep away all this chaos of
dangerous questions which converts society into a tumult
uous sea. What glorious results will follow, on the other
hand, from this happy union, this fraternal alliance ! The
church and the state, rendered valorous by this union, shall
trample under foot the two hydras, mother and daughter ;*
the fire shall consume them, and their ashes shall be
scattered to the four winds!"
* Protestantism and Revolution.

OF THE JESUITS. 125

XI.

There was a pause of some moments. A conversation took place,
so general and unconnected that it was impossible for me to seize its
meaning. But Father Boothaan soon resumed the discourse, and his
first words, no doubt, related to this short conversation.
To this effect I would remark that we shall establish
nothing firmly unless we begin with those who are to direct
others. It therefore appears to me essential to regulate
the initiation, by forming various grades in it (stadii). I
say regulate, because we must never risk our light but
upon sure grounds, and after a rigid scrutiny of the dis
positions of the person to be initiated. A ray too much,
sometimes, instead of enlightening (imbaldanzire) him to
whom it is communicated, serves only to dazzle him and
lead him astray. We thus lose some excellent and active
instruments, from having imprudently attempted to enlarge
their mission. Let us know well beforehand with whom
we have to do.
We must not, however, suffer a reasonable cautiousness
to degenerate into excessive distrust. Let frequent essays
be made in order to acquire extreme delicacy of tact, and
that discernment of the inner man by which we may assure
ourselves of a person's secret thoughts. It is well to begin
by complaining of the evils with which the church is
oppressed, and then to insist on the necessity of strongly
attaching the inferior clergy to their bishops, in order that
they may aid each other in seeking a remedy. The con
versation being thus opened, it seldom fails, if adroitly
followed up, to bring out the true character of the indi-
L 2

126 SECEET PLAN
vidual under examination. After having thus sounded
him, a word may be hazarded on the urgency of uniting
men distinguished by rank or talent (always supposing
that he is himself of this class), in order to raise up a dam
against the torrent, and ultimately put the church in
possession of her ancient sceptre. And if his replies denote
that he is capable of understanding us, the means to be
employed in attaining this great end may next be hinted
to him. He may afterwards be wrought upon by letters,
and if he shows himself apt, some sparks may be imparted
to him of the vast idea which animates us.
Yes, there are doubtless many on whom these words,
prayer, religion, church, glory of God, conversion of sinners,
exercise a magic power. There are others for whom there
is a divine meaning in the words abolition of slavery,
reformation of abuses, love of humanity, instruction of the
people, universal charity. Well, let us sing in all these
keys (cantiamo su questi tuoni medesimi), and let us
not be sparing of the characteristic terms of their lan
guage. Let us say that Catholicism alone knows how
to inspire philanthropy and heroism, and proofs of this will
not fail us. But, under cover of all these forms, we must
never lose sight of our final project.
Assuredly it is for our highest interest that a pope
should be elected who is fundamentally Catholic ; but if the
greater number insist on a rational pope, be it so, on con
dition that they will aid us in placing the reins in his
hands.* And we will not be sparing of our eulogiums on
those men who take the lead in all parties whatsoever, in
* All power, spiritual and temporal.

OF THE JESUITS. 127
order that we may, in time, convert them into instruments
for our own use.
But this is not enough. To ensure success to our
efforts, we require instruments well proved, and of a nature
to resist all seduction. We must, on recruiting them, gain
them over to our doctrines by whatever is most flattering
to their desires. This is the surest way of making zealous
and prudent propagators. Let all courts, and particularly
those of heretic princes, be provided with some of our most
vigilant sentinels, who must be wholly ours, although
belonging, in appearance, to the Protestant sect ; in order
that nothing may escape us, whether to our profit or our
disadvantage, of all that passes in the cabinet and the con
sistory. We must hesitate at no cost when it imports us to
gain possession of a secret.
I, too, earnestly desire a solution of this most difficult
point — how to isolate the Catholics without their appearing
in any way to be isolated. I confess that this appears to
me almost impossible to be attained amongst the common
people, because they have not been, like us, from their early
years subjected to a fixed and inflexible discipline. Never
theless, we can fashion men to what form we will, when
powerful interests do violence, as it were, to their minds.
The bishops, as well as the clergy, must learn the necessity
of realizing this plan. But since a knowledge of the means
of execution is indispensable, it must be our task to select
them and inculcate them. Our business is to contrive : —
1st, That the Catholics be imbued with hatred for the
heretics, whoever they may be ; and that this hatred shall
constantly increase, and bind them closely to each other.
2nd, That it be, nevertheless, dissembled, so as not to

128 SECEET PLAN
transpire until the day when it shall be appointed to break
forth. 3rd, That this secret hate be combined with great
activity in endeavouring to detach the faithful from every
government inimical to us, and employ them, when they
shall form a detached body, to strike deadly blows at heresy.
Let us bring all our skill to bear upon the development
of this part of our plan. For myself, it is my intention to
devote myself especially to it.
When we shall once have become familiar with these
schemes, and when our store of expedients shall have been
sufficiently augmented, I doubt not that the system which
now seems crude and confused, will assume a very different
aspect. We shall have brought it to a degree of perfection,
such as our present vague and obscure notions can scarcely
foreshadow. It is fortunate for us that the catechism of each diocese
contains the precious element upon which our dogma is
founded — that God is to be obeyed rather than men.
These simple words contain all that we require for the
papacy. If we teach (and who shall prevent us from doing
so ?) that the pope is the vicar of God, it follows that the
pope speaks absolutely in the place of God. It is the pope,
then, who is to be obeyed rather than men.
This is the bond of which every confessor must make
use, in order to bind the faithful indissolubly to the chariot
of Rome. Even in the Catholic States doth not the pulpit
bear this inscripion of servitude : " Usque hue venies, neque
ultra ? " But happily this is not the case with the confes
sional. That place is not profaned by any such insulting
restrictions. There God reigns supreme, and, from the

OF THE JESUITS. 129
great dogma, the clergy (as long as it shows itself the
worthy and legitimate organ of the pope) derives the
privilege of being obeyed as God himself.
The catechism thus explained, so as to support the chief
developments of our doctrines, we must from time to time
hint that the rights of the Holy See may be momentarily
forgotten, God so permitting, in order to punish the blind
ness of the people ; but that these rights can never be
annulled, since it is foretold that they shall one day revive
in greater lustre than ever.
Now, one of the means which I judge proper to promote
this spirit of isolation and proud self-reliance which is so
important to us, is the transmission by declared participa
tion of the all-powerfulness of the papacy, not only to the
hierarchical body, but to the faithful, in their relations with
those obstinate heretics ; on condition, however, that they
never lose sight of its indivisible unity. What a flattering
attribute ! what a fertile sjjtource of religious exaltation !
Could anything be conceived more adapted to knit our
forces together and render them invincible ?
One thing we cannot be too earnest and indefatigable
in proclaiming, namely, that the Catholic religion alone
possesses the truth and the life ; that he who holds it is at
peace with his conscience ; that its orthodoxy does not
depend upon its chiefs or its priests ; that, were they
monsters of wickedness, their shame and punishment must
be upon their own heads ; that their crimes could only be
looked upon as those clouds which sometimes obscure the
brightness of the sun ; that the stability of the church, its
holiness, and its virtue do not depend upon the characters of
a few men, but on that prerogative which it alone possesses,

130 SECEET PLAN
of being the centre of unity ; that it presents the sign of
salvation, on which we must fix our eyes, as did the Israelites
upon the serpent in the desert, and not upon the failings of
the clergy ! If a divine liquor is poured from vessels of clay,
instead of vessels of gold, is it on that account the less
precious ?
Only let such arguments as these be seasoned with
vivid eloquence, and take my word for it that even those
who pass for enlightened people will not fail to be taken
(tolti) by them just like the rest.
Let us also persist in declaring that if Catholicism gains
the victory, and becomes free to act according to the spirit
of God, it will work out the happiness of mankind ; that,
consequently, to labour in order to break the chains in
which the world and the powers of the world have bound it,
to devote ourselves, soul and body, to its emancipation, is to
make so many sacrifices for the propagation of the holiest
doctrines, and for the noblest progress of humanity. Can
the triumph of the cause of God lead to any other end than
the final triumph of the most generous principles that have
ever warmed and stirred the heart of man ?
I, too, am of opinion that it is advisable to make
frequent use of the Bible. Does not a prism reflect all
existing colours ? and can our system fail to reflect one
single idea of all those which pass through men's imagina
tions? No ; to set aside the Bible would be to tarnish our
beautiful prism. I will suggest a few instances of the
mode in which it may be used.
Let us preach that from the union of the children of
God with the children of men, sprang the monsters and
giants who called down the deluge upon the earth. Let us

OF THE JESUITS. 131
remind our hearers incessantly of the captivity of Babylon,
the bondage in Egypt, the conquest of the land of Canaan,
of the ark, the splendours of Solomon's temple, the authority
of the high-priest, his superb vestments, the tithes, &c, &c.
Even these few examples, you see, furnish us with
texts innumerable, wherewith to foster the spirit of antipathy
and separation, and to hallow all the sensuous and gorgeous
parade of the church.
The Christian allegories may be turned to good account.
We may say that God designs for extermination, like the
Canaanites, all the nations that obstinately refuse to enter
into the unity of the church ; and that the vicar of Jesus
Christ is appointed to execute these judgments in due time.
Let the Catholics commit themselves with implicit trust
into the hands of the s'overeign pontiff, who is tlieir only
guide ; God will hasten the day, when, not to speak of the
happiness which awaits them in another life, he will make
them the sole arbiters of all things here below.
Let us, on all occasions, impress upon the people, that
if they will only be united and obedient, they will become
strong, and will receive the glorious mission of striking
down the power of the impious, and scourging with a rod of
iron the nations inimical to the church, until they be brought
at length to implore remission of their sins, and pardon for
their revolt, through the intercession of him whom they
hear so often blasphemously designated as Antichrist.
Towards the end of this discourse, Father Boothaan seemed to me
to be deficient in his usual lucidity. There was a want of his accus
tomed assurance. It might be inattention ; it might be that he was
in haste to finish. No sooner had he done so than the Irishman again
took up the discourse.

132 SECEET PLAN

XII.

There is no reason why we should take too desponding
a view of our position with respect to the Protestant States.
Trust me, the age will have to pay dear for its much-loved
liberty. Let us, however, claim our just share in it. That
many-headed monster named Civil and Political Equality,
Liberty of the Press, Liberty of Conscience,- — who can
doubt that its aim, its ultimate aim at least, is the destruc
tion of the church ? But never shall this proud divinity
fulfil the vows of its enthusiastic adorers ! Never shall it
be able to arrest our march ! Firstly, We will strive to
obtain the same rights as those enjoyed by the Protestants :
an easy conquest ! We have only to awaken the good
sense of the Catholics on this point, and to repeat to them
without intermission : " What tyranny ! Are you not as
slaves ? Attack their privileges ; overthrow them ! It is
the will of God !" Secondly, When this equilibrium shall
have been obtained — since not to go forward is to go
backward — let us push up the faithful higher and higher,
over the shoulders, over the heads, of these heretic dogs
(di questi cani d'eretici). Let us aim at preponderance,
and in such a manner as to be ever gaining ground in the
contest. Thirdly, By new efforts, by an irresistible energy,
the faithful shall at length come forth conquerors, and
place in their mother's crown that brightest and richest
gem, Theocracy.
But what strikes me as most urgent, at the present
time, is to create a language whose phrases, borrowed from
Scripture, or from the Bulls, shall convey to the uninitiated
nothing beyond their ordinary meaning, but which shall

OF THE JESUITS. 133
contain, for those who are initiated, the principal elements
of our doctrine. This device is so much the more specious
as, by its means, we might officially propagate our ideas,
under the very noses of governments (a la barba de'
governi), unknown to them, and without the least hindrance.
Those who are furnished with a key will be able to explain
this language, on all proper occasions, so as to make known
the will of Rome. It will generally suffice, for this purpose,
to lift up a part of the veil with which the church is forced
to cover herself, to escape much inconvenience in her present
state of slavery. In this way, each word may be made the
envelope of a vast political idea.
It will also be very profitable to our cause if we augment
the number of those who comprehend us, and if we can
succeed in enrolling in our ranks the compilers of the briefs
and decrees which issue from Rome.
At this moment the father abruptly recurred to his favourite
thesis. Strike, strike upon this rock : Independence of the
Catholics in every heretical government ! There is a
burning thirst for this independence ! and you will see
what splendid fountains will spring forth from it.
All Catholic serfs must take those of Ireland for their
models ; and the manner in which Ireland behaves towards
her cruel step-mother, England, will teach them what
conduct to pursue with the Protestant sects and states that
encompass and overbear them. But I positively declare,
that we have no chance of success, except by means of
associations, powerfully combined, which shall have their
chiefs, tlieir own peculiar language, an active and well
M

134 SECEET PLAN
organized correspondence, and all sorts of stirring writings.
For these purposes, it is not enough to have at our disposal
men of talent and men of action — we must have gold to
keep them fast to their work. Aye, give me gold — plenty
of gold ; and then, with such able heads and such resources
as the church commands, I will undertake not only to
master the whole world, but to reconstruct it entirely.
The triumphant tone of his voice was here suddenly checked, and he
resumed, as if correcting himself.
When we aim at results so magnificent, a little boldness
may be allowed us ; but we must not be madly bold.
Yes, it is just, it is necessary to keep in view that,
although there be men ready to give their wealth and their
lives for the deliverance of the church (this word, the
church, has such a magic influence over their minds!)
yet nothing would be more dangerous than to explain too
clearly what the church is, and what it would have. Their
feeble vision could not bear the full blaze of the mighty
reality which is hidden under so many folds of the religious
veil. The moment they discovered the political element
their arms would sink powerless, their eager zeal would
vanish, and these athletic combatants, so prompt to serve
us, would suddenly turn their weapons against us. It is
by no means rare to witness these sudden changes, when
persons full of zeal, but at the same time simple and of
limited views, have been in communication with one of our
brotherhood, who may have overstepped the bounds of
prudence. Let us all then carefully fathom the characters
of those with whom we have to do, and let every attempt
we make be based upon strict examination.

OF THE JESUITS. 135
The experience of some years has also taught me that
sounding words go much further with vulgar minds than
the best supported arguments. With well informed and
cultivated persons we may venture upon abstractions of a
seductive character, but it will save us trouble to remember
that the common people may be wrought upon by talk
which would appear contemptible to men of cultivated
minds. And now, learn what is the baptism of fire, which,
at each confession, I used to pour on the heads of my
penitents in Ireland.
"Poor people!" I said to them, "how have they
degraded you ! they esteem you less than brutes. Look at
these great landlords ! They revel in wealth, they devour
the land, they laugh at you, and in return for the wealth they
draw from you they load you with contempt. And yet, if
you knew how to count up your strength, you are stronger
than they. Measure yourselves with them, man to man,
and you will soon see what there is in them. It is nothing
but your own stupidity that makes them so powerful."
Such was pretty nearly the substance of all my discourses
to them. And when their confession was ended, I added,
" Go your ways and do not be downhearted ; you are
white doves in comparison with those black and filthy
crows. Take them out of their luxurious dwellings ; strip
them of their fine clothes, and you will find that their flesh
is not even as good as your own. They do you gross
wrong in two ways — they sully your faith and degrade
your persons. If you talk of religious rights, the rights on
which all others depend, yours come down to you direct
from Jesus Christ ; as eighteen centuries — and what

136 SECEET PLAN
centuries ! — are there to testify for you. But they ! — who
is their father ? One Luther, or Calvin, or a brutal
Henry VIII. They reckon, at most, three centuries ;
and these they have dishonoured by numberless crimes, and
by the blackest of vices ! The Catholics alone are worthy
to be free ; whilst the heretics, slaves every one of them, of
Satan, have no rights of any kind. Impious as they are !
did they not stigmatize as false the religion of their fathers ?
a religion which counted more than fifteen centuries. In
other words, they declare all their ancestors damned, and
believe that they alone are saved."
Permit me, reverend fathers, to give you a summary of
the maxims which I have laid down for my own guidance.
I say to the Catholics who live in mixed countries : —
" Nothing can be more monstrous than the injustice you
endure ; you are not heretics, you therefore suffer not only
your persons but your faith to be enslaved, in being subject
to the rule of heretic princes. Not only have they no right
to compel you to this subjection, but God wills that you
should employ all your efforts to shake off the yoke.
" To despise the vicar of Jesus Christ is to despise
your Saviour ; for if Jesus Christ said of the apostles,
' He who despises them, despises me,' how much greater is
the crime to despise him for whom Christ especially prayed,
and whom he himself commissioned to confirm the other
apostles in the faith.
" Does it not follow from these declarations, that whilst
the whole human race is involved in error, the pope alone
is divinely preserved from all error ?
" It is from pride alone that heresy persists in main
taining its place beyond the limits of the church. It is

OF THE JESUITS. 137
not proofs it wants to convince it of its errors ; there are
proofs more than sufficient to overwhelm it with shame and
disgrace. " Do you know why it is that Catholicism has not yet
succeeded in rendering the whole world happy? It is
because human passions wage perpetual war against it ; it
is because Catholic kings themselves love their crown better
than their faith. Be this as it may, it is the pope, and the
pope only, who, by the will of God, possesses the secret of
pacifying and uniting all men."
As regards the Bible, I am quite prepared to maintain
the happy idea of representing it only as a primitive and
unfinished sketch ; whence we may justly say that it would
be folly to expect the church to be now what it was
originally ; as well might we expect a man to retrograde to
his cradle. Let us, also, do our utmost to weaken and destroy in
the minds of the people certain dangerous impressions
which are apt to be made upon them by the virtues and the
integrity of the heretics. Let us say to them : —
" However honest they may appear to you, it is next to
impossible that their intentions should be pure ; and as to
their sins, they remain with them, and accumulate fearfully
on their heads, deprived as they are of those means of
salvation which the church alone provides, and by which
alone we can be rendered pure in the sight of God ; whereas
the Catholics, if unhappily they go on from fault to fault,
and even become black as coal, will most assuredly be saved.
Surrounded in their dying hour by every aid and encourage
ment, they will revive as a flame, provided they do not
persist to the end (which is scarcely possible) in rejecting
m 2

138 SECEET PLAN
confession, indulgences, and masses, for the redemption of
their souls ; these are means of grace of which the church,
our good mother, is liberal towards those who, by their
devotion and zeal, are worthy to be numbered amongst her
children." You will easily perceive that, if it is good to exalt, in
the estimation of Catholics, these precious prerogatives, it
is well also to draw from them all possible advantage for
our cause. Thus let us tell them that, if they desire to be
absolved by the church when on their death-beds, they
must love her, and do much for her, in order that she
may do the same for them. Tell them that the only way to
please her is to hate whom she hates, to be united with
her, to combat for her, and to raise her from the state of
humiliation in which the last three centuries have held her.
Initiated fathers ! Great are the hopes 1 build on the
energies of our Ireland. I regard her as our champion.
Let us only be careful to anoint her effectually with our
oil, so that in wrestling with her tyrant she may always
slip from his grasp. In how many folds may she not
entangle the British she-wolf, if she will but listen to our
counsels ! Rising slowly from the tomb, under the breath
of resurrection which is already upon her, she will strangle
in her strong gripe the mysterious vampire which has
sucked her blood for many a year. What may we not
make of an idiot, savage, and famishing people ? (d'un
popolo idiota, rozzo e affamato). It will prove our Sam
son ; and with its irresistible jaw-bone it will grind to dust
myriads of the Philistines.
During my residence in Ireland I began a pamphlet
which I am now finishing, in order to present it to our

OF THE JESUITS. 139
chosen vessel,* that it may serve him daily for a breviary.
All difficulties are there smoothed, all advantages calcu
lated — the spirit of the nation, its wants, its resources, its
strength, what excites it, and what encourages it, are there
laid down and fully reasoned upon.
The father seemed to have finished, for here he made a pause ; but
suddenly, with a voice totally changed, in a manner unusually
deliberate, and with a remarkable stress on each word, he made this
singular profession of faith : —
I believe that God looks down with derision upon
humanity after having abandoned it to all the absurdities
of its own caprice.
I believe that morality, principles of conduct, all our
theories and all our systems, are merely effects of times
and places, which alone make men what they are.
Let a nation, or a caste, feel the attraction that lies in
the prospect of a great and magnificent advantage, let it
not want the means to ensure itself the possession of this
advantage, and immediately, in the eyes of this nation or
caste, justice ceases to wear the same countenance, or to
prescribe the same code as before in any one phase of its
existence. Were justice really as unchangeable as books
assure us, she would urge her dictates in vain — she would
not be listened to ; all her remonstrances would be
despised ; each party, each body, each sect would stick to
the justice of its own making (alia giustizia di sua inven-
zione). Such ever has been, and such ever will be man.
The weak will never cease to be slaves of the strong. Let
us try, therefore, to belong to the latter class ; strong in
intelligence and in action, strong in wealth, strong in
* O'Connell, doubtless.

140 SECEET PLAN
partizans, strong, in a word, in resources of all sorts, for it
is only thus that we may hope to crush our enemies under
our feet.
The fathers seemed to acquiesce in the principles professed by the
Irishman, for no objection was heard.

XIII.

Another father then spoke, and though his Italian was correct and
his accent faultless, it is most probable that he was a German. It is
well known that in their colleges the Jesuits exercise their pupils in
making speeches in different languages, so that they often acquire
great perfection in speech and accent.
We require to have certain centres from whence our
devoted servants may diverge, both in England and in
Germany. Bavaria and Ireland naturally present them
selves as our two strongholds. Who can deprive us of
them? As to Germany, we must make up our minds to regard
it as possessing a character altogether peculiar, seeing that
the Reformation has imbued it with prejudices which seem
almost insurmountable. We can have no hope that a pure
Roman church will soon make its way there. Who knows
how long we must be content to suffer many portions of
our Catholic church in that country to remain almost
Protestant ? Be it so ; but at least let them remain attached
by some strong link or another to Rome. Let us not lose
what is good by striving too impatiently for what is better.
Let us rather study what are the actual signs of the times . Let
us go into such and such parts of the country, and endeavour

OF THE JESUITS. 141
to introduce there our religious practices, beginning by
such as are least obtrusive, if we see an opening for them ;
but at the same time, taking care not to expose them to too
great a number of adversaries.
There is one argument which I have found singularly
efficacious in obtaining the concurrence of men in power.
I have observed to them that Protestantism is a reaction
of matter against spirit ; for with what did Protestanism
begin ? With expunging voluntary torture from the
catalogue of the most heroic and exalted virtues ; whilst,
without foreseeing the dreadful consequences, it has
dignified the enjoyment of the most seductive pleasures of
this life, and thereby produced boundless misehief. " For
our part (I have thus continued), what we show forth is,
Christ naked and crucified ; we declare that hunger, thirst,
privations, scourging, contempt, abandonment, debasement
even, are so many merits for which Heaven is prodigal of
rewards. ' Happy those who suffer ! happy those who
are without consolation here below !' we continually repeat
to the poor and the wretched ; and if, at confession, they
complain of the bitterness of their lot, we picture to them
the Son of God himself without a place wherein to rest
his head, bearing his cross, crowned with thorns, bleeding
from the scourge, led to death like a lamb to the slaughter,
and still forbidding to hate and to curse.
" Such is the model we place before the common people
in our sermons and at the confessional, and thus do we
change them from raging lions into resigned and timid
sheep. Besides all this we dazzle them by the prodigious
quantity of Lives of Saints which we set before their
eyes — saints who have been canonized, who are now

142 SECEET PLAN
resplendent with celestial glory, who have fasted and
mortified themselves, voluntarily undergoing the most
severe sufferings, in order to gain a glorious seat in
heaven. " Weigh all this well, and you will be prepared to ac
knowledge that the Roman church alone is able to
guarantee you against the principles of revolt, that by
such teachings as these it can stifle and destroy them in
their very germs."
The speaker here made a slight pause; and then, as if an idea
suddenly occurred to him, he resumed in a calmer tone.
What if we organized a special committee to watch
over the tendencies of the history and literature of the age?
Encouragement might be adroitly given to any writer who
would place a few flowers on the bust of one or other of
our popes, or who might be disposed to defend certain
parts of our institutions, or our calumniated religious
practices. In time, we should see a great increase in the
number of these apologies ; and there is no doubt that if
a few writers of note were to open the way in this direction,
others would soon follow in their track, without requiring
either pay or prompting from us.
If we could but operate a change in public opinion
with respect to the history of the church, its dogmas and
ceremonies, so as to bring the people to regard these things
with less repugnance, how many obstacles would be thereby
removed ! We suffer rich benefices to be devoured by a
host of Sybarites who do us more harm than good— why
should we regret a few sums expended for a purpose so
eminently useful ?

OF THE JESUITS. 143
How many ruins might be repaired through the instru
mentality of the multitude of young poetic enthusiasts, or
of those literary men whose presumption or itch for novelty
keeps them perpetually scribbling.

XIV.

In the short pauses which took place between the speeches, I
hastily made a few marks by which I might distinguish the speakers.
In this place, however, in turning over a leaf, I blotted a line — so that
I have nothing to say as to the Jesuit who broached the extraordinary
doctrines which follow.
As long as the human heart shall remain what it is,
believe me, dear colleagues, the elements of the Catholic
system will never be exhausted, so abundantly fruitful are
they ! I will bring forward a convincing proof of what I
say, although I am aware that, on the subject of the fair
sex, you are Doctors in Israel.
One of my friends had the good fortune to see, at his
knees, a lady, still young and beautiful. Her husband, an
aged and very rich man, doted on her, and made it his sole
study to please her. She, on the other hand, was a perfect
specimen of that class of women who love religion — but
love pleasure no less. Roaming from confessor to con
fessor, she had always had the ill fortune to fall into the
hands of confounded Jansenists. All these had enjoined
her to detach herself from her dear painter ! Our brother,
perceiving that she was devout to enthusiasm, knew at once
how to deal with her case. The lady expressed herself
nearly in the following terms: — "I could not endure to

144 SECRET PLAN
remain for whole years without receiving the sacraments ;
my heart would continually tell me that I was a heathen
and a child of perdition. Was it my fault if they gave me
in marriage at an age when I was incapable of reflection ?
He whom I love is the most irreproachable of men ; and
for myself, this attachment is my only fault. What use to
me are the good things of life if I must be wretched as
long as I live ? For the love of the Holy Virgin, reverend
father ! do not be so hard as my former confessors have
been ! His pictures* are almost all on religious subjects ;
there is not a great ceremony in the church at which he is
not present, as well as myself — too happy, both of us, to
take a part in these ravishing "solemnities ! Alas ! you
know not, perhaps, reverend father, what it is to feel such
love as this!"
Our friend, after having given free course to this
torrent of amorous eloquence, gradually soothed his peni
tent by assuring her that religion is no tyrant over the
affections — that it demands no sacrifices but such as are
reasonable and possible. " If you are of opinion," said he,
" that your health is suffering from the effect of melancholy,
I can point out to you a way by which you may relieve your
conscience. All those priests who have thus distressed
you understand nothing whatever of matters of faith ; they
interpret Scripture by the letter, whereas the letter killeth,
as the apostle says ; but the interpretation, according to the
spirit, giveth life. Listen to a parable, which will smooth
all your difficulties : —
" Two fathers had each a son. These youths had a
passion for the chase. One of the fathers was severe, the
* The paintings of the dear artist.

OF THE JESUITS. 145
other mild and indulgent. The former positively forbade
his son the enjoyment of his favourite pursuit ; the latter,
calling his son to him, thus addressed him : — ' I see, my
son, that it would cost you much to renounce your favourite
sport ; meanwhile there is only one condition on which I
can allow you to indulge it ; namely, that I may have the
satisfaction of seeing that your affection and zeal for me
increase in proportion to my indulgence.' What followed ?
The young man to whom the chase had been forbidden
followed it in secret, and at the same time became more
and more estranged from his father, until all intercourse
was broken off between them ; whilst the other redoubled
his attentions to his father, and showed him every mark of
duty and affection."
You will, no doubt, admire both the parable and the
tactics of our friend. He thus concluded his address to his
fair penitent : — " It is for you, madam," said he, " to take
the latter of these two youths for your model. Be always
amongst the first at your devotions ; let the house of the
Lord witness your presence on all holy occasions ; and since
you are rich, let it be your pleasure to adorn it richly, like
your own dwelling. The Magdalen, to whom the Lord
forgave much because she had loved much, proved her love
by her actions ; she broke the most precious of her vases to
bedew him with perfumes. In like manner, do you take as
much interest in the holy spot where Jesus Christ every day
dwells bodily, as you do in adorning your own person."
The delight with which the lady heard these words was
boundless. " Oh, yes, indeed, indeed," cried she, " all
that you say is clearer than the light of day. I vow that I
will never again have any other confessor than you."
N

146 SECRET PLAN
It is almost incredible what this lady afterwards lavished
on the church in ornaments, censers, crowns, and robes
for the Virgin. She placed herself at the head of different
confraternities ; and several other ladies, in circumstances
similar to hers, were easily induced to follow her example.
Let this serve as a lesson to us. Too much rigour
dries up the tree ; but indulgence is like the rain which
nourishes it and makes it bring forth fruit a hundredfold
(e glifa produrre de' frutti al centuplo).
Here followed a noisy interruption of some minutes, and it was
evident that the remarks which were made were rather highly-seasoned.
I was astonished, and I am still astonished, that men who affect so
much gravity in public can allow themselves thus to make a jest of
conscience. The president, however, soon put a stop to these ebul
litions of gaiety, remarking that he was led by what he had just heard
to communicate a perfectly novel idea. This idea, which he was about
to submit to them, had often dwelt on his mind when contemplating
the subject of celibacy, and the calamities which its renouncement
would bring upon the church.
I have to remark, that Father Fortis, if it were indeed he who
presided at this conference, and Father Boothaan, his actual successor
in the generalship of the Company, seemed to take a livelier interest than
the rest in the fate of the Catholic theocracy ; and-they were perpet
ually devising new schemes to secure its safety.

XV.
One measure, at which I have indeed already hinted,
and which must be brought under discussion, is in itself
calculated to produce admirable results : it is one which
would have for its object to relieve priests from the too
heavy burden of real celibacy (d'un vero celibato). You

OF THE JESUITS. 147
well know that if ever a breach is opened on this side, if ever
a considerable portion of the clergy (urged on by the secular
power which might be interested in such a change) should
demand the right to marry, the whole hierarchical edifice
would crumble away stone by stone, until nothing remained
of the church. If once this question came to be generally
entertained, the dispute would grow hot, and everybody
would be asking, "When did ecclesiastical celibacy begin?"
Its history would be investigated ; and the marble covering
which has been lying for ages over its mysteries, would be
wholly removed. Scruples, remorse, and reaction, would
spring up and spread like an epidemic. Rome would
resist most certainly, for the very foundations of Catholicism
would be in danger ; but a growing irritation would every
where find some object to fasten upon — inquiry would
proceed to other matters besides celibacy — and in all
probability a formidable league would be formed which
would address this question to the pope : " Where are your
titles to command the church and the clergy ?" Thus there
would be revolt upon revolt, and the' Holy See, beset on all
sides, would have to sustain the sorest fight it had ever
waged. It is therefore highly expedient that we should connect
with the celibacy of the clergy as many interests as possible,
like so many spokes of a wheel round its axis. For I
repeat to you, brethren, if this institution should come to
be overthrown, where is the dogma that will long survive
it ? As, in a house of cards, the fall of one single card is
followed by that of the whole construction, so, should
celibacy fall to the ground, down will fall confession, mass,
and purgatory ; all pomp will vanish from our worship — all

148 SECRET PLAN
glory will depart from our priesthood; and the mines
from which we have drawn such rich supplies, will be
henceforth closed to us. Maintain celibacy, and our course
will be one uninterrupted triumph ; suffer it to fall, and
what a destiny will be ours ! We shall be, as it were, trans
fixed with wounds, shamefully mutilated, our every project
torn to pieces in our hands ! Quod absit ! we must, how
ever, expect all this, if, by some powerful measure, we
do not prevent so great a calamity.*
Since we are occupied in forging so many revelations
and miracles, would it not be possible (great things proceed
sometimes from small beginnings) to compose a little work
which should breathe the purest perfume of sanctity, and
which should at first be cautiously and secretly circulated ?
It might be conceived in some such terms as these : —
" The Church is entering upon dangerous times. Upon
its fall, or its consolidation, hinges the end or the continuance
of the world. An era of glory yet unheard of will open for
the clergy, if it will lend an ear to what God reveals to it by
Saint ¦  " (this revelation must be made in the name of
some saint of recent date). " The strength which the
clergy will derive from it is immense. It will teach them
supernatural secrets, to throw down heresy, and to build
up the degraded priesthood on the ruins of the profane,
bestowing on it, at last, its imprescriptible title of royal.
It is Jesus Christ himself who establishes this new compact
* Others have thus expressed the same fears. " The duration of
the Catholic confession," says Archbishop de Pradt, " depends upon
the celibacy of its priests ; let the one fall, and the other perishes with
it. It would be an act of suicide in the Church of Bome to give up
this stronghold." — Du Jesuitisme ancien et maderne.

OF THE JESUITS. 149
with the shepherds of his flock, in order to prepare them,
as valiant and invincible soldiers, for the struggle which
is near. In former times, the Almighty sanctified
simultaneous and visible polygamy. This was in order to
people the earth ; it was meet that all other considerations
should yield to this. In later times, God condescended to
permit this state of things to continue, even when the earth
was covered with multitudes of people. Now, that the time
seems to have arrived to render the church the universal
sovereign, and to give it a glorious triumph over all its
enemies — now, the Almighty, who does what he wills, in
heaven and on earth, without control or question, from any
power human or divine, abolishes for the clergy, for all
monks, and all nuns, of whatsoever denomination, real and
true celibacy, and for this reason, that it cannot but be
hurtful to those who, called to destroy the armies of Satan,
require for the success of this work to be as closely and as
intimately united as if they were but one soul and one
body. Wherefore God establishes, henceforward, instead
of the ancient continence, a successive and invisible poly
gamy (una poligamia successiva e invisibile), and he requires
only an interior and spiritual celibacy. But so precious a
concession is only made in favour of those who resolutely
undertake the task of labouring for the re-estabhshment of
the church, and who spare no sacrifice in order that she
may be adorned and glorified as becomes the spouse of
God, and that she may finally take up her stand above all
principalities, dignities, and powers, so that, all things
may be put under her feet : seeing that there is nothing,
belonging to Jesus Christ, which is not equally due to the
church.
n 2

150 SECEET PLAN
" It hence follows that the right to have a sister* after
the manner of Saint Paul (for the title of wife belongs only
to those who are externally and indissolubly married) — it
follows, I say, that this right can only be granted to those
labourers whose zeal in the holy cause is constant and
heroic. It would be, in fact, a monstrous injustice, if these
men might not enjoy so dear a privilege with an untroubled
conscience. But it is, at the same time, highly important
that all those against whom the church has any cause of
complaint, should be impressed with the conviction that
they could not usurp this privilege without committing
deadly sin.
" The draught of water, which refreshes and strengthens,
given to those who are actively engaged in the Lord's
harvest, and are fainting under the excessive heat of the
sun, was a prophecy of the mysterious contract which God
has reserved for our times."
I have been for some months absorbed in this new and
important theme ; I am therefore prepared to enter upon
its development with all the seriousness it merits.
To open such a view as this to the church hierarchy,
would fortify, as by a triple wall of brass, a point of
Catholicism so really weak, and so frequently attacked. I
have not the least doubt that our idea will gain ground if
* The text is here perverted; here it is verbatim: "Have we not
power to take about with us a sister-wife, as do the other apostles, the
brethren of our Lord, and Cephas?" (1 Cor. ix., 5.) Brother and
sister were synonymous with Christian ; as to the word wife, Pope
Leo IX. himself acknowledges that it here signifies a married woman.
The word yvvauca has the same signification in Greek as femme in
French. (Leo IX. Dist. 31, can. omnino.)

OF THE JESUITS. 151
we can manage to form a sect, at first very secret and select,
which should adroitly insinuate this good news into convents
and nunneries, and into the heads of certain churchmen.
Some resistance there will be of course, but finally all will
agree upon the propriety of what is at once so agreeable
and so advantageous in many ways. You well know, besides,
that we have nothing to invent in this matter, since numer
ous connections of the nature we would advocate are already
in existence. But as they exist at present, they bring no
profit to the church ; on the contrary, they are hurtful,
inasmuch as they bring many a conscience into trouble ;
whereas the authorization that I would give them, would
take away all remorse, and would provoke an increase of
zeal and industry. By virtue of this plan, men and women
would co-operate to one end, each at his or her post,
according to the established rules ; whilst, thanks to this
metamorphosis, the only scruple which could disturb them
would be the fear of not rendering themselves worthy of
such a privilege by a sufficiently entire devotion to the church.
If you will now consider the certain results of this
secret dogma, you will find them of immense importance.
But the most consummate prudence will be required in
guiding and propagating the plan in question. The hospi
tals a la Saint-Roch* must be multiplied, and monks and
nuns of all kinds must learn to combine three indispensable
qualities, — first, outward austerity ; second, moderation
in their pleasures, and the most intimate mutual agree
ment ; third, an indefatigable zeal for the conquest of
souls — a zeal which never says, " It is enough."
* It was long before I learnt the meaning of this term. I will
explain it in a later part of this work.

152 SECEET PLAN
You know the proverb, Varietas delectat. This presents
a further guarantee of the immense fruitfulness and of the
solidity of such a theory ; especially if, having vanquished
all opposition, it should one day obtain an altar in the
hierarchical sanctuary. Let it once obtain one, and no
power on earth can ever remove it from that seat.*

XVI.
The Jesuit, whose revelations on the most delicate of subjects the
reader is about to peruse, and who, further on, gives others not less
curious, touching the dignitaries of Bome, had, in all probability,
long resided in that city, with which he appears to be intimately
acquainted. All that I have just heard is perfectly true. And, in
order to convince yourselves that, even in this respect, we
have abundant materials ; that, in point of fact, we have
nothing to do but to legalize, or, more properly speaking,
to consecrate what already exists pretty nearly everywhere,
I beg of you to fix your attention on what I have to suggest
to you. * Cardinal Bellarmin, a Jesuit, was the first to promulgate the
germ of this audacious idea respecting celibacy. He says : " For
those who have made a vow of continence, it is a greater crime to
marry than to give themselves up to incontinence." (Bellarmin, De
Monachis, lib. ii., cap. 30.) Innocent III. (Extra, de Bigamia,
cap. 34) says the same thing. Saint Paul says, on the contrary,
" Honorabile connubium in omnibus ; Marriage is honourable in all."
(Heb. xiii. 4.) "Melius est nubere quam uri : It is better to marry
than to burn." (1 Cor. vii.) The apostle excepts no one, and admits
of no prescription.

OF THE JESUITS. 153
No doubt you are all more or less acquainted with the
things of which I am about to speak, but perhaps some of
you are ignorant of certain particulars.
I refer to the Sisters of Charity; charming women, who
owe it to us not to forget that " well-ordered charity begins
at home." I have visited and been intimate with many of
them in different countries. They are very accessible and
very confiding ; almost all whom I have known have
spoken to me of their secret sorrows. I have listened to
their complaints against priests and_ monks, — as if they
expected our hearts to be as tender and as ardent as their
own ! It is my opinion that these are the sort of nuns
adapted to our own times. I wish, indeed, it were possible
to lighten the yoke of all the rest (allegerire il giogo dell'
altre), who are condemned unnecessarily and uselessly to
see nothing all their lives but one little patch of sky and
one little patch of earth ; and what is still worse, to remain
always shut up together, seeing the same eternal faces,
without any possibility of removing to another convent,
even when such a change appears reasonable. I would
have the cloister abolished altogether, so that there might
be less difficulty, less ceremony in approaching them.
What a spring of cheerfulness for the poor hearts of these
maidens ! What an opportunity for them to vary, if not
their pleasures, at least their griefs !* The Sisters of
Charity have this advantage.
* There was more prudence in the fifth century. Pope Leo the
Great made a decree, cited in the Boman Breviary, a decree with
which few persons are acquainted, and which will surprise many : —
" He decreed," says the Breviary, " that no nun should take the veil
until she had given proof of her chastity during forty years. Sanxit
ne monaca benedictum capitis velum reciperet nisi quadraginta annorum
virginitatem probasset." — (11 Api. infest. S. Leon prim, papm.)

154 SECEET PLAN
You know that good professors, skilful in this kind of
chase, capture these poor little creatures when they are in
the depths of terror and anguish. It is when they find
themselves betrayed and forsaken, when the ground seems
to fail from beneath their feet, and shame and remorse
overwhelm them, that they eagerly accept the proposal to
become Sisters of Charity. Young, for the most part, and
having long deluded themselves with dreams of blissful
love, they fall. at last into despair. But their eyes are
soon opened to the nature of the new state upon which they
have entered ; beset by priests of every age they soon
forget their fine resolutions. They are as yet but at the
very entrance of their spiritual career, and already their
fortitude is shaken by the temptations of the flesh. As
they find a sort of pleasure in dwelling upon the misfortunes
which have decided them to become nuns, they have
scarcely finished pouring their romantic tale into the curious
ears of priests or monks ere they have already laid the
groundwork of another. This time, however, they feel
certain, the character of their new friends considered, that
the web they are weaving will be of golden tissue.* If the
clergy were discreet they would not make a capital object
of a pleasure which they ought to take lightly as a passing
indulgence. Always joining the utile with the dulce they
should, however, profit by these critical moments to incite
the woman to acts from which the church may indirectly
derive advantage ; for women can far outdo us when love
and religion have warmed their imaginations. It is our
business to know how to feed this double flame. Our best
* A passage, occupying about a line, has escaped me here, and I
am unable to supply it.

OF THE JESUITS. 155
plan would be to impress upon our sisters that, where
there is a want of constancy on our part, it is a chastisement
for their want of zeal. Mountains alone are unchangeable.
We should, moreover, never form anew connection without
an express condition, on the part of the newly elected one,
that she shall perform prodigies. But it happens, alas ! too
often, that men to whose lot they fall show no consideration
for these frail vessels, and unexpected consequences expose
them to inconveniences of the same nature as those which
induced them to take refuge under the religious garb.
But wise precautions may keep all scandal at bay ; a sum
of money, a temporary abandonment of the dress of their
order, and a prompt obedience in removing to some other
place, will always prevent affairs of this sort from transpiring.
In their new residence they will be sure to find some new
sister who will aid and console them ; for where is there one
who has not been, or who may not be exposed to the same
difficulties ?
Here an interruption took place. I heard the voice of the president,
and then a confusion of voices. There seemed to be a sort of calling
to the question. The orator continued in these terms : —
The essential point to which I would draw your
attention is this. We must labour to multiply in all places
initiated confessors, who may be able not only to augment
the number of these sisters by persuasion and argument,
but who may adroitly take advantage of their critical
position, in cases such as those which I had first to mention
to you. In fact, when they return to their religious duties,
after the pains of maternity, disgusted, as they say, with
the ingratitude of men, it is then we require aged and

156 SECEET PLAN
experienced priests, who, in proving to them the vanity of
all human things, may totally change their ideas, and urge
them, by the aid of severe penitence and heroic labours, to
acquire unheard-of merits. At this period, also, the perusal
of the life of some female saint, who has been a model of
holy enthusiasm, who has been eager to incur suffering,
and loss, and ruin, in order to serve her fellow-creatures,
will have a wonderful effect.
There are in our strangely complicated existence moments
which pass fruitlessly away, for want of being seized oppor
tunely. I remember with what cheerfulness and ardour I
devoted myself, whilst yet a novice, to the most disgusting
functions of the hospitals. I confess that I should now be
utterly incapable of these acts of self-denial ; but it is not
less true that, such as I then was, I rendered myself useful
to the Company. I contributed my part to thicken the
layer of good which can never be too deep to cover * —
that which a blinded world — incapable of appreciating the
grandeur of our work — always stigmatize as — bad !
I have beheld these our sisters in their field of action,
devoting themselves with assiduous care to the relief of the
most infamous galley slaves, and this in places and scenes
so repugnant as to astonish the proudest heretics and the
coldest infidels. And I, who knew so deeply and so well
the subtle springs which move these delicate creatures, I
have felt something stirring in the bottom of my heart at
the sight of their constancy and their courage.
* To cover — much evil. This is the word which naturally suggests
itself. In order to avoid it, and yet feeling himself, bound to finish
the sentence, the Jesuit lengthened out word after word, andhis circum
locution was so awkwardly managed that his colleagues found it
impossible to maintain their gravity.

OF THE JESUITS. 157
The secret of all these things is this :
In order to induce them to prolong such sacrifices, to
persuade others to imitate them, and to determine them if
they waver, we must take the opportunity, when no strange
ears are within hearing, and particularly at confession, to
dwell upon such ideas as these : — " It is true that you
have a hard struggle to overcome all that is most repugnant
to your nature ; but the angels, who behold you, envy you
your future crowns in heaven. Persevere, for if even
weakness, or even crime, has stained your consciences, from
the day that you entered here, your charity, like fire, has
wholly purified you. Henceforward you are white as
snow ; Jesus Christ looks upon you as his well-beloved
spouses ; he calls you his doves, his perfected ones ; and
the oil which you daily burn in your lamps is so abundant
that it can never fail you. If we judge of you by your
exterior, what so feeble as your frames ! if we look within,
what is there to be compared with the strength of your
spirit ! If it were not for your sakes, avenging thunderbolts
would fall upon the earth ! But God takes pleasure in you ;
you are the dearest objects of his love ; he looks upon you
and he becomes disarmed. Oh ! beware how you cut short
a time so precious ; remain at your post of honour, where
the heretics look upon you with stupefaction, avowing that
they have never beheld such devotedness in their own
impious sect. Pursue, then, your heroic career ; for when
you shall have accomplished your generous martyrdom, you
will find yourselves in possession of such a treasure of merits,
that you will be for ever lifted above the frailties and the
faults which are, in this life, but too inevitable."
It is easy to imagine what power this species of eloquence
o

158 SECRET PLAN
gives us over the better part of that sex which is not less
complex in character, nor less enigmatical than ourselves,
but generally more credulous. When they have once tasted
the nectar of these flattering eulogiums, some of the most
ardent and impressionable amongst these women may be
brought to plunge into the intoxication of mysticism, and
by a strange miracle to transform the vague mobility of
their minds into something fixed and constant ; we may
convert them into beings destined to remain altogether
inexplicable to those who are ignorant of our secrets ; beings
who are, in fact, medals of honour which Catholicism can
place, with pride and exultation, before the eyes of its
silenced and confused enemies.
If we can extract fire from two bits of wood, rubbed
together, what may we not obtain from these women,
assembled together, and placed entirely and exclusively in
our hands ? Why should we not furnish ourselves with
such a chosen band, worthy to be sent on missions of
importance, and to become, by the very charm and illusion
of their presence, a centre of attraction and a means of
conquest ?
This subject would admit of amplification ; but, not to
lose time in digression, I will return to considerations more
immediately involved in the subject. Every one will admit
that the example we owe to the public, our common
interest, our complicity, and the fear of laical observation,
must necessarily force us to cover these connections with
the most impenetrable mystery. But whence comes it
that there have always been relations of this sort ever since
priests, monks, and nuns have existed ? It is that, in the
clergy, if there are some men who make a point of austerity,

OF THE JESUITS. 159
even these are desirous of providing themselves in these
female nursery-grounds with- some adjutorium simile sibi,
being well satisfied, all the while, to live apart from the
world. Now, it is a fact that the arms which they
employ to vanquish these interesting creatures are precisely
the same as those which we would ourselves consecrate to
the purpose. Their only means in fact of making them
yield is to say to them : " Provided that your fall is com
pensated by charity, by devotion and prayers, by an active
observance of all religious rites, — in a word, provided that
the good counterbalances the evil, especially when this evil,
which does harm to no one, is caused by an unavoidable
necessity ; then, thanks to the quantity of indulgences
amassed, and to the intermediation of saints, whose favour
may be propitiated ; thanks, also, to many other merits,
daily augmented by scrupulous care and pious practices,
the part of sin becomes deadened, or as it were annulled,
whilst the part of good works remains entire and abundant."
It is then clear as the day that our system, at least in
its rudimentary form, has long been at work in the habits
and in the hearts even of the clergy, of monks and of nuns ;
all we have to do is to make it complete by gradually con
secrating it ; just as when an artist has completed a statue,
it is brought forth from his profane studio, and solemnly
inaugurated. XVII.
He whom I last designated as a Frenchman, now spoke again.
The observations of our friend are incontestibly true ;
but we must not flatter ourselves that we shall easily bring

160 SECEET PLAN
our short-sighted clergy to accept ideas so bold. I know
thousands who would be delighted to put our theory
into practice as far as they themselves are concerned, but
who would reject the principle as impious. I admit that
if we could induce them to enter intrepidly into this
course (as to the women, they are easily managed — they
never have any other will than that of their spiritual
directors), we cannot calculate the immense benefit which
would follow for the church. Meanwhile, let me warn you
that we should be utterly lost if so grave a secret should
ever, by any chance, publicly transpire. Let us, then, act
invariably in this matter with the most consummate pru
dence. If we can but continue to hold together our
religious bodies by those strong bonds, the pleasing cogency
of which experience has fully demonstrated, what have we
to fear for celibacy ? It cannot perish ; and as long as it
keeps its ground, what Catholic institution or dogma can
incur any danger ?
That naturally leads me to speak, according to the
indication of the programme. (Velenco), of the radical reform
of the episcopacy, the cardinalship, and the papacy, as the
last term of our efforts ; a reform without which it will be
impossible to maintain many others which ought to extend
to the heart of all communities and all convents.
Since there ought to be but one model for the whole
church, should' not the superior clergy feel themselves
peculiarly bound to give us their aid in engraving it on
every heart? But is it probable that we shall inspire
this body with any magnanimous resolutions ? Can it
comprehend us ? Verily, verily, the columns of the
Catholic temple are neither precious nor solid. Touch

OF THE JESUITS. 161
them, and you will perceive their want of massiveness.
They are hollow, and at the first shock — it would need no
very strong one — the whole edifice would give way. What
shall we then do to prop them up until we shall have
gradually substituted for them a stronger range of sup
porters ? In other words, how shall we organize a totally
new plan for the election of such as are fit to sustain us ?
How shall we introduce into the whole church a rule and
a set of maxims better conceived, more rational ; so that
dignities, riches, and honours, all, in a word, that is worthy
of man's ambition, shall become so many recompenses for
eminent services rendered to our cause all over the world ?
If we could realize a species of alliance between talent,
ambition, and the most exciting interests on the one hand,
and the interests of our system on the other, then, indeed,
our progress would become triumphant ! We must conse
quently choose for our purpose, not men of a narrow and
pedantic morality, which is always at war with our great
projects, but the most advanced of our own initiated
members, who shall have furnished, by their admission
into our mysterious laboratory, some new links to the
chain of our creative conceptions.
It is, therefore, expedient that a great number of the
superior clergy, and some of the cardinals, should begin to
be acquainted with our ideas, in order that they may feed
upon them. This would be a means of preparing materials
for the desired change. It is certain that if we could
henceforward reckon upon men worthy of the name, whose
number should be daily augmenting, whether by reciprocal
contact, or by the promotion of such as are able to compre
hend them (for those who resemble each other naturally
o 2

162 SECEET PLAN
collect together), it would no longer be difficult, with the
aid of these hierarchical heads, and the co-operation of
many others sufficiently initiated, to succeed in the impor
tant enterprize which occupies us. By thus copiously
transfusing our young and ardent blood into the veins of
the sacred body, we should by degrees clear it of the
corrupt and sterile lees which are bringing on its death.

XVIII.
The impetuous Jesuit who next spoke, and whom we supposed to
be Roman, leaves us now no room to doubt that he is so.
What I have heard is excellent, and I vow to you that
I would willingly lose my  * to see at last annihilated,
in my own city, that race of commonplace and stupid
beings who have been raised so high by the assiduous
gratitude of certain matrons. Provided these elect of
Cupid and Mammon find themselves in a prosperous con
dition, and after having lived by intrigue, can enjoy them
selves like demigods, in an atmosphere of pomp and
pleasure, what care they if a deluge comes after them ?
Who durst disturb their voluptuous dreams with forebodings
of approaching and overwhelming catastrophes? Are
these the men by whose aid we can hope to purify the
hierarchy in renovating fire ? I confess to you that when
I examine the monachism of our days, in its cells, and
* If I heard aright, the word which I here abstain from translating
completes a Boman oath, which has more than once escaped from
holy lips, in my presence, and in my own country.

OF THE JESUITS. 163
when I find it so utterly incapable of anything great,
the rage that I feel is not so much against it, as against
that college of cardinals, from which nothing issues but
what is totally unworthy both of the purple it wears,
and of the lofty station it occupies. In fact, I see
amongst them all, high and low, nothing but a collection
of blockheads, who sit there and grow fat (che imbecilli,
che s'impiguano). It is true that their tongues now and
then curse the age which sometimes disturbs their volup
tuous slumbers ; but who amongst them ever takes the
trouble to think for a moment, or to consult those who do
think, on the means of extinguishing the conflagration that
is devouring all around ?
We alone, my brethren, we alone bear the burden of
the summer heat ; we alone, diving deep into the annals of
the world, study the secret springs which have decided the
fate of empires ; and our hope and courage gain strength
from this study.
Permit me now to offer you a wholesome advice. Let
our individuality become effaced. Let us be, as much as
possible, not men but ideas. It is these which sooner or
later get possession of crowns. Let these b^ assiduously
instilled into the cloisters, and into the minds of some of
the cardinals and bishops ; for, notwithstanding all I have
said, there are a few honourable exceptions. When we
shall once have gained even a few of those who are the
most hostile to our views, there will ere long be beheld
conferences such as this in the very palaces of the highest
dignitaries, and then it is that partisans will flock to us,
and our work will truly prosper. The most sluggish
and unwilling will then be forced to follow us.

1 64 SECEET PLAN
I am sure we shall all admit the necessity of involving
the people in the thickest and most inextricable network of
devotional practices, so that they may become docile in pro
portion to their stupidity. But all this, though not without its
value, is not yet enough ; what is of all things indispensable
is, an active, indefatigable, perpetual concurrence, like this
which now animates us collectively ; men of large and bold
intellects, intent on Continually advancing the progress of
our work. Unless the church have the aid of a vast brain
to elaborate for it a truly Catholic scheme, can it expect
ever to see mankind universally subject to one sole chief ?
This is the way in which the name of Rome, at present
so light, will recover all its preponderance.
As for persons of high birth, I would show them no
favour, except in cases where their position or influence might
contribute to the more rapid advancement of our conquests.
From the moment I beheld heretical governments stretch
forth a hand to aid in the re-establishment of the Holy
See, I believed the time was coming when they would at
last swallow the bait, and begin to Catholicize their states ;
but it is only too evident that I was deceived. Nevertheless,
a few years ago some Roman princes having accompanied
a prince of Germany on a visit to our most celebrated
monuments, upon his asking for some explanations on a
historical subject, there was something said about certain
ferocious beasts being tamed by their masters to such a
degree that the said masters did not fear to place their
heads within the animals' mouths. I observed to these
personages that a narcotic powder, frequently employed,
would probably produce these marvellous effects. As this
remark was accompanied with a somewhat subtle smile,

OF THE JESUITS. 165
the heretic prince understood me, and replied, "Reverend
father, have you not some narcotic powder for all those
wild beasts?" — pointing to the passing crowds — "for they
seem to me very far from being tame." Emboldened by
this observation I answered, " From the moment your
populations were delivered from the Catholic soporifics, and
you yourselves broke so many salutary checks upon them,
from that moment they have been as turbulent as madmen.
It is just as if the narcotics given to those animals were to
be discontinued for a while ; their astonishing tameness,
which attracts such crowds of curious observers, would then
be at an end, and they would resume all their habitual
ferocity." This led us on to further discussion, and I have
reason to believe that the prince went away convinced of
the efficacy of our remedies to cure this very inconvenient
popular malady.
But in order that hints of this kind may have more
considerable results, we require a greater number of
instruments. I return, then, to the necessity of having
some of ours initiated in the cloisters, and of getting rid
of some of these cardinals without thought, these popes
without capacity, and of a host of bishops without nerve or
energy, and who are totally ignorant of the spirit of the
age. For our plan will be nothing but a dream until
we can actually bring about these changes. Before the
hierarchy can exercise any imposing influence, it must have
in its upper ranks men of power to conceive, and of energy
to bring their conceptions into action ; men who are capable
of reducing other men under the power of a vast and
unfathomable political wisdom. Who would then dare to
look our system in the face ?

166 SECEET PLAN
I ask you — is there anything approaching to this in the
men whose office it is to guide us ? Fools that they are !
They would have us look upon them as giants ! Man's whole
strength is in his intellect ; but these pillars of the church
have nothing strong about them but their animal tempera
ment. What would be the fate of these rotten voluptuaries,
these ignoramuses, buried in purple and in ennui (di questi
voluttuosi putridi, di questi ignari sepolti nella porpora e nella
noia), but for our unconquerable energy and intrepidity ?
We have, then, a herculean task to accomplish : to
renovate a triple sphere, as well as the chief who governs it ;
and when a considerable mass shall have undergone a
complete transformation, it is then that a pope who shall
bear within him our idea, already ripened and developed,
may employ the means and resources which shall have
been accumulated by our strenuous exertions during a
century, perhaps, or more. Again he may launch forth his
anathemas, his interdictions, and his omnipotent decrees, to
shake thrones, and to humble for ever the pride and
insolence of monarchs.
After these last words there was a sort of pause ; and during this
interval several remarked upon what they had heard as presenting
insurmountable difficulties. I even remarked a general tone of doubt
and discouragement. Some, however, asserted that in time all this
might be effected. In order to animate them after this short colloquy,
the president set about explaining what should be the final purpose of
the whole work.

OF THE JESUITS. 167

XIX.

I would not have any one despair of the great future
success of our enterprise because our beginnings are small.
What could be more inconsiderable in appearance than was
our Company at its commencement ? Yet but a few years
had, elapsed ere it proved to be full of vigour, and was
already become rich and powerful. And, in later times,
what throne but owned the mysterious ascendency of our

This short reflection was made in a familiar tone ; it 'was a brief
reply to those who had expressed some doubt as to the final triumph
which was promised. Then, as though prompted by the picture just
given of the vices of the Boman hierarchy, or, perhaps, previously
prepared for this subject, he resumed after a short pause, in a voice
alternately impassioned, proud, or exalted, but always marked by self-
possession. In his manner of dealing with this subject he displayed
surprising tact, profundity, and boldness.
From the review which has been taken of the matter,
you must perceive that the church, notwithstanding the
immense aggregate and the value of its materials, is far
from being in the condition of an edifice solidly raised upon
its foundations and completely finished. It is still altogether
in a rough and disorderly state. If, then, it has narrowly
escaped an overthrow on the first shock, let us look to the
causes of its weakness. It wanted a skilful and rigorous
architect, who would have taken care to examine and prove
each several stone ; who would have rejected the bad ones
outright ; who would have sought out the hardest granite

168 SECEET PLAN
to strengthen the most exposed parts ; and would have seen
that the whole was united together by the strongest and
most tenacious cement. The greatest amongst the popes
themselves have never possessed a clear and living light,
they have only groped in the dark ; and this explains to us
wherefore a work, which is in itself gigantic, presents so
little homogeneousness and harmony.
If, when the barbarian hordes overran our country
and took possession of it ; when the Roman empire fell to
pieces, and Christianity was driven to change its abstract
form for one better adapted to fascinate the imaginations
and the senses of the new comers ; if, at the moment when
the papacy arose out of the universal degradation, it had
fallen into the hands of men of large and enterprising views,
it would have been able in times so propitious to efface,
secretly and by degrees, all records of the ancient state of
things, and to blot out every trace of the transformation of
the episcopal aristocracy into a papal monarchy. It might
have effected this by retrenchments from and additions to
the writings of councils and of fathers, employing on this
task minds capable of accomplishing it ; and then, what
a glorious position for us ! The great strife between
Catholicism and Protestantism would never have arisen, or
at least it would wholly have confined itself to the authen
ticity of the primitive writings.
This work of retrenchment and addition ought to have
been confided to a Roman school, well trained to the pur
pose, so as to imitate with dexterity the style peculiar to
each writer.

OF THE JESUITS. 169
Here a few taps at the outer door, which I distinctly heard,
stopped my pen. The thought that some one was perhaps seeking me
froze me with terror, and drove every other thought out of my head.
I did not recover from my alarm until I was aware that the person who
had gone to the door to reply had quietly returned to his seat. There
was probably too a momentary suspension of the proceedings ; for not
withstanding the mist in which I was wrapped for a while, it does not
strike me that there is any sensible lacuna in my report of the speech.
What was wanting in the ninth century was a pope
who should have eclipsed the glory of Charlemagne.
Gregory VII. with his gigantic, but too vague ideas;
Innocent III. with his marvellous institutions, confession,
inquisition, and monks, came too late. Five centuries
earlier, some genius equal to his, and ourselves to aid with
the vast idea that now engrosses us, would have rendered
the Romish church the sovereign arbiter of the whole
world. Instead of this, the two centuries which preceded
Hildebrand supplied popes madder than Caligula, and
more monstrous than Nero, so that it is impossible for us
to give a colour to their history which may be deemed — 1
will not say excusable, but even tolerable. Neither the
fourteenth rior tbe fifteenth century offers a single example
of talent and intelligence capable of foreseeing, and con
sequently of preventing by the abolition of the most flagrant
abuses in the church, the horrible outbreak of the sixteenth
century. What, in fact, do we see in the two centuries
which precede Protestantism ? The Roman see occupied
either by men of less than ordinary abilities, or by haughty
voluptuaries. Such beings ruin a construction rather than
help to build it up. They have no prudence to guide them ;
they exhibit to the people in their own persons a spectacle
of turpitude, as if the people were brutes, absolutely

170 SECEET PLAN
incapable of reflection. Under such popes, with a clergy,
bishops, and monastic orders of the same stamp, was it to
be hoped that the church should wax great and strong so
as to hold nations and monarchs compressed in its great
embrace ? Can we be surprised that it still remains in a
state of abortion in spite of its immense resources ?
Dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, he continued :
It is my desire that among ourselves everything be
spoken out, and that the whole naked truth be uttered ;
for it is in the highest degree useful and necessary to us to
know and to study it, as it is.
Besuming then his former manner, and even with added emphasis,
he continued :
Are we so blind as not to perceive clearly that whatever
was done then was done entirely with greedy and interested
views, and that the same observation applies also to the
present times ? Nothing has ever been contrived as subordi
nate to the execution of a vast plan. You are acquainted
with the infamous abuses of nepotism, and its frightful
consequences : what a degradation of the papacy ! That
high and inestimable dignity was no longer coveted but as
a means of glutting the mad ambition and insatiable avarice
of a few families. Meanwhile, a vast catastrophe was
impending, and the veil of the temple was about to be rent
in twain. Alas ! when those selfish dreamers suddenly
awoke and everywhere lighted exterminating fires for
heretics, it was too late. Men's eyes were opened, they
had learnt to think, their indignation was aroused, the fire
of it was in their hearts. The death of a great number
of heretics only bestowed on a party already strong and

OF THE JESUITS. 171
filled with the most perverse ideas, the dangerous prestige
of possessing its martyrs. Thus, by an excess of impru
dence on our part, heresy took its stand as a power, to
which novelty and persecution gave attraction and strength.
How much time was thus lost ; and what conflicts was the
church compelled to sustain, no longer for the purpose of
extending her sway, but simply to save herself from imminent
and utter ruin.
Leo X. — that Sardanapalus enervated by Asiatic
luxury — did nothing but blunder. Those who succeeded
him followed but too closely in his footsteps. At length,
the hurricane had almost dispersed the riven planks of the
Bark, and no one could suggest any practical expedient for
keeping them together. All grew pale at the demand for
an oecumenical council, and it is certain that that of Trent
would have been the grave of Rome but for the ability of
our Company. We, resolute and unswerving, succeeded in
baffling the multitude of heretics who were eager to attack
the very foundations of Catholicism. With History in their
hand, they were prepared to question the Bible, the Fathers,
the Councils, to trace them from age to age, and explore
the origin of each institution, dogma, and practice. What
secrets would then have come to light ! The symbol of
the ancient faith, the primitive mode of solving questions,
the progress of the papal power, the precise date of every
innovation and change, the immense chaos of past ages, so
well covered until then, would all have been exposed to the
eye of day. Sifted after this fashion, nothing would have
been preserved but what is expressly supported by some
text of Scripture ; the rest would have been remorselessly
burnt as stubble. Nor could the pope have flattered

172 SECEET PLAN
himself with the hope of remaining an honoured patriarch ;
this very title of patriarch, they would have told him, was
but of recent invention. There was a general conspiracy
against it, bent on reducing it to the measure of what it
was when many bishops of the east and even of the west
despised it so openly, and when Cyprian, Ireneus, and
Polycarp held it in so little esteem.
How many bishops, indeed, flocked to Trent with hostile
intentions ! How far might not their boldness have pro
ceeded, had heresy been permitted to spread freely before
them its pernicious erudition ? But we intrepidly defended
the breach, and the young hydra strove in vain to break
into the place.
Thus, after three centuries of indefatigable labour, after
we had been as a cuirass on the breast of Rome, her
enemies determined to tear us thence, and almost succeeded,
convinced that as long as we remained, Rome was invulner
able. But if Rome, in her weakness, bent for a time like
a palm-tree beneath the raging winds, she soon raised her
head again ; and now, let us trust, she has gained an
accession of strength that will enable her for the future to
defy storm and thunder. Kings call upon us — they feel
the need of our narcotic cup for their people ; but they
shall drink of it themselves also, and deeply ! We will not,
however, forget to bedew its rim with honey.
The cadence of these last words made me imagine that the confer
ence was closed, when I heard the same chief resume, but with the
coolness of a man who recapitulates. His repetition of ideas already
propounded, was doubtless intended to give more prominence to certain
favourite views which, as the reader has seen, predominated during
the meeting.

OF THE JESUITS. 173
Two principles — amongst the many we possess — two
principles of. inexhaustible power and attractiveness ought
to hold the first place in our consideration ; and this we
must continually call to mind.
We must thus argue with men in power, and especially
those at court : — Heresy having been the cause of all the
complications which arose precisely when church and state
were on the point of entering into a happy alliance, the
results of which could not but have been solid and most
satisfactory, it is of the highest importance that we should
at length realize what three centuries of anarchy have
postponed. As soon, then, as positive conclusions shall
have been laid down, the following should be the two
leading principles of a new code, devised for the regulation
and conservation of the vast interests of the two powers at
length united : —
Whenever heresy shall dare to disturb the
sacred tranftuillity of the church, whatever may
be the nature of its assaults, be they slight or
serious, the duty of the state shall be to punish
them with the utmost rigour, as political crimes.
Reciprocally, Whenever revolt shall dare to
disturb the sacred tranquillity of the state, what
ever may be the nature of its attacks, be they
slight or serious, the duty of the church shall
be to stigmatize them in the face of the nations,
and to treat them with the same rigour as heresy
itself, which is to be crushed by terrible and
solemn chastisements.
After this, we have only to be logically consistent, and
since it is a maxim of the schools that qui potest majus
p 2

174 SECEET PLAN
potest minus, it will not be difficult to contrive that the
spiritual power, the omnipotent divinity of the Holy See,
shall entirely absorb the temporal power. Only let them
give up to us the souls of the people, let kings second us
with their encouragement and their wealth, and our hierarchy,
at present winding about like a river, shall soon spread wide
as the sea, and cover hills and mountains.
But it is mainly important that we should know how to
extinguish, one by one, the multitude of phosphoric flames
that glitter in every direction. We must have the art to
accustom the mass of the people to look up to none but our
men (sic); and thus we shall train them for the day when,
excited by some crying injustice, an increase of taxes, or
some such cause of discontent, they shall furnish us with an
opportunity to hurl forth a thundering manifesto from Rome,
a signal of its rupture with all governments, and conse
quently of a decisive and final struggle, in which we shall
be bravely supported by the innumerable and ardent host
which we or our successors shall have so well disciplined.
Would that we might be certain — but at least we can
hope — that when that crisis comes, a considerable portion
of the hierachy will have undergone a radical and complete
change ; that the loftiest thrones of the sanctuary will be
inaccessible to men incapable of understanding us ; that
bishops and cardinals well know how to follow up their
brave words with braver deeds ; and finally, that, after
so many sacrifices, we may have to glory in a man
embodying, in his own person, the most enterprising
popes of past times, a man wearing one of those heads, in
fashioning which Nature expands her compasses to tlieir
full stretch.

OF THE JESUITS. 175
The artisan, when plying his ordinary labour, is never
discouraged by the hardness of the wood or the metal on
which he works, because he has at hand such implements
as will reduce these materials into whatever forms he pleases.
Let us so take care to be well provided with implements.
When the ebullition which we are secretly fomenting shall
have reached a sufficient point, the cover shall be suddenly
removed, and we will pour our liquid fire upon those politi
cal meddlers, who are ignorant and unreflecting enough to
serve as tools in our hands, and our efforts will result in a
revolution, worthy of the name, which shall combine in one
universal conquest all the conquests that have yet been made.
For this purpose, let our unceasing exertions be directed
to the conversion of souls, and let us so preach that death
beds may be the fruitful source of donations, riches, jewels,
and all sorts of legacies. Means of action are indispensable
to us, and these means must be as vast as our projects.
Let nothing resist us ; whilst, enveloped in mystery from
head to foot, we ourselves remain impenetrable.
Friends, we must conquer or die ! The higher classes are
always very inaccessible to the lower ones ; let us nourish
their mutual antipathy. Let us accustom the mob, which
is, in fact, an implement of power, to look upon us as its
warmest advocates ; favouring its desires, let us feed the
fire of its wrath, and open to its view a golden age ; and let
the pope, Rome, Catholicism, or the Church, let each of
these words become for the people the expression of all its
rights, the point on which its eye is fixed, the object of its
devotion, the moving spring of its thoughts and intentions.
A day will come — but it will be too late — when it will be
seen that expedients the most ridiculous have given birth

176 SECEET PLAN
to marvellous effects, and that those who believed themselves
wise, were fools.
Yes, brethren ! we also are kings ! our arsenal is perhaps
as rich as theirs, and even, if I mistake not, more efficient.
Our chaplets, our medals, our miracles, our saints, our holy-
days, in fine, all that immense battery which we have this
day passed in review, (*) will be worth as much, I imagine,
as their powder, their soldiers, their cannon, and their
moving forests of bayonets. All depends upon the skill
with which we combine this infinity of means, discipline our
troops, and by exciting their zeal and their courage, pre
pare them for the day which must bring to nothing, or
crown with triumph, the long series of our labours. Let
them make a jest of our processions round the profane
Jericho, let them mock us and the sound of our trumpets,
provided that at the seventh circuit, and assuredly it will be
made, the walls of the city fall down, and those who inhabit
it fall a prey to us.
What we have to do, then, is to erect again upon its
pedestal the prostrate papal colossus. We engineers, here
assembled, have to concert a special plan for this pur
pose, to point out the machines to be used or to invent new
ones, to form workmen and place in their hands levers and
cables, and then, provided the whole be directed by superior
intelligence, success will be infallible.
Such is our task.
* Ch'oggi abbiamo si bene analixxato ; this expression induces me
to suppose that the analysis of all these things had been made, the
same morning, in a previous meeting ; for it appears too precise to
relate wholly to what was said in the conference which has just been
submitted to the reader.

OF THE JESUITS. 177
But the day is closing, and I desire that we may not quit
this place before some one, who may have considered the
subject more deeply than myself, shall have said a few words
on the possibly sinister issue of events, which, seeing the
dangers around us, it is indispensable that we should coolly
consider, while as yet our minds are undisturbed by any
immediate apprehensions of such a result.

XX.
There ensued a brief silence, which the Irishman was the first to
break, though in a tone less confident than before. He soon warmed,
however, and became quite himself again.
If I venture to respond to this appeal, it is because I
was lately present at a meeting of our fathers, in which the
subject now in question was amply discussed. The con
ference closed with the following resolution.
Should we ever (it was unanimously agreed) be aban
doned by kings, or should any fatal discovery utterly ruin
our projects ; should we in vain attempt to recover, if not
confidence, at least some standing compatible with the
execution of our plan ; should we even be forced to crawl
along (trascinarci) for a lengthened period, in order to
reunite our many lost or broken threads — even in this
extremity, happen what may, we must resign ourselves to
these shackles, and submit to this wearisome delay. But if
nothing can reconcile us with the offended Catholic govern
ments, and if even Rome, in the hope of securing her own
safety in a mean and narrow sphere, consent to immolate us
anew, we must, at the price of every consideration, show

178 SECEET PLAN
kings and Rome that, even under circumstances so adverse,
we can prove ourselves stronger than them all : and this,
you are aware, it will be the more easy for us to effect, the
further our labours shall have been advanced when the time
of trial comes, if come it must. But I feel no doubt (and
I could bring forward authentic proofs in support of this),
I feel no doubt that, this time, Rome would rather make
common cause with us, than consent to remain a degraded
and manacled slave, without a hope of ever escaping from
the limits imposed upon her. In case of need, poison
would deliver us from a short-sighted pope (il veleno ci
liberebbe d'un papa a corta veduta), and the next conclave
which should be assembled would accord entirely with our
views.* Then, brethren, will the world behold a strange
spectacle. Having failed in our endeavour to avenge
ourselves on kings by slowly and artfully exhausting their
strength, we will take vengeance on them in a manner
equally sudden and terrible. In six months Rome would
become the incendiary focus of those volcanic spirits who
are themselves at present the objects of our hatred ; and a
bull in which the sovereign pontiff should announce to the
people that, deceived in his hopes of seeing good gradually
* Clement VII. having declared to Cardinal Bellarmin his resolu
tion to condemn the doctrine of the Jesuit Molina as dangerous, the
Jesuit Bellarmin replied, " Your Holiness will do no such thing."
Cardinal Francis Marie del Monte having spoken of this resolution
to Cardinal Bellarmin, the latter replied ; " I know that he would
gladly do it ; I know that he is able to do it; but he will not do it. If
he persists in executing his design, he will die first." Jacques
Tagliotti, Jesuit, in his " Life of Cardinal Bellarmin," liv. vii., 2.

OF THE JESUITS. 179
prevail over evil, his patience is exhausted — such a bull
would give us forces more numerous than the hyperbolical
army of Armageddon.*
What a source of agitation in times like ours !
Assuredly Catholicism and its ceremonies would be for
some time the fashion, but all its illusions would sooner or
later evaporate, and we should but have hastened the
opening of an era the very reverse of what we have been
labouring to introduce. What matters it ! let our last cry
of despair, let our death be worthy of us ! We must not be
content to disappear like a dried-up river ; let us rather
resemble a torrent which breaks every mound and bears
down every obstacle ; like the elements of nature, which
cannot be compressed without bursting out into universal
conflagration. Thus would the famous saying be verified,
" that the fate of kings is intimately allied with ours," for
they would vanish from the earth along with us. Such
would be the vengeance of Samson when shorn, blinded,
and made to toil at the mill like a vile ass. He would
crush them with the last effort of his enormous strength,
and bury himself and them in the same tomb.
It is very possible, brethren (continued the Irishman in
a fierce tone), that there may be some traitor amongst us,
who, to render himself acceptable to some cursed Pharaoh
by becoming his Joseph, his informer, may one day escape
from our ranks and ruin us. The precautions which we
have already taken against such a contingency do not
appear to me sufficient, for the wretch who would desert
from our body might find means to hide himself from our
vengeance, and thus in vain would he have sworn that
• An allusion to a passage of the Apocalypse, ix. 16 ; xvi. 16.

180 SECEET PLAN
" to the last breath of life he would regard the destruction of
his own person as holy and legitimate."
I therefore propose to you another means of surety, in
addition to the former. Let us lay down this rule : — that
no one shall be initiated unless he have previously con
sented that a certain number of our members shall concert
together to attribute to him (on probable grounds of course)
a correspondence either politically criminal or monstrously
obscene ; and this correspondence the candidate shall
transcribe and faithfully sign, in order that our Company
may, in case of treason, have the means of invalidating his
testimony by the production of these precious manuscripts.
Such documents would, you will easily understand, be of
eminent service to us, should other means of vengeance
fail us.

XXI.
The president now spoke in these terms.
We will hereafter take this suggestion into our special
consideration. Meanwhile, I thank you heartily for this
conference ; it has been much more instructive than the
three former ones, the minutes of which you had better
examine — I have them here for your better information ;
and I beg that each one of you will note down his observa
tions upon them. But let me suggest that during a
discussion on mere details it would be advisable not to
allow too much predominance to the poetical elements of
the question. These elements may be admitted when we
have to consider our whole plan in the fullest light, whilst

OF THE JESUITS. 181
the analysis of each separate question or problem should
present a character as deliberate and cool as that of the
synthesis ought to be warm and enthusiastic. I admire
these two different kinds of talent, but I have rarely seen
them united in the same individual. I have almost always
found that those who were eloquent in the one way were
mute in the other, and vice versa. Let us strive to combine
the calmness of reason with the fire of enthusiasm. Christ,
who saw the germ of so many splendid truths, teaches us
that in order " to make ourselves master of the strong man,
his house and his goods, we must first bind him." Let us,
therefore, become perfect in the art of loading the proud
and the powerful with chains. Let us lay to heart this
maxim as the rule of all our efforts : — one sole authority —
that of Rome ; one sole order — that of the Jesuits. And
since our age does not boast a single mind capable of
aspiring to universal empire, for kings have enough to do
to retain a hold upon their petty kingdoms which are slipping
from their grasp, let it be ours to aim thus high, whilst
empty heads are dreaming. Nulla dies sine lined. Let
not any opportunity escape us of observing what are men's
tendencies ; the better we know them the more useful they
will be as instruments in our hands. Let us, at all events,
so conduct ourselves that our future glory may compensate
for our present abasement ; for whether our name be
destined to perish, or finally to prevail over kings and
nations, let it, at least, be synonymous with the loftiest
reach of greatness and daring which the world has ever
seen or ever will see. Yes ! when future generations read
our story, and learn what we have been, let them be
forced to assimilate us, not with mankind, but with those
a

182 SECEET PLAN OF THE JESUITS.
cosmogonic agencies which God only puts in motion when
it is his pleasure to change the laws of the universe.
These words — an echo and confirmation of others not less presump
tuous, which had already proceeded from the Irishman — show plainly
that the modern Jesuits are imbued with no inconsiderable dose of
pride. It will be equally clear that it is their project to Jesuitize,
besides all the other orders, the papacy itself; and, as the nee plus
ultra of the metamorphoses they are effecting by their mysterious
strategy, to Jesuitize the whole world.
The president having concluded, they all rose and
warmly congratulated each other. The scene then closed,
they left the room, and I was out of danger.

END OF PAET II.

PAET III.
PROOFS AND CONCLUSION.
I.
The Jesuits have always spoken of themselves in terms of
the most unmeasured pride.
When their society had reached the hundredth year of its
existence, they composed a book in its honour. The
symbols which decorate the frontispiece of this work
sufficiently prove that they esteem the humblest member
of their order as infinitely above the rest of mankind.
They call themselves "The Company of the Perfect."*
The contents of the volume accord with the arrogance of
its emblems. The Jewish high-priest wore on his breast the jewel
called the oracle. The order of the Jesuits considers itself,
under the New Alliance, as the oracle from whence the
pope draws his inspiration.
They proclaim themselves "the masters of the world,
the most learned of mortal men, the doctors of the nations,
the Apollos, the Alexanders of theology, prophets descended
from heaven, who deliver the oracles in the cecumenic
councils." * Imago priini sseculi Societatis Jesu, lib. iii., Orat. i., p. 409.

184 SECEET PLAN
The epitaph which they composed for Loyola strikingly
exhibits their love of grandiloquence, and their overween
ing pride. It runs thus : —
" Whoever thou art who conceivest in thy mind the
image of Pompey the Great, of Caesar, and of Alexander,
open thine eyes to the truth, and thou wilt learn from this
marble that Ignatius was the greatest of conquerors."
The epitaph of Saint Francis Xavier is in the same
strain. But how striking the contrast between their conduct
and the apotheosis they award themselves ! We could say
nothing on this subject which has not been proved by
numberless publications.
Some of their own generals, even, have made no secret
of their dismay at the perverse tendencies of the order.
Mucio Vitelleschi, the sixth general, in one of his letters,
dated the 15th of November, 1639, cannot refrain from
pointing out the loathsome malady that had fastened upon
the Company. "There exists," he says, "amongst the
superiors of our society an excessive cupidity which spreads
from them through the whole body. From this source
comes the indulgence which they manifest for those who
bring them riches."
Saint Francis Borgia, one of the earliest generals of the
order, had before this acknowledged that poison was in its
veins. I will not here repeat the numerous testimonies
which prove that their casuistry justified crime in all its
forms. It is impossible to deny that the doctrines, every
where to be found in their writings, authorize theft, rape,
perjury, debauchery, and even murder ; that, when they
have judged it expedient to get rid of a king, they have

OF THE JESUITS. 185
not shrunk from making the apology of regicide. But
what we should be most repugnant to believe, did not their
books, approved by the generals of the order, attest it, is
the cynical nature of their science on a matter which ought
to remain unknown to religious men, vowed to perpetual
chastity, and making pretensions to perfect purity.
I shall not enlarge upon this subject, but confine
myself to quoting a judgment which conveys the impression
made on grave doctors of the church by the perusal of some
of the books of the Holy Company. The university of
Paris, in 1643, in its Verites Academiques (Academical
Truths), thus expresses itself:
"All that the malice of hell can conceive of most
horrible ; things unknown even to the most depraved of
pagans, all the abominations which could call up a blush
on the face of effrontery itself, are epitomised in the book of
a Jesuit. The different casuists of this society teach secrets
of impurity unknown even to the most dissolute."
What must be the shamelessness in their secret
assemblies, if they suffer it to become thus apparent in
their printed works ? There is the less likelihood of their
amendment, inasmuch as whilst others are led astray by
passion and temptation, their immorality is a system,
founded on an utter contempt of what is right and just.
It is painful and revolting to make these assertions,
but the truth must be told. A pope supports it with his
authority. In 1692, Clement VIII. presided at a general
chapter of the Jesuits ; what is the reproach which he casts
upon them ? His words reveal the spirit, the tactics, and
the whole plan of the Jesuits, ancient and modern.*
* Theatre jesuitique, part ii. 4.
a 2

180 SECEET PLAN
" Curiosity," said this pope, "induces them to intrude
everywhere, and principally into the confessionals, that
they may learn, from their penitent, all that passes in his
home, among the children, the domestics, and the other
inmates or frequenters of the house, and even all that is
going on in the neighbourhood. If they confess a
prince, they contrive to govern his whole family ; they
seek even to govern his states, by inspiring him with the
belief that nothing will go well without their oversight and
care." The assertion of Clement VIII. , made in terms so precise,
would be sufficient to command belief; but there are
numerous and striking historical facts, which prove
that, under pretence of religion, this Company has
constantly carried on a plot against nations and their
governments. I will mention one only of all these facts, but it was so
notorious in its time, and is one of such weight, that it is as
good as a thousand. It is related as follows by President
de Thou, an historian of acknowledged probity : — *
" The Jesuits were accused, before the senate of Venice,
of having pried into family secrets, by means of confession ;
and of having come, by the same means, to know intimately
all sorts of particulars relating to individuals, and, con
sequently, the designs and resources of the state ; and of
having kept registers of these things, which they forwarded,
every six months, to their general, by the hands of their
visitors. Proofs of these charges were found in many

* Le President de Thou, in his Hist, liv. 137.

OF THE JESUITS. 187
documents, which their hurried flight prevented them from
carrying off."
This fact is not denied by Sachin himself, one of the
most devoted historians of the Company.*

II.
This is surely enough to make those writers pause who
have undertaken the defence of the Jesuits, and have
carried it so far as to assert that they do not concern
themselves about temporal things, and that the whole
world is in a conspiracy to calumniate them. As if the
universities, parHaments, and bishops who have accused
them of corrupting morals, and leading the people astray,
could have leagued themselves together, from age to age,
for a purpose so iniquitous. Strange it is, however, we
repeat, that, in our times, they have again succeeded in
gaining over the bishops, that the more the world shudders
at their name, and abhors them, the more warmly the
superior clergy espouses their cause, and identifies itself
with them. There is now a concert of apologies in their
behalf. The new Catholic school is strenuous for them,
alleging even that it is the very excess of their virtue which
has called down so much hatred upon them, and that this
hatred can only proceed from the envious rage of the
impious. M. Laurent, bishop of Luxembourg, says in
a pastoral letter of 1845 : —
" God has sent to the aid of his church militant a well
army, commanded by a valiant chief; whose
* Sachin, Hist. Soc. Jes., lib. v., No. 15.

188 SECEET PLAN
name is Ignatius de Loyola. Anathema against all the
sovereigns of Europe, who, guided by an infernal instinct,
and by the instigation of some self-styled philosophers,
constrained the court of Rome to suspend for a time this
holy order of Ignatius the Great."
In France, of late years, the superior clregy has
disseminated many books on the subject of free teaching.
Its organs are full of fine-sounding orations in favour of
the common right. Nothing can be more curious than
their expressions on this subject. They are constantly
borrowing the language which they used formerly to
stigmatize as subversive of the throne and of the altar.
It is true that they were then in the insolence of pros
perity, and that their position is since changed. Become
feeble themselves, they are compelled to have recourse to
the arms of the feeble.
But are they hearty and sincere in all that they proclaim
so loudly about right and truth ? They have put on the
new man too hastily for us to suppose that they have
entirely put off the old. Thus, the Bishop of Luxembourg
would have all instruction superintended by the clergy, and
dependent upon it. The Univers, the organ of the French
bishops, holds the same views.*
" Since the university has been at work it has only
produced incapable and corrupt schoolmasters, and irre
ligious and impious doctors. The Bishop of Perpignan,
following the example of M. de Bonald, demands free
teaching. ' My wishes,' he says, ' are in favour of free
competition in the instruction of youth ; but I believe that
* L'Univers etL'Union Catholique, 24 Octobre, 10 et 11 Novem-
bre, 1843.

OF THE JESUITS. 189
this precious instruction has indispensable need of super
intendence. Laws, and imperative laws, are necessary to
protect society against the dangers of bad doctrines. This
superintendence ought to combine all the elements capable
of rendering it complete and enlightened ; and consequently
the episcopacy must not remain a stranger to it. In fact,
religion has a large share in the inculcation of the sciences,
of which it is the foundation, and the episcopacy
alone is a competent judge in this matter, since it alone has
been established guardian of the sacred deposit of the
faith. Now, has not its bearing on this point been turned
aside ?"
All the art which the defenders of the clergy employ
in their writings, is compressed into these few lines ; the
writer first proclaims right and justice, and declares
himself the champion of free competition ; then he asks for
imperative laws against the dangers of bad doctrines. And
who are to judge of these dangers ? The bishops. They
alone are competent judges of every range of ideas ; the
sciences are not to advance beyond the limits they shall
prescribe. It appears, then, that in their estimation free
instruction and common right signify subjection of thought
and conscience to episcopal censure and domination.
" Wherefore," cries the Bishop of Chalons,* " should
there be two sorts of instruction in one house ? If it
is yours which ought to have the precedence, why not
tell us so ? Wherefore compel us to play a part in your
colleges which is altogether beneath our dignity ?
" By virtue of the royal ordonnance you are to believe
that these persons profess the same religion as the pope.
* Idem, 24 Octobre, 1843.

190 SECEET PLAN
It is true that the catechism says the contrary, but the
catechism makes a mistake ; the bishops say the contrary,
but the bishops know nothing of the matter. Oh but —
Make no objections : the king having heard the council of
state, orders you to be convinced."
Are we to believe, then, only what the pope decrees,
after having heard the council of cardinals ? If it be so,
the following is to be our creed : — " The doctrines of civil
and political equality are seditious ; we cannot hold in too
much horror liberty of opinion and of the press, and
particularly this maxim, that every man ought to enjoy
liberty of conscience ;" for such are the very words of
Gregory XVI., in his circular of the 15th of August,
1832. A French bishop has made himself the interpreter of
the spirit of the Vatican under the preceding pope.
Different religious journals in Italy have applauded his
attacks against those innovators who follow up " the mad
and impious project of a restoration or regeneration of
humanity." The Bishop of Carcassonne declared, in a
mandate which followed close upon the circular of which
we have just spoken: — "If it (the Romish church) so
requires, let us sacrifice to it our opinions, our knowledge,
our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imaginations,
and the most sublime attainments of the human
understanding. Far from us be all that bears ihe stamp
of novelty." In the primitive ages, the Christian doctors held
another language. Tertullian, speaking in the name of
the church, thus expresses himself : — *
* Tertullian, Apologet, iv.

OF THE JESUITS. 191
" Every law which does not admit of examination is
suspicious ; when it exacts a blind obedience, it is
tyrannical."

III.

The superior clergy has begun to boast of being alone
able to realize liberty and right. We have just seen what
it understands by free teaching. There is, after all, no
secret to discover. The Bishop of Liege declares openly : —
" We desire the monopoly of religious and moral instruc
tion, because to us belongs the divine mission of bestowing
it." *
Is it not grievous and scandalous to find so many
artifices amongst those on whom Jesus especially enjoined
simplicity and truth ? Their minds have unhappily become
perverted by the habit they have contracted of anatomizing
vices and crimes ; a mass of perfidious subtleties has at
length stifled the voice of conscience within them. From
hence proceeds their willingness to temporize when interest
prompts them ; from hence their inconceivable versatility,
and their tactics ever changing according to times and
places, alternately cursing or blessing, the doctrines of
liberty one day, and those of absolutism on the morrow.
But it is important to remark that whilst their means are
perpetually changing, their end is always the same. When
power is adverse to them, or does not favour them as they
could wish, they do not shrink from the revolutionary
character which, under other circumstances, they consider
* Letter of M. Doletz.

If! 2 SECEET PLAN
so odious. Thus, whilst they declare it to be the rigorous
duty of those who suffer, to submit to their lot without a
murmur, they will, from the same pulpit, excite discontent
by propounding ideas which they will afterwards reprobate,
when they have no longer an interest in sustaining them.
I will give one example of this, one example amongst
thousands which prove that what I advance is well founded.
On the 21st of May, 1845, at Paris, in the aristocratic
church of St. Roch, the Abbe le Dreuille thus exclaimed : —
" I am the priest of the people. Labourers do not
enjoy the rights to which they have a claim ; it is time for
the rich and the powerful to render them an account. Is it
necessary to tell them that the working-man has a torch in
his hand which a single spark will suffice to light, and that
he will presently carry it flaming into chateaux and palaces
with cries of distress and of vengeance ? Has not experience
taught us, that privileges authorized by the law are liable to
fall before the justice of the people?"
The same abbe, whom we believe to be sincerely liberal
and a friend to the people, once again preached the same
doctrine in the same church. He had been authorized to
do so. And since there has never been any repetition of the
same thing, is it not reasonable to suppose that the desired
effect had been produced ?

IV.
We know no writer more intimately acquainted with
the occult plans of the Company than M. de Maistre. As
Sardinian ambassador at the court of the Czar, he had no

OF THE JESUITS. 193
more cherished friends than the Jesuits, to whom Alexander
had given refuge, when they were driven out of all other
states. Their modern panegyrist, M. Cretineau-Joly, by no
means denies that there was a close and intimate connection
between M. de Maistre and the Jesuits. " He supported
them," says he, "as one of the key-stones of the social
arch." *
Alexander, who was addicted to mysticism, and strongly
attached to the Holy Scriptures, warmly encouraged the
Bible societies. " The emperor," says the writer whom we
have just quoted, " had suffered himself to be deceived.
Prince Galitzin, the minister of worship, the highest
functionaries of the state, the greater part of the Russian
bishops, and even the Catholic archbishop of Mohilev,
Stanislas Siestrzencewiez, became avowed patrons of an
institution, which was in ihe long run to strike a mortal blow
at ihe Greek religion and at Catholicism. There rose up in
Russia, in favour of the Bible Society, one of those enthu
siastic movements which can scarcely be conceived by those
who live remote from the scene of action. Anglicanism
was securing a footing from the shores of the Black Sea to
those of the Frozen Ocean, and was spreading eastwards
towards the frontiers of China. Prompted by Galitzin, the
Catholic prelates served as blind instruments in its propa
gation, and encouraged their flocks to favour this work, of
the tendencies of which they were, themselves, wholly
ignorant." The Jesuits knew the danger of placing the Scriptures
in the hands of the people ; for is it not virtually saying to
* Histoire religieuse, politique, et litteraire de la Compagnie
de Jesus, t. vi. E

194 SECEET PLAN
them, Reflect and judge ! Such of the innovators as were
Catholics were denounced to Pius VII., who severely
reprimanded them. Is it not, in fact, an unpardonable
audacity, to follow this precept of Jesus : " Search the
Scriptures ; it is they which testify of me " ? The Scriptures,
then, speak, and even testify ; this, however, M. de Maistre
denies ; and, doubtless, his judgment has more weight than
that of Christ !
"Let others," he exclaims, "invoke, as much as you
please, ihe mute word ; we live in peace with this false God,
(the Bible !) awaiting evermore with fond impatience the
moment when its partizans shall be undeceived, and shall
throw themselves into our arms, which have been open to
receive them during the last three centuries." * So then
the Bible, submitted to the right of private judgment, is
but a false God, a mute word; it only becomes intelligible
in one single mouth — that of the pope. Moreover, this
book is incomplete ; the little that is found there is only a
germ. " Never was there a shallower notion," says De
Maistre, " than that of seeking in the Bible the whole sum
of the Christian dogmas."
The same writer is shocked at the idea of seeking to
verify whether laws or creeds are conformable to equity, or
to the doctrines of the apostles.
"What man of sense," cries he, "would not shudder to
put his hand to such a work ? ' We must revert,' we are
told, ' to the fundamental and primitive laws of the state,
which an unjust custom has abolished ; and this would be
a ruinous game Nothing but would be found wanting
* Essay on the Regenerating Principle in Political Constitutions
and other Human Constitutions, pp. 30, 31.

OF THE JESUITS. 195
if weighed in this balance. Meanwhile the people
are very ready to lend an ear to such exhortations.' This is
well said ; nothing can be better. But behold what is
man ! The author of this observation (Pascal) and his
hideous sect (the Jansenists) have never ceased to play this
infallibly ruinous game ; and in fact ihe game has perfectly
succeeded." *
This is what irritates him ; this is what he cannot bear ;
he sees no hope of safety but in compression; he insists
that the altar and the throne should be sacred, and quite
above all question. Has he not then, erudite as he is, read
how Lactantius, the celebrated apologist, upbraided the
Pagan priests? "They make themselves slaves to the
creed of their forefathers ; they aver that it is to be adopted
on trust ; they divest themselves of their reason ; but those
who have enveloped religion in mystery, in order that the
people may be ignorant of what they adore, are but knaves
and deceivers." -j-
M. de Maistre himself has said : " Never can error be
useful, or truth hurtful." This does not prevent him from
maintaining elsewhere, that error is necessary — that it has
its advantages — and that truth ought often to be held
captive. " The world," he says, " always contains an innumera
ble host of men so perverse, that if they could doubt of
certain things, they could also increase immensely the
amount of their wickedness."
Now, we all know that the Bible is styled, from the
pulpit, the Book of Truth, and that truth has light for its
* Idem, p. 55. f Lactantius, Instit. dio.

1Mb SECEET PLAN
emblem. But the Jesuits, applauded by M. de Maistre and
by Pius VII. , have done their utmost to put the light
under a bushel. They have raised every possible obstacle
to the propagation of the Bible. " They opposed it,"
remarks M. Cretineau-Joly, " with a firmness which the
prayers and menaces of Galitzin, up to that time their
protector and friend, could never overcome. The partizans
of the Bible societies became leagued against the Com
pany." * Now, the Jesuits have taken good care not to
oppose version to version. They have uniformly opposed
every version, and their intrigues on this subject were one
of the causes of their expulsion from Russia, on the 13th of
March, 1820. Does not this explain, in some sort, the
explosion of rage against the Bible itself, which the reader
has remarked in the secret conference ?
Previously to this period, the Jesuits, as their apologist
admits, were at open and bitter feud with the Russian
universities. On that occasion they found, says the same
writer, a bold defender.
" Joseph de Maistre studies it (the Society of Jesus) in
its connection both with peoples and kings. Placing before
the eyes of the Minister of Public Instruction a picture of
the follies and crimes which the revolutionary spirit has
produced, he exclaims, with a prophetic voice, which the
events of 1812 have justified, not less than those of 1845 :
' This sect (the liberal party), which is at the same time one
and many, encompasses Russia, or, more properly speaking,
penetrates it in all directions, and attacks it to its deepest
roots. It asks no more, at present, than to have the ear of
* Histoire religieuse, &c, de la Compagnie de Jesus, t. vi.

OF THE JESUITS. 197
children of all ages, and the patience of sovereigns ; it
reserves its noisier manifestations for a future time.' After
uttering these words, the truth of which becomes more and
more apparent as the circle of revolution enlarges, and
monarchs sink deeper into the fatal slumber of indifference,
Joseph de Maistre adds : ' In the midst of dangers so pressing,
nothing can be of greater utility to his Imperial Majesty
than a society of men essentially inimical to that from which
Russia has everything to dread, especially in the education
of youth. I do not even believe that it would be possible to
substitute with advantage any other preservative. This society
is the watch-dog, which you should beware of sending away.
If you do not choose that he should bite the robbers, that
is your affair ; but let him, at least, roam round the house,
and awake you when necessary, before your doors are
broken open, or the thieves get in by the windows.'"
This language is intelligible ; the imagery is striking :
the Jesuits are, truly, the vigilant watch-dogs of absolute
governments, who rouse them from their sleep when neces
sary, and are always ready to bite those who would invade
their repose. Do they not boast of possessing the statistics
of everybody's thoughts, and of being alone able to predict
the periods of the political tides ? Thus M. Cretineau
quotes these words of John Miiller as profoundly judicious : —
" Wise men did not hesitate to conclude, that with the
Jesuits fell a common and necessary barrier of defence for
all powers." The rampart of the old order of things being thus over
thrown, M. de Maistre gives vent to his wrath in these
terms : —
" When we think how a detestable coalition of perverse

198 SECEET PLAN
ministers, magistrates in delirium, and ignoble sectarians,
has been able, in our time, to destroy this marvellous
institution, and to boast of their work, we are reminded of
the fool who triumphantly clapped his foot upon a watch,
exclaiming — I will soon find a way to stop your noise !
But what am I saying ? A fool is not guilty ! "*
The Jesuits had a good right to the mortal remains of
Joseph de Maistre, so they were delivered up to them, and
are deposited in their church at Turin.

M. Saint-Cheron, whom we ask pardon for quoting
after a writer so distinguished as M. de Maistre, now comes
forward as one of the most ardent disciples of the reverend
fathers. He calls to remembrance this remarkable phrase,
written by M. de Maistre in 1820 : — " Providence is engaged
in raising an army in Europe." f This army must needs
have been on the increase. M. Saint-Cheron is, no doubt,
acquainted with its chiefs ; already he perceives " striking
signs of the approach of one of those solemn crises which
mark, for ages, the destiny of a people ; signs which fore-
* Essay on the Begenerating Principle, &c, p. 49.
f Cited by the Journal des Debats of the 21st of February, 1844. —
In 1820 an institution of the greatest importance was founded. The
3rd May, 1844, .* pompous placard made its appearance in Paris,
announcing to the faithful that an august ceremony would take place
at St. Sulpice, to return thanks to God for the ever-increasing success of
the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, inspired by God twenty-
three years ago.

OF THE JESUITS. 199
token one of those epochs in which sanguinary contests take
place." Emboldened by these prognostics, he adds: —
" Catholicism is taking its measures to assure itself anew of
the sword of France."
It is impossible, however, to be more daring than was De
Maistre; he propounds the most formidable views, so that
you would say he wrote with a portion of the secret plan before
him. He lived in a time when the defeats of freedom were
too recent to make him at all cautious in measuring his words.
His successors are, in general, more anxious to disguise
their odious projects. Often blunt and offensive, but always
frank, M. de Maistre was too well acquainted with the
falsity of the double system he so vigorously defended, to
suppose, for a moment, that it could maintain itself under
the rule of liberty. He deems, therefore, that the inquisition
and the executioner ought to form its corner-stone.
"There must," he says, "be some authority against
which no one has the right to argue. To reason, said Saint
Thomas, is to seek, and to be always seeking is to be never
contented."* No discussion, therefore ; the right to use it
is only sought by those who would reform and remodel all
things — an impious and abominable thought ; it is, doubtless,
desired to the end that " the crushed party may have time
to raise itself up, through the tolerance which is shown
towards it, and may crush its adversary in its turn."
But why should not each party enjoy the same rights,
the same liberty ? This is precisely the equality which
M. de Maistre abhors, he who is characterized as the
man eminently religious, the model of a Christian. Accord-
* Delay of Divine Justice in the Punishment of the Guilty. Note 2nd.

200 SECEET PLAN
ing to his notion, liberty is a privilege which belongs only
to nobles and prelates. What, he indignantly demands,
is the source of this flood of detestable doctrines ? " It
proceeds," he answers, "from that numerous phalanx of
what are called learned men, whom we have not persisted
in keeping in their proper place, which is the second."*
This champion of the faith, who has God and religion
perpetually on his lips, covers with these sounding words a
system of barbarous oppression for all that is most sacred in
man : he would have two castes, as masters, holding all the
rest in slavery.
" It is not to science that it belongs to guide mankind :
it has none of the necessary powers for this purpose. It
belongs to prelates, to nobles, to the great officers of the
state, to be the depositaries and guardians of the truth ;
to teach the nations what is evil and what is good, what
is true and what false in moral and spiritual things : none
others have any right to reason upon matters of this nature.
They have the natural sciences to amuse themselves with —
of what do they complain ? As to the man who speaks or
writes so as to take away a national dogma from the people,
he ought to be hung as a common thief. Why has so great
an imprudence been committed as to grant liberty of speech
to every one ? It is this that has undone us. Philoso
phers (those at least who assume the name) are all possessed
with a sort of fierce and rebellious pride which takes
nothing for granted ; they detest all distinctions of which
they do not partake : all authority revolts them, and there
is nothing out of their own sphere which they do not hate.
* Soirees de St. Petersburgb, enbutun Vlllme.

OF THE JESUITS. 201
Leave them alone, and they will attack everything, even
God himself, because he is their master. Is it not these
very men who have written against kings and against him
who has established them ! Oh ! if, when ihe earth shall
be settled  ."*
M. de Maistre here suddenly checks himself. He has,
however, said enough to betray his gigantic hopes that
the old system shall be re-established, that free inquiry
shall be abolished, that all independence shall be impossible
for the people, and that priests and nobles alone shall reign.
He quotes this saying of Cardinal de Retz : " He who
assembles the people stirs them up to insurrection." The
commentary which he makes upon it is worthy of himself.
" A maxim," he says, " the spirit of which is unimpeach
able. The laws of fermentation are the same in morals as
in physics. It arises from contact, and augments in
proportion to the mass of the fermenting matters. Collect a
number of men rendered spirituous by any passion whatever :
you will shortly have heat, then excitement, and presently
delirium will ensue, precisely as in the material process, where
the turbulent fermentation leads rapidly to the acid, and
this is speedily followed by the putrid. Every assembly is
liable to the action of this general law, if the process is not
arrested by the cold of authority, which glides into the
interstices and stops the movement of the particles."f
Consequently, meetings of the people must be interdicted.
But, at least, the people may have the right to represent
themselves by deputies ? See what one of the boldest
defenders of the Jesuits says on this question.
* Idem. f Du Pape, p. 96.

202 SECEET PLAN
" In the courts of law," he says, " it happens every day
that infants, the insane, and the absent are represented by
men who are deputed only by the law ; now the people is
eminently characterized by these three qualities — it is
always infant, always insane, and always absent. Why
therefore cannot its guardians be appointed without its
own sanction ?
" There is no king by the grace of the people. Nobility
being but a prolongation of the sovereignty, magnum jovis
incrementum, it repeats, on a smaller scale, all the
characteristics of its parent. The true nobility is the
natural guardian of religion, it is the parent of the priest
hood, and its constant and natural protector. Appius
Clodius exclaimed, in the Roman senate, ' Religion
belongs to the patricians, auspicia sunt patrum.' Wo to
the people whose nobles abandon the national dogmas !
France, which furnishes the most striking examples both in
good and in evil, has proved this to the whole world : for
that Bacchante, called the French Revolution, and who has,
as yet, only changed her dress, is the daughter of the
impious commerce of the French nobility with the philosophy
of the eighteenth century. The disciples of the Alcoran
say : ' One of the signs of the end of tne world will
be the advance of persons of low condition to eminent
dignities.'" "If the nobility," he goes on to say, "renounce the
conservative religion, what right have they to expect to be
themselves conserved ? Why should they be better treated
than their masters, whose reign has been shortened ?
" Let princes, above all, be assured that their power is
vanishing ; that the European monarchies have been only

OF THE JESUITS. 203
constituted, and can only be preserved by one sole religion,
and that if this alliance fails them, they must inevitably fall.
" In order to establish one religion and one morality in
Europe ; to give to the truth the strength which her
meditated conquests will require ; to confirm the thrones of
sovereigns, and allay this general fermentation in the minds of
the people, which threatens us with so many misfortunes, one
preliminary measure is indispensable, and that is, to efface
from the European dictionary the fatal word protestantism."
" In the sixteenth century, the rebels attributed the
sovereignty to the church, that is to say, to the people.
The eighteenth century only transfers these maxims to
politics ; it is the same system, the same theory, up to its
remotest consequences. What difference is there between
the church of God, ruled solely by his word, and the
republic, one and indivisible, governed solely by the laws
and by the deputies of the sovereign people ? It is the
same folly, having only changed its name with its epoch.
" Yes, it was the Reformers, who, sounding the tocsin
against the pope and Rome, struck the first blow at the
ancient and venerable colossus of the Roman hierarchy ;
and by directing the minds of men towards the investigation
of religious dogmas, prepared them to discuss also the
principles of sovereignty, and thus sapped the foundations
both of throne and altar.
" The time is come to prop anew the foundations of
this splendid palace, overthrown with so much violence."*
The sovereign powers must bestir themselves, their
existence is at stake. Such a religion as Protestantism,
* Considerations sur la France, u. 3, p. 69 ; Du Pape, p. 399, 400,
465, &c. &c.

204 SECEET PLAN
which is only accepted by reason, and discusses points of
faith, is good for nothing but to undermine thrones ;
therefore does M. de Maistre desire that this error, the
fruitful root of many others, should be extinguished by
kings themselves.
"Help me," he says, "with all speed to make it
disappear the more quickly. It is impossible that con
siderations so important should not at length make their
way into Protestant council chambers, and be stored up
there, to descend after a time like fertilizing water into
the valleys. There is every inducement for the Pro
testants to unite with us. Their science, which is now
a horrid corrosive, will lose its deleterious qualities in allying
itself with our submission, which will not refuse in its turn
to derive light from their science. This great change must,
however, begin with the sovereigns."*
None are so much interested as the great in the
demolition of Protestantism ; other classes may be called to
aid them ; the Protestant clergy alone is to be excepted.
" Several manifest signs," he says, " exclude this
ministry (the Protestant clergy) from the great work. To
adhere to error is always a great evil ; but to teach it by
profession, and to teach it against the cry of conscience, is
the extreme of evil, and absolute blindness is its inevitable
consequence." We have, then, a right to distrust doctrines which are
an evident source of wealth and domination for those who
teach them ; the ardent zeal with which they are inflamed
is to be justly suspected. • Du Pape, p. 476.

OF THE JESUITS. 205

VI.

In 1804, at the very moment when kings were struggling
under the grasp of their conqueror, and plotting useless
coalitions, Pius VII., so far from surrendering a jot of the
ancient Roman supremacy, wrote thus to his nuncio, at
Vienna : —
" THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CANON LAW IS THIS : 
That the subjects of a heretic prince are liberated from
all duty, all fealty and homage towards him." " Those
who are at all versed in history," he remarks, " cannot but
be acquainted with ihe sentences and depositions pronounced
by pontiffs and councils against princes who persisted in
heresy." "In good truth," concludes Pius VII., "we are fallen
upon times of great calamity, and of such deep humiliation
for the spouse of Jesus Christ, that it is not possible for her
to practise many of her holy maxims, nor even expedient
for her to bring them forward ; and she is, at the same
time, forced to interrupt the course of her just severity
against the enemies of ihe faith."
Thus we are warned. Rome (unless Pius IX.
accomplish a complete revolution in its traditions) is not
less tenacious of its canonical rights than are kings and
nobles of their prerogatives. They protest that God is the
author of these. Absolution is holy, the theocratic system
is sacrosanct. It has never been destroyed, it is only
suspended until the passing away of these times, so
calamitous and humiliating to the church, for days of glory
are promised to her. Then, every sovereign who shall be

206 SECEET PLAN
heretical, or even of suspected faith, shall either be con
verted or deprived of his throne; the holy maxims of
ancient times shall revive, and a just severity against the
enemies of the faith shall renew its course.

VII.

It is not without reason that M. de Montalembert,
while defending the Jesuits against those who reproach
them with their vow of absolute obedience to the popes, is
astounded at this accusation, and remarks that the bishops
still make oath of absolute submission to the pope, in
clauses and terms the most precise, strong, and compre
hensive ; and yet this important oath has never, till now,
been a subject of accusation. Let us attach to each word
its proper value, and we shall perceive that everything in
this formula combines to render the pope the absolute chief
of the world, as well temporal as spiritual, and that we
must not therefore be surprised that the bishops spare no
efforts to make the ecclesiastical jurisdiction predominate
over every civil jurisdiction. Before he receives the mitre
each bishop swears thus : —
" I will do all that in me lies to pursue, defend, increase,
and strengthen the rights, honours, privileges, and the
authority of the holy Roman church of our lord the pope
and his successors.
" I will humbly receive the apostolic commands (the
orders of the pope), and I will apply myself to their execu
tion with the greatest zeal and the strictest punctuality.
" I promise and swear that I will with all my might

OF THE JESUITS. 207
persecute and combat all heretics, schismatics, and rebels
to our lord the pope." *
As for the priests, every one knows that they are bound to
swear implicit obedience to their bishops. It is exactly the
same with the different orders and religious congregations.
The Jesuits are, therefore, not the only ones bound by vow
to labour for the restoration of Rome's sovereign power,
and for the subjection of temporal rulers. What distin
guishes them from other orders is their perfect accordance
with theocratic principles, and the unremitting energy with
which they follow them up to all their consequences. They
it is who sustain the burden of the strife, and spur on the
combatants. Just now, indeed, the superior clergy, though never
ceasing to extol the Jesuits, find themselves compelled to
use language somewhat more liberal than formerly. But who
will believe that these manifestations are genuine ? Has not
Father Roothaan himself but lately declared that his order
applauded the tendencies and the acts of the new pope ?
Does he not loudly protest against those who have written
that in Piedmont and Sicily, as well as in the Roman
States, the Jesuits are striving to turn away princes from
encouraging progress ? Is he not indignant that they should
be styled retrograde, and they should be accused of favouring
the system of Metternich ?
* Juro, honores, privilegia, et auctoritatem sanctae Romanee ecclesiae
et successorum prcedictorum conservare, defendere, augere, promovere
curabo. Mandata apostolica humiliter recipiam et quam diligentissime
exequar. Promitto et juro me haereticos, schismaticos et rebelles
domino nostro papas omni conatu persecuturum et impugnaturum.
Ex pontificali Romano, capite de consacratione episcoporum.

208 SECEET PLAN
"Our Company," he says, "is a religious order, solemnly
approved by the church. Its sole object is the glory of
God and the salvation of souls ; its means are the practice
of the evangelical counsels, and the zeal of which the
apostles and apostolic men of all ages have set it the
example. It knows no other means. It is a stranger to
politics ; and has never allied itself with any party what
soever. Calumny may be pleased to spread perfidious
insinuations, and to represent the Jesuits as mixed up with
political intrigues ; but I defy any one to point out to me a
single priest, amongst those who are subordinate to me,
who has departed on this point from the spirit and the
formal prescriptions of our institution.
" Will any one pretend to insinuate that the Jesuits of
the Roman States have made an alliance with Austria ?
Surely this would be attributing a singular importance to
these men of religion ! But this supposition is so contrary
to common sense, reason, and evidence, that it does not
even require to be refuted.
" The Company of Jesus, like the church, has neither
antipathy nor predilection for the political constitutions of
the several states. Its members accept with sincerity the
form of government under which Providence has marked
their place, whether a friendly power encourages them, or
whether it merely respects in them the rights which they
enjoy in common with other citizens.
"If the political institutions of the country they inhabit
are defective, they quietly endure their defects ; if they are
in course of improvement, they applaud every amelioration;
if those institutions grant new privileges to the people,
they claim their just share of this advantage ; if they

OF THE JESUITS 209
become open to more extended and liberal views, the
Jesuits profit by this to give more extension to works of
beneficence and zeal. Everywhere they bow before the
laws ; they respect public authorities ; they are endowed
with all the feelings of good and loyal citizens ; they
partake with these their obligations, their burdens, and
their rejoicings.
" It is as contrary to truth as to public notoriety that the
Jesuits are in a state of permanent conspiracy against the
august pontiff whom the whole universe salutes with its
acclamations. To love, venerate, bless, and defend Pope
Pius IX., to obey him in all things, to applaud the wise
reforms and ameliorations which he shall be pleased to
introduce, is for every Jesuit a duty of conscience and of
justice, which it will ever be grateful to him to fulfil." *
Up to this day, then, history has been nothing else,
with regard to the Jesuits, than a perpetual calumny — a
diabolical conspiracy. Thus, we are not to accept any
historians but such as are sanctioned by them. What has
been seen in past times, what is seen at present, is not to
be believed ; the most authentic witnesses are to be sacri
ficed to the immaculate purity of this innocent order. At
Lucerne, at Freiburg, in the Valais, in all places where
they have succeeded in establishing their influence, however
heavy may be the chains with which they have laden the
people, however intolerable the compression which they
have established, we are to call it all the reign of social
rights and of true liberty ! Well ; let us say nothing more
of the past, which pronounces against them such terrible
» L'Ami de la Religion, No. 4434.
s 2

210 SECEET PLAN
condemnations ; let us look at what is close to us — let us
see what is their favourite regime ; let us see, amongst
other laws exhumed from the dust of the middle ages, what
decrees the Grand Council of the Valais, acting under their
direction, has pronounced against illicit assemblies, blameable
reports and speeches, &c. Here follows the first article : —
" A fine of from twenty to two hundred francs, and
imprisonment for not less than a month, nor more than two
years, or one of these punishments only, shall be inflicted
on those who shall utter scandalous words against ihe holy
Catholic and Roman religion, or against public morality ;
this sentence does not regard blasphemers who shall be
punished according to ihe criminal laws; likewise on those who
introduce, placard, expose, lend, distribute, or possess know
ingly, or without authorization, writings or infamous books, or
caricatures, which attack ihe holy religion of the state or its
ministers .... The said objects, moreover, shall be
confiscated. In case of repetition of the offence, the
highest amount of the fine and the longest term of
imprisonment may be doubled."
The Semeur makes the following observations on this
article : —
" A citizen of the Valais happens to give it as his
opinion, that such or such a miracle, proclaimed by the
reverend fathers, is apocryphal : — scandalous words against
the holy Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion ; fine and
imprisonment for an offence so heinous ! He ventures to
assert that certain cures do not set the best possible
example : — most scandalous words, which must be punished
by the maximum of fine and imprisonment ! He goes,
perhaps, further ; he disputes the title of the Virgin Mary

OF THE JESUITS. 211
to the adoration of the faithful, and maintains that the
Roman church is at variance on this point with the New
Testament : — this is more than scandal, it is a blasphemy,
and blasphemy is a crime in this exceedingly well-governed
canton. Our citizen of the Valais, with rash temerity,
affirms that the morality of the Jesuits is sometimes very
immoral :— blasphemy in the highest degree, and an igno
minious punishment must be awarded for so heinous a
crime !
" Is it conceivable that a law of this nature should be
promulgated in 1845, on the frontiers of France and of Italy,
in the very face of a press which takes note of all these
atrocities ; whilst the Jesuits wish to make it appear that
they are prepared to admit a certain liberty ? Is it
comprehensible that they should offer to all Europe the
spectacle of this ignoble thirst for despotism, this base and
odious impudence, for which no name is strong enough in
any known human tongue ? Our country (France) was
justly and deeply enraged against the law of sacrilege, which
was abolished in obedience to the unanimous voice of the
nation, after the days of July. But what was this law of
sacrilege compared with the law promulgated in the Valais
on the subject of scandalous words against the Catholic
religion or its ministers ? It was mildness, gentleness, and
tolerance itself. It was only called into operation on the
occasion of an offence committed in a place of worship
during the exercises of religion, or of a direct attack upon
a minister of the church. In the Valais it was enough to
have uttered scandalous words, — and where ? In the street,
in an inn, at home, perhaps before strangers ! Did the In
quisition go farther ? What do I say 1 — did it go so far ?

212 SECEET PLAN
" We thought that the ordinances of the eleventh
century, which prescribed that the tongue of the blasphemer
or the heretic should be pierced with a hot iron, no longer
lived but in history, as monuments of atrocious barbarism.
We were mistaken ; the Jesuits will not suffer anything
that is cruel or infamous to perish : they may hide it for a
time, they close their arsenal when the tempest roars, but
let sunshine come forth again and they bring out
their chains, their instruments of torture, and their merci
less steel.
" Tell us, after this, of the generous principles of the
Jesuits and the Romish priests ! Boast of your love of
liberty ! Tell us for the thousandth time that you, and you
alone, know how to respect the rights of nations and the
progress of humanity ! Advocate democracy in your
sermons and in your journals ! We know you too well,
and shortly there will not be one reasonable man to be
found who does not discern, under your borrowed mask,
your insatiable tyrannic instincts !
"If there were any sincerity in your liberal maxims,
you would at least express your indignation against such
laws as those which have been promulgated in the Valais ;
you would attack the abominable enterprises of the Jesuits ;
but which of your journals is capable of such honourable
frankness ? The Univers, and the Ami de La Religion, and
all the ecclesiastical gazettes, will keep silence, and on the
morrow, even, these same papers will not be ashamed to
reproach their adversaries with being inimical to liberty !
" Comedians ! comedians ! the wretched piece that
you are playing will soon come to an end ! beware of its
denouement!"

OF THE JESUITS. 213

VIII.

Just as I had finished these lines there was discovered
in the Bibliotheque Royale a manuscript, containing on the
subject of the Jesuits some pages which were not intended
for publication, and which possess a curious interest at the
distance of two hundred years from the date when they
were written. They are by Thomas Campanella, well
known by his book on the City of ihe Sun and other works,
but still more celebrated for afflictions which would have
subdued any other soul than his. His testimony comes
forth opportunely after having remained buried nearly two
centuries. Campanella's pages may be considered the
complement of the Secret Plan ; we learn from them once
more by what occult mechanism some thousands of men
dispersed over the face of the globe succeed in exercising
an almost incredible power. I pass over pages of the celer
brated Dominican, which contain only what would seem a
tedious repetition of facts and artifices already divulged in
books that have obtained great notoriety ; and will only
remark with Campanella, who adduces historical facts in
proof of his assertion, that the Jesuits only exhibit great
zeal for the pope's infallibility when it serves their own plans,
but that they make not the least account of it when it speaks
in a tone of authority to impose restraints and rules upon
them. Let us hear the author.*
" Their father-general resides constantly in Rome, all
the others yield him absolute submission. He has selected
* Instruzione a' princlpi intorno alia maniera colla quale si governano
i Padri Gesuiti. Bibl. Royale de Paris, No. 636.

214 SECEET PLAN
some fathers who are called assistants because they con
tinually aid him. There is at least one of these for each
nation, by whose name he is called, one being styled the
Assistant of France, another of Spain, a third of Italy, a
fourth of England, a fifth of Austria, and so on for all the
other provinces and kingdoms. Each of them has for
office to acquaint the father-general as to all events of state
which take place in the province or kingdom, for which he is
assistant ; and this he does by means of his correspondents
who reside in the provincial towns of the said kingdom.
Now these correspondents inform themselves with scrupu
lous care as to the character, inclinations, and intentions of
the sovereigns, and by each courier they acquaint the
assistant with whatever facts have recently occurred or
been brought to light. These are immediately communica
ted by the assistant to the father-general, who thereupon
assembling his council, they proceed together to perform an
anatomy of the world, and scrutinize the interests or the
projects of all christian princes. After having weighed all
the documents, they agree among themselves to favour the
interests of one prince and thwart those of another, making
everything turn to their own advantage. Now as the
lookers-on more easily detect the sleigh ts-of-hand committed
than those who are playing the game, so these fathers
having under their eyes the interests of all princes, can very
accurately appreciate the exigencies of times and places,
and put in operation the most decisive means in order to
favour a prince whom they are sure they can make use of
for the realisation of their own interested views.
" The Jesuit fathers confess a great part of the nobility
in the Catholic States, and often the sovereigns themselves;

OF THE JESUITS. 215
whereby they are enabled to penetrate every design and
resolution, to know the dispositions of princes and subjects,
and to lay them before the father-general or an assistant.
" Anybody of the least penetration may easily convince
himself how many perplexities they can cause to those
princes whom their own interests, the sole and exclusive
motive of their actions, point out to them as adversaries.
" Secrecy is necessary in state affairs : a state is undone
when its secrets are divulged. But the Jesuit fathers, that
is to say the father-general and his assistants, whether by
means of the confessional or of the mutual consultations
held by the correspondents who reside in all the chief
towns of Christendom, or through other adherents, of whom
we shall speak presently, are exactly and minutely informed
of all the decisions come to in the most private councils ;
and they know the forces, revenues, and expenditure of
sovereigns, better in a manner than the sovereigns them
selves. All this costs them only so much postage. At
Rome alone, as the post-masters attest, their postages for
each courier amount to 60 or 70, and often to 100 gold
crowns. Being thus profoundly acquainted with the
interests of all sovereigns, is it not in their power to
weaken the credit of any one of them with the rest, to ruin
any sovereign they please in the estimation of his people,
to make the latter his enemies, and to instil the leaven of
revolt into the state — and all this the more easily, since by
means of confessions and consultations they penetrate into
the most secret thoughts of the subjects ? "
After this follow details respecting the various classes of
Jesuits, laymen and priests, and their auxiliaries in sundry
occult functions. " They have them," says Campanella,

216 SECEET PLAN
" in every kingdom, province, and court." Their choice
falls on shrewd and adroit men, whom they recompense
with pensions, benefices, or high offices.
" The fourth kind," he says, "is that of the political
Jesuits, in whose hands is the government of the whole
order. They are of those whom the devil has tempted
with that temptation which Christ endured in the wilder
ness, hcec omnia tibi dabo ; and they have not shrunk from
the offer. They have made it their task to constitute their
company a perfect monarchy ; and they establish it in
Rome, the centre of confluence for almost all the affairs of
Christendom. There resides the chief of these politicians —
that is to say, their general — with many others who profess
the same maxims. Being informed beforehand, through
their spies and numerous correspondents, of all the affairs
of the greatest importance which are pending at the court
of Rome, and having their minds fixed upon those issues
which accord with their own interests, each of them is
assiduous in attendance on the cardinals, ambassadors, and
prelates, with whom they adroitly ingratiate themselves.
They talk to them of the affair in question or about to be
brought forward — represent it under such colours as suit
themselves — and do this so cleverly, that they make their
hearers believe black is white. And forasmuch as first
impressions, especially when they are derived from clerical
persons, usually leave deep traces on the mind, it follows
that extremely important negociations, conducted by ambas
sadors, princes, and other eminent personages of the Roman
court, have often not succeeded as princes would have
desired, the Jesuits having forestalled the influence of the
princes or their agents by their insidious statements.

OF THE JESUITS. 217
" The same artfulness which they use with the Roman
prelates, they exhibit also in their dealings with sovereigns,
either directly or through the medium of the Jesuits of the
second class who are away from Rome. Thus does the
greater part of the affairs of Christendom pass through the
hands of the Jesuits ; and those affairs alone succeed to
which they offer no resistance.
"They formerly supplicated His Holiness Gregory XIII.
(on the colourable plea of the good of the Church) to enjoin
all legates and apostolic nuncios to take, for companions and
confidants, Jesuits whose councils should guide them in all
their actions.
" By such manoeuvres, and by that knowledge they
have of affairs of state, the principal Jesuits have acquired
the friendship of several temporal and spiritual princes,
whom they have prevailed on to do and say many things
for their advantage. Hence have resulted two great evils.
" The first is, that, abusing the friendship and kindness
of princes, they have not scrupled to ruin many rich and
noble families, by usurping their patrimonies. They have
enticed into their order such of the pupils in their schools
as were most remarkable for their talents ; and very often,
when the latter have become useless to them through
infirmities or other causes, the Jesuits have turned them
off under some pretext or another, but without restoring
their property, of which, during the period of profession,
the order had taken care to become possessor.
" The second evil is, that these fathers are sedulous to
make known the friendship and intimacy they enjoy with
princes, and give it out for still greater than it really is, in
order to engage the sympathies of all the ministers, and

218 SECEET PLAN
thus excite everybody to have recourse to them for obtain
ing favours. They have publicly boasted of their ability to
create cardinals, nuncios, lieutenants, governors, and other
functionaries. There are some among them who have even
made bold to affirm that their general can do much more
than the pope ; and others have alleged that it is better to
belong to their order than to be a cardinal. All these
things have been said publicly ; and there is scarcely any
one who, in conversing familiarly with them, has not heard
them give utterance to the like sentiments.
" Amply provided with resources of this kind, they
affirm that they can favour or disgrace whomsoever they
please ; and covering themselves with the cloak of religion,
the better to secure belief, they often succeed in their
designs. " It is not long since one of the leading Jesuits, speaking
in public to one of the leading sovereigns in the name of
his Company, began with these audacious words, founded
on the notion that they are a Power: — 'Our Company
has always maintained a good understanding with your
Serenity,' &c.
" These reverend fathers make it their business to have
it believed that all those whom the prince favours in any
manner whatever have been their favourites ; and, by this
means, they acquire more mastery over subjects than their
monarch himself. This is highly prejudicial to the latter,
both because it is inconsistent with every interest of state
that ecclesiastics so ambitious and politic should have so
much power over the will of ministers as to be able, if they
please, to produce treason or riots ; and because, through
their influence over the ministers, their adherents, they

OF THE JESUITS. 219
introduce sworn Jesuits into the prince's service as coun
cillors or secretaries ; these, again, intrigue until they induce
the prince to employ some Jesuits as confessors or preachers,
and then all together ply their task as spies and informers,
rendering a minute account to the general of all that passes
in the secret councils. Thence it happens that certain
projects get wind immediately, secrets of great importance
are discovered, yet no one can tell who is the traitor, and
sometimes suspicion falls on those who are not guilty."
" As from different plants the alembic extracts an
unguent capable of curing many sores ; as the bees suck
honey from many flowers, so the Jesuit fathers draw profit
from the infallible knowledge they have of all the interests
of princes, and of the facts which occur in all parts, being
skilled to the use of speech, so as to obtain their profit
through the good or evil fortune of others, but more fre
quently through the latter than the former. Often, too,
they prevail with princes, whose dispositions they have
already sounded, by hinting at the possession of great
means to enable the latter to accomplish their designs and
crown all their desires. But when by the help of princes
they have succeeded in their views, judging that if they
aided those princes to rise too high, the latter might one
day do them a mischief, they begin, as lawyers do with
their causes, to protract and delay everything, and, with
surprising artifice and cunning, they turn the cards, and
finally ruin the designs they had themselves suggested.
" From all that has been said, it follows that the Jesuits
never act with the least honesty towards any princes what
ever, lay or ecclesiastic, and that they aid them only as far
as their own interests require. It also follows that their

220 SECEET PLAN
aid should never be accepted by princes, and still less by
prelates, because they are equally ready to bestow their
attachment on everybody, and make themselves Frenchmen
with the French, Spaniards with Spaniards, and so forth,
according to circumstances ; and since, provided they
compass their own ends, they care not though it be to the
detriment of this one or that, the enterprises in which the
Jesuit fathers have meddled have rarely had a good result.
Moreover, knowing the interests of all princes, and
being exactly informed of all that is daily transacted in the
most secret councils, those who profess themselves partisans
of France propose to the king, and his principal ministers,
certain conditions of importance, which the political fathers
transmit to them from Rome. Now, as they do the same
with regard to Spain and other countries, there ensues such
a jealous distrust in the hearts of princes that the one no
longer puts any faith in the other, which is immensely
prejudicial to the public tranquillity and the general welfare
of the Christian world, such distrust rendering very difficult
the formation of a league against the common enemy, for
peace between the princes themselves is insecure.
" Sometimes we see a person afflicted with a dangerous
disease ; he shrieks out piteously ; every one thinks him in
great danger, but no one can guess the nature and origin
of the disease. Thus every one complains of the Jesuits :
one, because he is persecuted by them ; another, because
they have dealt dishonestly by him ; but still the evil goes
on, and it is not easy to apprehend its cause. Now, that
cause consists in their huge desire to aggrandise themselves
evermore. To accomplish this, they will stop at nothing,
whether it be to displease everybody, or to deceive princes,

OF THE JESUITS. 221
or to oppress the poor, or to extort widows' fortunes, or to
ruin the most noble families ; and they very often sow the
seeds of suspicion among Christian princes, in order to have
opportunities of mixing in their most important affairs.
" To demonstrate how excessive is their passion for
aggrandisement, I might adduce numberless proofs from
experience. In the time of Gregory XIII. had not the
Jesuits the audacity to solicit of the pope the investiture of
all the parochial churches of Rome, in order to lay the
foundations of their monarchy ? But what they could not
obtain in Rome they have at last recently obtained in
England, where they have procured the election of an
arch-priest, bound by oath toi their Company. This man,
far from protecting the clergy, is like a ravening wolf to
all the priests who wish to be independent of the Jesuits,
and drives them to despair, forbidding them to converse
together under severe penalties. Almost all the English
clergy have become sworn Jesuits, and none are now received
in the colleges but those who pledge their words to become
Jesuits ; so that should that kingdom return to Catholicism,
England would give birth to an effective Jesuit monarchy,
since the ecclesiastical revenues, all the abbeys, benefices,
and bishoprics, the arch-priestships, and the other dignities,
would be conferred on none but Jesuits.
" If now, when they have no temporal jurisdiction,
they exhibit to the world such great and scandalous dis
orders, what would they do if unhappily one of them were
elected pope ? In the first place, he would fill the sacred
college with Jesuits, and by that means the pontificate
would remain for ever in the hands of the Company.
Moreover, the sacred college being moved only by its
t 2

222 SECEET PLAN
interests, and possessing the papal power, might they not
endanger the states of several princes, especially those
most contiguous to Rome ? The Jesuit pontiff would
bestow on his order the investiture of some towns or of
some temporal jurisdiction, in which it would adroitly
maintain itself, to the great injury of other princes. When
the sacred college was filled with Jesuits, the latter would
be the arbiters of Christ's whole patrimony ; and like the
dropsical patient, whose thirst increases as he drinks, the
more greatness they acquired the more they would covet,
and they would cause a thousand troubles. And as there
is nothing so susceptible of changes as states, these fathers
would put in operation all their artifices and resources, and
would strive to disorganize everything in order to realize
universally the form of domination which is dearest to them;
and by this means they would become real monarchs.
"Were I ordered to write what I think the best to
keep the Jesuits within rule, without doing them the least
injury, but on the contrary procuring them the greatest
advantage — for I would fain make them real monarchs, not
of this world, which is but vile clay, but of souls, which are
Christ's treasure — I should be ready to do so with charity,
and with all the strength it should please the Lord to
grant me."

IX.

I shall be asked, perhaps, do I think that any one has
ventured to suggest elsewhere than in the occult committee
the startling project of dispensing priests, monks, or nuns,

OF THE JESUITS. 223
from real celibacy ? If it were so, it would still be very
difficult to obtain tangible evidence of the promulgation of
such a doctrine. Though I am of opinion that in its most
audacious extreme it must have remained unrealized, I still
believe that something of the kind has gone abroad ; and if
I am not mistaken, I have met with some tokens of
its existence. Nothing is more common than the licentiousness of the
clergy, at least in Italy, where little pains are taken to
conceal it ; for the heads of the church are the less disposed
to visit it with punishment, since the impunity they extend
to it seems a sort of compensation for the total sacrifice of
freedom to which the clergy are still doomed.
I knew a lady, a widow with one child, who was fre
quently visited by a clergyman of staid habits and irre
proachable character. No one in the world would have
presumed to entertain the least suspicion as to the nature
of their intercourse, so extremely respectful was their
behaviour towards each other.
One day, just as he had left the house, I paid a visit to
the lady — a charming person, whose beauty was of the
kind peculiar to that period of life at which youth is past,
but decline has not begun. The moment I set eyes on her
I was greatly surprised to see patches of white powder
scattered over her bosom and shoulders. The venerable
clergyman wore hair-powder.
Unwilling to hurt her feelings, but regardful of her
interest, I led her to a looking-glass, where she blushed in
great confusion. I entreated her to pardon my boldness,
assured her of my discretion, and at last put her at her
ease. She then confessed to me that she tenderly loved

224 SECEET PLAN
that grave and austere man, whom any one, to look at him,
would have supposed insensible to such a passion ; but she
assured me that under a rough bark he concealed a warm
and loving heart.
Of course I did not allow so good an opportunity of
putting questions to escape me. I asked her, in the first place,
how her reverend friend reconciled his vow of chastity with
his conduct." It is true," she said, " the church must have priests
who are not married, for otherwise the clergy would lack
authority and prestige ; and besides, confession is perhaps
still more necessary than preaching (astonishing remark!);
but If celibacy were abolished, there could be no more
confession. On the other hand, how can men help loving?
A man does not put off human nature when he becomes a
priest. Now, there is but one way of reconciling these
seeming contrarieties : and that is to love, and even with all
the ardour of the senses, but without compromising the
clergyman, making, if necessary, the greatest sacrifices —
except, she added with a smile, that of not loving — in
order not to expose the priesthood to the contempt or
derision of the multitude.
"As for our affection, it is no obstacle, we are very sure,
to sacred duties : far from being so, it excites us to fulfil
them with more devotedness. Perhaps you will be surprised
if I tell you that he whom I love regards, as a recompense
from God for his zeal, the possession of a mistress who so
well understands her position, and conducts herself with
such prudence."
When I remarked to her that I could not understand
the vehement indignation with which the individual in

OF THE JESUITS. 225
question professed to regard such faults, and that this
appeared to me an instance of bad faith and hypocrisy, she
made answer that he acted in perfect sincerity ; for he
believed firmly that the clergy ought to take care never to
afford the laity grounds for scandal ; what incensed him was
not the fact itself (since he knew well that every man, priest
or lay, was irresistibly impelled to an attachment for some
woman), but the levity and indifference to the interests of the
church shown in the neglect of precautions against discovery,
which are less difficult to take than is commonly supposed.
Some years afterwards the lady's lover reaped the reward
of his piety, decorum, and prudence, being appointed a
bishop. His mistress accompanied him to his diocese,
where he had no sooner arrived than he took measures
which to many priests seemed intolerable. It was seriously
believed that he was an enemy to the sex, and one of those
whom nature has created incomplete. One of my friends,
who was among the victims of these inexorable reforms,
wrote and told me that he was living on bread and water
in a convent, as a punishment for a liaison of which he had
made no secret, and that he could not tell when his penance
would end. He was not aware that I could deliver him
forthwith. A sharp note addressed to the lady, in which I
strongly reprobated the rigour displayed in the case, pro
duced the desired effect. I saw her some time afterwards.
She defended the prelate's conduct, and thought he was
right in not tolerating those thoughtless and awkward
persons who exposed the church to such serious disadvan
tages. You know well, she said, that his lordship is not
so unjust as to desire that his priests should surpass human
nature ; but he thinks he has a right to insist on prudence

226 SECEET PLAN
and circumspection for the honour of the church. And
then, as she had picked up a smattering of Latin, she
quoted to me (from St. Paul !) these words, which the
bishops are constantly repeating to the clergy : Si non
caste, saltern caute — If not chaste, at least be cautious.

X.

Let us now refer to Section XV. of the Secret Sitting,
in which mention is made of the hospitals a, la Saint Roch.
This passage would have remained for me a dead letter,
but for a fact which cast a strong light upon it.
When very young, I had been placed as a boarder with
an ex-Capuchin, Father Evasio Fantini, who was every
moment beset by crowds of penitents of every rank and
condition. What I saw and heard early excited in me
reflections which were not without influence on the bent of
my mind. At a later period I passed some time with the
old man during my vacations, and used to accompany him
in all his walks, delighting to hear him call up his recollec
tions of the cloisters, of which he was a living echo. He
took pleasure in making me acquainted with everything
that passed in them to the minutest details, with a frankness
and kindly simplicity worthy of his age. What I learned
from him was more useful to me, towards judging of
monks and the monastic system, than all the books I
have since read.
One evening at Casal Monferrat, as we were returning
home from a walk, we observed an extraordinary bustle
and excitement, and soon learned that faint cries had been

OF THE JESUITS. 227
heard issuing from underground in a girl's boarding-school ;
masons had been employed to search the spot, and a new
born infant had been found in a disgustingly filthy state in
the privy of the house occupied by D. Bossola, a parish
priest of the town. D. Bossola and his servant-woman
were proved guilty. I will not repeat all the observations
uttered among the crowd ; it was not safe for priests to be
seen there at such a moment, and we hastily came away.
The priest was sent to a convent, and his accomplice was
incarcerated. And, by-the-bye, there was much talk some
time afterwards of the interest shown for her by the clergy ;
she received visits, was comforted, aided, protected, and
treated with the most assiduous kindness.
Just as Father Fantini and I were quitting the spot, we
were accosted by a reverend Jesuit father, who had just
stepped out of a carriage, and learned the whole story.
He was angry, but for reasons we were far from suspecting.
" Never would such things happen," he said to us, " if
the clergy, and especially the bishops, had an ounce of
brains" (un' oncia di sale in zacca). " Those who wielded
power, religious or political, were all a pack of asses. It
ought to be impossible for such dangerous scandals ever to
be made public."
"What would you do to prevent it?" said the old
ex-Capuchin. " You Jesuits are men with grand secrets ;
but amongst them all you have not yet found a remedy for
a great evil. You have not a secret for effecting that a
man shall not be human. I have been confessing both
sexes for fifty years ; the confessional is my main business.
Now, up to this time my penitents have always been in the
same tale ; one most obstinate sin holds the sceptre and

228 SECEET PLAN
sways all the rest ; and if God will not pass the sponge
over it, hell will be paved with nothing but tonsures, and
peopled only with celibataries."
The Jesuit smiled, shook his head, and said he did not
understand. " Leave human nature as it is," he said ; " men will not
reform what has been made by an artificer who will suffer
none to correct him. As for me, I think nature very good,
especially on that point on which people so foolishly affect
to consider her bad. One thing alone is important in the
matter — namely, to know clearly whether it is intended
that the church shall subsist, or shall share the fate of
many another buried cult. Confession is the prime
mover of the church ; and without celibacy there is no
confession." I replied to him that it is not an easy thing to make
celibacy and the confessional go together ;' that it is not
easy to contrive that the candle shall not take fire when the
match is applied to it.
" Too true, alas !" said the old man immediately ; " the
lamb will remain safe and sound under the wolf's tooth,
before the young priest, with his passions glowing, can
remain long without burning in the furnace of the
confessional." " The evil," said the Jesuit, "is not where you see it.
No one is afraid of burning in the furnace ; and the
candle," he added slily, " likes to be lighted and relighted
as long as it lasts."
" I begin to understand you," said the old man. " Thou
becomest thy name : Jesuit ! " (For venerated as he was
by all, Father Fantini said thou and thee to everybody, from

OF THE JESUITS. 229
the peasant to personages of the highest birth.*) " What
you complain of is solely that the priest's honour suffers,
that confession is jeopardised, and even in danger of total
wreck." " I say, by all means pluck the rose," said the Jesuit ;
" but no pricking of the fingers ! And to explain myself
precisely, I will ask why means should not be taken to
make it impossible that a priest should ever meet with
mischances and be exposed to obloquy ? Might there not
be provided in every province establishments, in which the
sex which suffers most from the results of human weakness
might find a refuge free from care or fear, or any of those
consequences which make it so often repent of having
yielded ? "
" Why, you don't mean to say," exclaimed the old man,
" that you would have a seraglio established in every dis
trict, to which none should have access but monks and
priests, and where they should find accomplices com
fortably boarded, lodged, and clothed at the expense of
the church ? "
" Not exactly that, but something like it," was the
reply ; and then the speaker looked on us with a scrutinizing
glance, as if he hesitated to proceed. As for me, the reader
may imagine my curiosity to know what he was driving at.
All I did to lead him on was to let him understand that,
although the octogenarian stood out against him, he would
not find me invincibly opposed to his notions.
" Still," said I, " it would be favouring and encouraging
* The Translator, however, thinks it better to drop, after the
first phrase, a form of expression which in English does not imply
familiarity. U

230 SECEET PLAN
a passion which, even when it encounters obstacles or conse
quences apparently the most likely to check it, still rushes
forward with undiminished audacity and blindness. What
would become of it if every obstacle was removed and
every untoward consequence was rendered impossible ? "
" Had not David at least twenty wives ?" he replied.
" Whenever he was smitten with the beauty of a daughter of
Eve, did he not make her his concubine ? Would not any
one who should now imitate him be regarded as the most
abominable of libertines ? And yet is it not written that
David was a man after God's own heart ? Other holy men
had a greater number of women. Solomon is not blamed
for having had a thousand, but only for having taken them
from among the heathen, and for having been beguiled by
them to worship their gods. Why, then, should it be a
crime to know one woman, when in former times, notwith
standing the oppression thence resulting for the woman,
God was not offended with those who indulged so copiously
in that respect ? "
I will not repeat all he said on this subject, for it would
be necessary to enter into a labyrinth of theological ques
tions. But what strongly excited my attention was his
mention of a Hospital of St. Roch, existing, he said, at
Rome. The rules of the institution, which he explained to
us in detail, are such as to secure any woman from the
usual unpleasant consequences of female frailty. These
regulations seemed fabulous to Father Fantini ; but the
Jesuit insisted so strongly on the reality of what he had
been telling us, that for my part I did not hesitate to believe
him. He met all our objections without flinching.
I myself was afterwards assailed with the same objec-

OF THE JESUITS. 231
tions in Switzerland, when I offered an explanation of the
passage in my text wherein mention is made of a Hospital
of St. Roch. Fortunately I was able to put them entirely
aside by means of a testimony that leaves no grounds for
suspicion. In the following passage, written by M. Poujoulat, that
writer has unwittingly done me a great service :• — *
" One very admirable abode of charity is the arch-hospital
of St. Roch, intended for pregnant women who wish to be
delivered in secret. They are not asked either their names
or their condition, and they may even keep their faces
veiled during the whole time they are within the walls.
Should one of them die, her name would not be inserted
in any register, numbers being invariably used in the
establishment instead of names. Young women, whose
pregnancy, if known, would bring dishonour on themselves
or their families, are received at St. Roch several months
before their time, so as to prevent the shame and despair
that might drive them to infanticide. The chaplains,
physicians, midwives, and all who are employed in the
establishment, are bound to strict secrecy, which is enjoined
under the severest penalties ; whoevee should violate
this law would be aeeaigned befoee the teibunal of
the holy office. Every provision is made that nothing
which occurs within St. Roch shall transpire out of doors.
The arch-hospital is managed by pious widows. All
strangers, be they who they may, are absolutely excluded ;
none but those who are employed in the hospital are
allowed to cross the threshold. After their confinement,
* Toscane et Rome, Correspondance d'ltalie, par M. Poujoulat
Bruxelles, 1840; Lettre xxii.

232 SECEET PLAN
the patients can leave the house at any hour of the night
they think most favourable, and dressed in garments that
disguise their gait. The house, too, is isolated, and all
around it is solitude and mystery.
" What can be more generous, noble, and christian,
than these pious cares to spread the cloak of pity over the
errors of frailty ! "
The suppression of foundling hospitals certainly cannot
take place under existing circumstances without serious
inconveniences ; before they could be dispensed with,
nothing less would be requisite than a fundamental change
in the system of society. As for the institution of St. Roch,
there is, after all, nothing in it very generous or very
christian. In what interest has it been founded? Who
are the authors of its regulations ? They are an immense
number of celibataries, who have but too strong an interest
in concealing by any and every means the vast evils of a
false celibacy. What is really surprising is, that those who
profess themselves the guardians of the public morals, and
who inveigh against vice and debauchery as a consequence
of the incredulity of the age, should be the very persons
who display such ingenuity in inventing the most efficacious
means for screening the licentious from public observation.
What a sublime effort of piety it is to rid oneself of every
thorn, and to enjoy the perfume of the rose without fear, as
the Jesuit expressed himself! That same cloak of pity,
spread with pious care over the errors of frailty, would have
been called an abominable invention, had it been woven by
other hands.
" The sacred groves," said our Jesuit, " must by all
means be rendered inaccessible to every profane eye,

OF THE JESUITS. 233
and the rash intruder must be laid low by the avenging
thunder." The ex-Capuchin, pursuing the same imagery, and
alluding to a great number of monks and priests whom he
had long confessed, replied — " As for what you call the
sacred grove, I have handled a great deal of its timber, and
found it all rotten and worm-eaten : the worm was always
the same. It is a very bad sort of timber, indeed."
" It is one," said the Jesuit, looking particularly at me,
" that can be made to shine like the purest gold."
When he was about to quit us, I asked his name. " Is
it his Dame you ask?" said the old Capuchin; "but do
you not know that a Jesuit of the superior grades, who is
on a mission, must have at least as many different names as
there are hours in the day ? What a child you are ! He
has come to feel our pulses, and that is a reason the more
why he should invent a name on the spot." Upon this,
the Jesuit opened the door and left us, with a sardonic smile
exclaiming, " It is no lying proverb that says, ' There is
nothing simpler and slier than a Capuchin.' "
" I know a truer one," retorted the old man, " and that
is, 'It takes seven Capuchins to make a Jesuit.'" We
parted with a hearty laugh on both sides.
But to come to the fact I alluded to just now. The
Rev. Mr. Hartley, an Anglican minister, to whom I had
imparted the Secret Plan in Geneva, after having come to
me three or four times to read it, told me he did not doubt
its authenticity ; that to suppose it my own work would
infer my possession of qualities and conditions of which I
was entirely destitute ; but that he thought I had let
myself be tempted to add to it the pages concerning
u 2

234 SECEET PLAN
celibacy, by way of a climax to all the rest. "This part
of the work," he said, " does not appear to me to be
credible." " So strongly," replied I, " do I share in your opinion
as to its improbability, that I have been a hundred times
tempted to suppress it. Had I invented the Secret Plan,
I should never have ventured to go so far."
I then narrated to him everything concerning the
Hopital St. Roch. I could not enumerate all the objec
tions with which he assailed me, and with such force as to
silence me completely. There were moments, even, when
I fancied I had been made the dupe of a forged tale ; and
I was quite appalled when I contemplated the picture which
my reverend friend drew of the consequences flowing from
those regulations of the Hospital of St. Roch, which the
Jesuit so much admired.
The Anglican minister was not favourable to the publi
cation of the Secret Plan. Though he believed that the
tactics described in it were real, and was convinced that to
them Jesuitism owes its most brilliant conquests, yet he too,
like many others, thought it imprudent and dangerous to
initiate the multitude into all these stratagems. He again
attacked me keenly on the pages which he averred were
my work.
" Supposing such an institution existed," said he, "could
any man of sense believe that it could have remained
occult ? Would married persons have abstained from
denouncing it, or at least holding it up to public derision ?
It would thus have become known, and would have broken
down before it could have made any great way. Think
how long Rome has been visited by legions of English, who

OF THE JESUITS. 235
explore and anatomise it more closely than the Romans
themselves. Consider how much ridicule and opprobrium is
cast on our clergy for having rejected celibacy ; what finer
opportunity could they have had to lay bare, to the
disgrace of the Romish clergy, the expedients by which
they secure themselves against all scandal ? Yet not a
word has ever been written to that effect. Had I no other
argument than this, I should deem it invincible ; but there
are others besides of a higher order. I know how institu
tions, evidently bad, come to be submitted to through the
force of centuries, heedlessness, the tyranny of habit, or
potent interests. But most of them sprang up in barbarous
times, and were formed little by little. Now, as for the
regulations in question, if they existed, we should have to
admit that they were the work of our own times, and that
they had been planned, not piecemeal and gradually, but in
one bulk, for the sole purpose of giving free course to the
vices of the clergy ! And who are those who should have
proposed to themselves such an aim ? Not one, or many
priests, but the whole body of the prelates, with the pope
at their head. I cannot bring myself to attribute to them
such consummate depravity as this would infer. However
I dislike Rome, I cannot possibly believe that a numerous
body of men who respect themselves, who are watched by
the public, and have formidable enemies, could conspire
together to systematize the impunity of debauchery, and
even take extraordinary pains to put it at its ease ! Why,
it would be a vast brothel, under high protection, and
screened from infamy. The encouragement to crime would
here be flagrant. You would have done better," he con
cluded in a tone of severity, " not to put forward this fable.

236 SECEET PLAN
The crimes of Rome are weighty enough without inventing
others to charge her with. These objections stand like a
wall of brass, which nothing can shake."
Any one who had seen me would have been sure that
my cause was lost. I really knew not what to say, so
exceedingly strong did his arguments appear even in my
own eyes. As for the pages of the Secret Plan that relate
to celibacy, had the world argued against me, of course it
could not have made me believe that a thing belonged to
me which did not.
Some months afterwards, when turning over several
new works in a bookseller's, I lighted on M. Poujoulat's,
and found in it the passage I have quoted. How great
was my delight ! I hurried off instantly with the volume
in my hand to Mr. Hartley, who was just returned from a
journey to Nice. Before conquering him in my turn, I
wished to resuscitate the question. He appeared vexed at
my audacity, and pressed me with objections still more
pointed than those I have already reported. I let him
enjoy his triumph, and my defeat appeared consummated.
Logic, common-sense, and rules, were all for him. Mean
while, in order to make him fully persuaded of the credit
due to the authority on which I was about to base my proof,
I made him read certain passages in which M. Poujoulat
speaks of his relations with Gregory XVI., his docility with
regard to the censorship, and his unbounded zeal for the
triumph of Catholicism ; after this, I laid before him the
passage quoted above.
He was stupified. He read it two or three times, and
at last confessed that he was forced to yield to evidence,
and did not conceal from me that until then he had looked

OF THE JESUITS. 237
on me with great distrust. He frankly acknowledged his
injustice, and exclaimed, " This Rome ! this Rome ! it
bewilders the reason. We cannot apply to it any of the
known and ordinary rules of judgment : it tramples on
them all ; it makes real what seems impossible ; and we
may well say of it that truth is stranger than fiction."
One is fortunate when he can refute his antagonist's
arguments in this manner. One plain fact suddenly
demolished an immense fabric : the wall of brass fell to
the ground.
But do we not at this moment witness events, for good
and for ill, which, if they had been predicted yesterday,
would have been rejected as incredible ? A pope is intent
on progress ; a government born of revolution is making
itself the support of the Jesuits in Switzerland ; frightful
crimes are committed in high places ; and the official
regions are flooded with a corruption, the possibility of
which would have been utterly disbelieved seventeen
years ago.

XI.

Had it been announced some months ago that there
was about to appear a book proving that the conclave in
which Ganganelli was elected pope, had been a sink of
venality and simony, in which nearly all the courts of Europe
and a considerable number of cardinals had dabbled, and
that Ganganelli had been elected only on condition of
abolishing the Jesuits, no one would have believed the
assertion, although the author had affirmed that he had

238 SECEET PLAN
seen and read the documents proving all this turpitude.
Yet we are constrained to admit no less, now that
M. Cretineau Joly comes forward with his proofs to
establish this strange fact.
" When I had finished," he says, " I stood aghast at my
own work ; for above the throng of names that jostle
together for mutual dishonour, there is one which the
Apostolic See appeared to cover with its inviolability.
Princes of the church, for whom I have long cherished a
respectful affection, entreated me not to rend the veil that
concealed such a pontificate from the world's eyes. The
General of the Company of Jesus, who had so many strong
motives for being interested in the discoveries I have made,
added his entreaties to those of some cardinals. In the
name of his order, and for the honour of the Holy See, he
besought me, almost with tears in his eyes, to give up the
publication of this history. Even the wish and authority
of the sovereign pontiff, Pius IX., were invoked in the
counsels and representations of which my work was tbe
object. " To a Catholic, how painful it is to detect princes of
the church in flagrant acts of lying and venality ; still more
painful to see a sovereign pontiff timidly resisting the
iniquity he encouraged by his ambition, and annihilating
himself on the throne, when he had done so much to ascend
it. But does not such a spectacle, which no doubt will
never be repeated, does it not inspire a sentiment of sorrow
which history cannot help recording ? Is not the crime of
the supreme priest equal to the crimes of the whole people?
Does it not surpass them in the eyes of the Eternal Judge?
" The world swarms with writers who have the genius

OF THE JESUITS. 239
of evil : to us there remains only the boldness of truth.
The moment is come to speak it to all. It will be sad
both for the Chair of St. Peter and for the Sacred College,
and for the whole Catholic world." *
We are free to admit everything except the tears and
supplications of the General of the Jesuits. It was rather
he, we think, who believed that the time was come for
drawing from their concealment documents long collected,
and that it was he who " excited the writer to unveil the
mystery of iniquity," and to make known that when the
Company was abolished, " then was seen the abomination in
ihe temple.'' Vainly would M. Cretineau Joly put the
order of Jesuits out of question in this matter ; it is a
stratagem which we see through. It is to no purpose he
exclaims, " I must boldly declare that there is not only
want of agreement, but complete disagreement between
the author and the Fathers of the Company of Jesus." f
This is going too far, and pointing out the battery by dint of
too much pains to mask it. His efforts to maintain that the
original manuscripts did not come to him from the Jesuits,
are equally unfortunate. Who more than the Jesuits could
possess the art of insinuating themselves everywhere, in
veigling, and employing thousands of agents all over Europe
to get hold of secret papers carefully put away and kept in
all the chanceries, and the most mysterious diplomatic
correspondences ? For it is in these terms M. Cretineau
himself characterizes the documents he has in his hands,
and the almost insurmountable difficulties of getting
possession of them. It is amazing and inexplicable that
* Clement XIV. et les Jgsuites, 1847, pp. 7-11.
t Defense de Clement XIV., p. 8.

240 SECEET PLAN
those who were the most implicated by these documents
did not make haste to destroy them immediately after the
conclave ; for whilst they existed, personages of the highest
rank, including even a pope, were exposed to the danger of
being rendered infamous in history. Here are two enigmas
which shock the reason, and which it would be exceedingly
difficult to admit if the fact were not indisputable.
One is tempted to believe, from the manner in which
M. Cretineau Joly defends himself, that far from its being
his intention to prove that he does not derive all these
original manuscripts from the Jesuits, it is, on the contrary,
his aim to let that fact be understood ; for the argument he
uses to put the Jesuits out of question, implicates them
more than ever.
"At what period, or by what mysterious ramifications,"
he says, " could they have deceived or suborned all the
ambassadors, all the conservators of the archives 1
" No doubt," he says, speaking hypothetically of the
Jesuits, " tbey have possessed these documents since an
unascertained period ; why did they never make use of
them during their suppression ?
" The Jesuits, then, have not furnished me with any of
these documents, for the very simple reason that such
pieces could never have been in their archives. They
have done all in their power to stop the work ; but they
have failed, because I have thought that in conscience I
ought not to keep the light under a bushel." *
So then M. Cretineau, an ordinary individual, has been
able, alone and unaided, to accomplish that very difficult
* Defense de Clement XIV., p. 32.

OF THE JESUITS. 241
thing which would have been impossible for such a company
as that of the Jesuits.
Having given these proofs that he is not the " liege
man of the Company," he is more happy in his replies to
those who have attacked his book as a romance.
"If," says he, "the letters of Bernis (one of the
cardinals in the conclave) stood alone, without any other
warrant than his word, we hold that doubt would be allow
able, and we should doubt ; but it is not he alone who, for
the amusement of his idle hours, invents all these events,
histories, and simoniacal projects, of which he makes
himself the echo, the accomplice, or the censor. Outside
the conclave intrigue marches with head erect, backed by
ministers and ambassadors whose correspondence strikingly
coincides with the romance which some would fain attribute
to the cardinal. But these diplomatic correspondences
show as much as possible a common bond and centre ; they
dovetail, in the cabinets of Versailles, Vienna, Madrid,
Naples, and Lisbon, with other dispatches which contain
the same plans and avowals.
" The simoniacal conspiracy is manieest. Bernis
and Cardinal Orsini repudiate it at first, but afterwards
they join in it ; and if this immense process were tried
before a jury of bishops, or merely of upright men, do you
suppose that after examination of the documents cited in
the work, the election and the reign of Clement XIV. would
not be regarded as one of the sores of ihe Apostolic See ?"*
Let us take note of this language : it will be of import
ance to remember it. A little further on he protests that,
* Defense de Clement XIV, pp. 37, 38.
v

242 SECEET PLAN
notwithstanding all he has been saying, "it never entered
his thoughts to invalidate the election of Ganganelli." His
defence is nothing but a series of legerdemain, of subtilties
and sophisms, denying on the one hand what he affirms
on the other. But indeed the cause he defends makes all
these contradictions inevitable.
" In my eyes," he says, " and by the documents I have
published, Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) has never been
sullied with the crime of simony, properly so called. Ambition
led him astray. A victim to the position in which he placed
himself, he has incurred the eulogy of the enemies of unity
— a eulogy which for a priest, a bishop, above all for a
pope, acting in the plenitude of his apostolic authority, is
the most disgraceful of condemnations. This pope, whose
name becomes popular only at moments when the enemy's
batteries are playing upon the See of Rome — this Gan
ganelli, who is deified whenever revolutionists affect an
air of compunction in order to arrive the faster at their ends —
I have represented struggling with the calamities he accu
mulated round St. Peter's chair ; and I have felt for him
the pity due to his private virtues and his misfortunes.
There is a wide difference between this sentiment and
desertion of the cause of justice. The memory of
Clement XIV. had always been attacked and extolled
without convincing proofs. Now, public opinion may, in
safety of conscience, hear and determine this great suit.
When the time shall have come, I will speak out the rest.
" There were attempts at simony," he says again, " on
the part of the ambassadors, ministers, and Spanish cardi
nals. Terror, intrigue, and motives of family interest, were
assiduously employed to sway some cardinals in the con-

OF THE JESUITS. 243
clave. Ganganelli was lured away by ambition beyond his
duties and his most secret wishes : he desired the papacy,
thinking perhaps that his heart was set on a work beneficial
to Christendom ; he entered into a sort of an engagement.
If this does not constitute simony — and we are firmly
persuaded that it does not — let us add, nevertheless, that
such a manner of acting in a prince of the church borders
very closely on scandal and corruption. Furthermore let
us add, that the words of the cordelier to Cardinal
Castelli are an evidence of knavery which everybody will
condemn."* The last lines of this fragment are glaringly inconsistent
with the first ; concession follows concession, until at last
we have it admitted that Ganganelli's conduct borders very
closely on scandal and corruption, and that he displays
knavery. Would the reader have more ? The same writer
beholds in him only "a pope who made cunning his ladder."
And this he calls a sort of an engagement. There is not
even a trace of simony, he says. Wherefore, then, such
bitter reproaches, as though he had been the worst of
popes ? If he was under no formal and explicit engagement,
then his brief was his free act and deed ; and in suppressing
the Jesuits, he was really actuated by the grave and impera
tive motives he alleges. The abolition was, therefore, the
work of five years' reflection, and of the conviction arrived
at by this pope, that the order was dangerous to the church,
and would finally hurry it to destruction. Ganganelli
would thus be the most innocent of all concerned, and
quite unconnected with all the villanous schemes and
* Defense de Clement XIV., p. 40.

244 SECEET PLAN
infamous manoeuvres. The venal compact is, nevertheless,
proved in the most irrefragable manner: it is the very basis
of the book, and that book is nugatory if Clement XIV.
was not a party to the compact. Now, the words of the
same writer, on which he rests all the importance of
his book, are clear and precise, and they do implicate
Ganganelli. " The bargain," he says, " which gave him to the
church, has hitherto been always denied by the Jesuits and
by several annalists. We have cast an unexpected light on
this point ; with the documents before us, which we have
exhumed, doubt is no longer possible." *
These discoveries have appeared so strange and incredi
ble, that some have even ventured to contest their validity ;
others on all hands demand the complete publication of the
original manuscripts.
I will now mention a curious specimen of the disputes
between the cardinals in this conclave into which we have
been enabled to peep. The prelate attacked was one of
Voltaire's friends.
" Overwhelmed with reproaches, Bernis tried to recover
his position by starting personal considerations, and he said,
' Equality ought to prevail among us ; we are all here by
the same right and title.' Whereupon old Alexander
Albani, raising his red cardinal's hat, forcibly exclaimed,
' No, Eminence, we are not all here by the same right and
title ; for it was not a courtesan that placed this hat on
my head.'
" The recollection of the Marquise de Pompadour,
* Clement XIV. et les Jesuites, p. 269.

OF THE JESUITS. 245
evoked in the conclave, closed the mouth of Cardinal
Bernis. The allusion told." *
Such a cardinal knew too well with whom he had to do
not to be able to retort with the same force. But what is
really astonishing is, that although it be confessed that the
conclave was a downright mart, wherein the movement of
the market from hour to hour, and the price current of
consciences were noted and recorded — and although, in
spite of all efforts to disguise the truth, it is evident that
such of the cardinals as sided with the Jesuits were also the
subjects of similar temptations — notwithstanding all this,
M. Cretineau Joly has yet written such words as these':
" We may assert, that at no time did the Sacred College
consist of more pious and edifying members. The excep
tions in this respect are few." f
The author is deliberately resolved on heaping infamy
upon this conclave, and at the very same time proving its
almost spotless innocence.
If still stronger proofs are required that Ganganelli
must have consented, must have owned accomplices, and
bound himself by promises, here, according to the same
writer, is what happened immediately upon the pope's
accession. " The distribution of the high functions of the Roman
court is made by the diplomatic body. Pagliarini, the
bookseller, who, under the protection of Pombal, inundated
Europe und Rome itself with his pamphlets against the
Holy See and against good morals, obtained by the brief
cum sicut accepimus the decoration of the Golden Spur.
* Clement XIV. et les Jgsuites, p. 226. f Ibid, 220.
v 2

246 SECEET PLAN
Thus Pombal ennobled him whom Clement XIII. had con
demned to the galleys, and he asked for a cardinal's hat for
his brother. Every one strove to secure an equivalent for
the part he had taken in Ganganelli's nomination ; every
one insisted on high office, and trafficked on his suffrage to
secure a hold on the helm of the church. One would have
imagined that the constitutional system had invaded the
conclave, such was the throng of craving intriguers and
proteges. It was the day of self-seeking, the day of
wages." *
The elevation of popes by corrupt influences, and even
by crime, is no new thing. Although in times of censorship
and inquisition, history could not know or relate everything,
yet it has recorded scandals, trafficking and bargains,
enough to hinder our being surprised at anything. Still
they would have us believe that the Holy Spirit always
presides at the elections of the Roman pontiffs ; only, those
who thus speak are forced to own that, whereas it formerly
spoke by the lips of the clergy and the people, some cardi
nals have since succeeded in monopolizing it.
In fine, never could one have believed, never could one
have dared to suspect, that so many ambassadors, ministers,
princes, and cardinals, could have concerted together, with
out the least shame, to commit the greatest of sacrileges.
The conclave in which this took place would still to this
hour be regarded as one of the most edifying, were it not
that from it issued the pope who abolished the order of the
Jesuits. What was necessary in order that a mystery,
which had so long remained impenetrable, should be
* Clement XIV. et les Jlsuites, p. 330.

OF THE JESUITS. 247
unsealed, was that the pride and vanity of a potent congrega
tion should be brought in play. Nothing less was requisite
than the interest of such a corporation as that of the
Jesuits, in order that the most profound secrets should be
plucked from the archives of all the courts of Europe, no
one knows how. I repeat, that if all had been said without
that mass of proofs which are ready to be produced, the
objections would have appeared insurmountable.
One word more, while we are on the subject, as to the
strange work of an advocate of the Company of Jesus.
" Full of reverence for the pontifical authority," says
M. Cretineau Joly, "we do not pronounce judgment on an
act that emanated from the apostolic chair." *
What, you do not pronounce judgment? Your humility
and reverence are but contempt. You have declared null
and void the suppressing brief, and you abstain from
judging ? Can any condemnation be stronger ? But let
that pass.
If there be any fact beyond question, it is that Gan
ganelli's death was most horrible, that the poison infiltrated
into his very bones had dissolved every part of his body,
so that all who saw him were terror-stricken. It is
known, through the testimony of others beside Cardinal
Bernis, " that from the day of his elevation he was afraid
of dying by poison." Now the apologist of the Jesuits,
taking upon himself to be the biographer of Clement
XIV., makes haste to pass over this perilous subject. He
makes scarcely any account of the most ascertained facts,
but takes pleasure in exhibiting the pontiff as a prey to the
* Clement XIV. et les Jgsuites, p. 353.

248 SECEET PLAN
most poignant agonies of remorse, shrieking out the words,
" O God, I am damned ! Hell will be my portion. There
is no remedy left !" He adds, that the pope soon after his
elevation became insane. " His insanity began," says he,
"on the day he ratified the suppression of the Jesuits!"*
So the pope who gave audience to a great number of per
sons, whose language excited admiration, and who for
five years studied the question of the Jesuits, was only a
madman ! " In the history of the sovereign pontiffs,"
concludes the avenger of the Jesuits, " he is the first and
only one who suffered this degradation of humanity."
Nothing less would have been an adequate punishment for
the greatest of crimes.
But now it is the denouement, which, above all things,
is worth knowing. It was requisite to renovate the good
name of Ganganelli, and it belonged to the Jesuits to do
this for their own greater glory. The expedient employed
for this purpose is not new ; recourse is had to miracle, and
a legend is invented.
Saint Alfonso Signori has been canonised in these latter
days. I have been able closely to observe how this sort of
affairs is managed. The theologian Guala, of whom I
have already spoken, was among the most active on the
occasion, and spared no intrigues or efforts towards bringing
about the canonisation. Could this great supporter of the
Jesuits abstain from taking part with many others in rear
ing an altar to one of the greatest friends of the Company ?
The new saint was bishop in one of the cities of Sicily
when Ganganelli died. His name was used, and the story
* Clement XIV. et les JGsuites, p. 331.

OF THE JESUITS. 249
was put forth that he remained for several hours entranced
and seemingly dead ; and that when he came to himself
he narrated to some confidential friends that he had
just been witness to the pope's last moments ; that God
had heard his prayers, and caused the pontiff's madness to
cease, in order that he might repent ; that he had spent his
last moments in bewailing his crime, and asking pardon of
the Almighty for his suppression of the sons of Loyola, and
that he died reconciled to God, and saved.* How indeed
could we suppose that God had not received him into
grace, since he died reconciled to the Jesuits ?

XII.
A third of a century before the French Revolution, a
vast change was taking place, as in our day, in the minds
of men. Everything was preparing for a decisive crisis.
Then, as now, the Jesuits, in their system of teaching,
represented the most obstinate immobility, and the most
retrograde doctrines. Men craved for more air, light, and
life ; and the Jesuits and their adherents everywhere strove
to stifle these aspirations.
" They held in their hands," the panegyrist himself
avows it, " the future generations, and they acted as a clog
on ihe movement begun. This order has appeared as the
most formidable rampart of Catholic principles. It was
against it that the storm immediately directed itself. To
* M. Cretineau Joly, towards the close of his book.

250 SECEET PLAN
reach the heart of Catholic unity it was necessary to pass
over the bodies of the grenadiers of the church."*
Great, however, is the difference between those times
and ours. Then the upper classes, intoxicated with
philosophy, and knowing by experience what were the
designs of the Jesuits, spared no efforts for the abolition of
the order. But a pope alone could accomplish their
wishes. Now the Company was so identified with Rome,
and so indispensable to it, that nothing short of the combined
strength of the greatest powers could sever the connection.
Even this was not enough ; they had already demanded this
abolition without success. Two preceding popes had begun
by refusing, and when at last they had declared their
design to suppress the Jesuits, death had soon cut short
their projects. Success was, therefore, believed to be
impossible, except by means of a pope created by the princes
themselves, and thereby seriously compromised. Now to
obtain such a pope it was necessary to manoeuvre and use
intrigues as potent as those employed by the Jesuits. The
cells of the Vatican were conquered by a hostile spirit — by
the very spirit of the encyclopedists which had become
the possessor of thrones. It was a duel to the death, but
the younger combatant was at last the victor. There
issued from the conclave a chief of the church better
adapted to the spirit of the age, and acquainted with its
requirements. And yet he took good care not to abolish
the Company forthwith ; he waited, and postponed the
matter even for several years. He wished, before he struck
the blow, to collect proofs of extreme weight, and formid-
* Clement XIV. et les Jesuites.

OF THE JESUITS. 251
able by their numbers ; but it turned out, as he had
predicted, that in signing the brief which suppressed the
Jesuits, he signed his own death-warrant.
As for all those monarchs, ministers, and diplomatists,
who knew no rest until the abolition took place, fortunately
they did not perceive what would be its remote consequences.
They rejoiced to see that Rome was about to lose her most
valiant and able soldiers. Remembering how their ances
tors had humbled themselves, in the dust before her, and let
themselves be beaten with rods, they believed that they
were at last sole masters, that the tables would be turned,
that the clergy would become their tools, and receive their
orders. On either side there was no question of the
people ; it was regarded as nothing. But unconsciously they
worked for its advantage, and prepared the way for its
advancement, whether by the new philosophic ideas with
which they inundated Europe, or by overthrowing the
strongest bulwark that restrained it. They could not
fail themselves to be swept away by the bursting flood.
Such blindness was providential.
" Rome discharged her best soldiery," observes M.
Cretineau, " on the very eve of the day on which the Holy
See was about to be attacked on all points simultaneously.
The Jesuits, while they obeyed the pontifical brief, thought
it was their duty not to desert the post entrusted to their
guard."* Here was a model of perfect submission ! The Jesuits
alone know how to obey thus. As an institute they were
absolutely bound to subsist no longer. But no, it is their
* Histoire religieuse, politique, et litteraire de la Compagnie
de Jesus, vi. 93.

252 SECEET PLAN
privilege never to be liable by any possibility to be accused
of revolt. The less they obey the greater is their submis
sion. M. Cretineau' s book is a collection of contradictions,
posted by way of double entry, and very regularly
balanced.

XIII.
An immense revolution had convulsed the world;
Napoleon had in vain endeavoured to turn it to his own
profit ; but the same ideas which had raised him so high
had ceased to support him when they had been betrayed
and put in peril, and so he was plunged living into the
abyss. This terrible lesson, like many others, taught
nothing to those who came from exile to resume the sceptre.
The volcano of the new ideas did but smoulder ; the
Jesuits persuaded the powers that they had the means and
the strength to extinguish it. All that was requisite was
that they should have the young generation in their hands.
They imagined that, as in past times, they should succeed
in making God's name a means of propping up the most
intolerable abuses and the most iniquitous privileges. But
this insensate project was met by a proportionate reaction ;
the ideas of progression and freedom would not submit to be
stifled, and they resumed the conflict — a conflict which
M. Cretineau calls an impious rebellion, a work of perfidy
and imposture.
" Ever since 1823," he says, " it is not individual
malice that seeks to beguile a class of individuals ; there is
a permanent conspiracy against the truth, and, above alb

OF THE JESUITS.

253

against the good sense of the multitude. All means are
employed to pervert it."*
Although the thing is known, it is not amiss to recollect
what he means by the truth, and by conspiring against it.
It is important to institute a comparison between the epoch
of which we are speaking and our own ; between the undis
guised language then held by the upholders of the old
system of society, and that which their successors now hold.
At the very time when the Jesuits were occupied with the
Secret Plan, M. de Remusat thus expressed himself: —
" The new year, or 1824. Questions of a ponderer.
" A grand project occupies the minds of the mighty of
the Old World. They would fain bring back the New
World to its infant state, and strangle it in its cradle in
the swaddling-clothes in which it has been so long kept.
The age has been accused, condemned, and anathematised
by them. Crowned Europe has conceived the design of
proving to the human race that it is wrong to be what it is ;
to time that it ought not to destroy ; to the present that it
ought to be the past. And one would almost say that this
strange enterprise is beginning to succeed ; one would say
so, were one to judge from the stifled wail of the oppressed.
But raise your eyes towards the thrones, and there you see
faces pale beneath the diadems, and anxious eyes incessantly
turned to the sceptre, as if to be assured that it has not
slipped from the grasp. The anxiety of the victors is the
consolation of the vanquished."*
* Histoire rfeligieuse, politique, et litteraire de la Compagnie de
Jesus, vi. p. 178.
t Passe et Present, melanges par Charles de RSmusat, vol. i.
p. 206. w

254 SECEET PLAN
The same writer thus describes the system with which
it was sought to innoculate France in those days : —
" Passive obedience, unlimited submission, in one word,
despotism, were pleaded with the best faith in the world.
Fear and flattery did not neglect so fair an opportunity to
speak like good faith. Never was it more easy to bend
without degradation, to be frail without shame ; the slave of
arbitrary power became the friend of order ; the absence of
every original, or, merely independent idea, was preached up
under the name of good sense ; we were taught to respect
even error, and to regard enlightenment as an abuse of
thought. Thus served at once by faith and hypocrisy,
leading in its train all the most heterogeneous prejudices,
subduing the minds of men by admiration, their hearts by
lassitude, their characters by fear, the genius of absolute
power set about re-erecting its throne by heaping up 'the
ruins of the old regime on the foundations laid by the
Revolution."* What was the lever put in operation ? It was religion,
as though enough had not already been done to render it
odious by all the oppressions attempted in its sacred name.
A committee was organised. The Jesuits, who had no
doubt suggested it, were its managing advisers. The Holy
Alliance supported it. Its affiliations ramified through all
countries of Europe. M. Capefigue, as quoted by M.
Cretineau himself, speaks of it in the following terms : —
" The first organisation of the party was connected with
the religious congregations. Under the presidency of
Viscount Mathieu de Montmorency and the Duke de la
* Passe et Present, melanges par Charles de Remusat, vol. i. p. 71.

OF THE JESUITS. 255
Rochefoucault Doudeauville there was formed in Paris a
central congregation, the statutes of which were simple at
first, and had for their object the propagation of religious
and monarchial ideas. The congregation received every
Catholic who was presented by two of its members ; it was
to extend to the schools and educational institutions, and,
above all things, it was to lay hold on youth. When a
young man wished to enter the association, his proposers
were asked what influence he would exercise. If he was
professor or member of a college, it was made a condition
that he should propagate the good principles among the
pupils. If he had fortune or high station, he engaged in
like manner to employ them for the defence of religion and
monarchy. Meetings were held twice a-week for prayer,
innocent games, particularly billiards, and to report progress.
Every Sunday the Abbe Freyssinous preached before
a numerous audience, and waged war upon philosophy and
the age in his elegantly composed sermons. It was against
Gibbon and Voltaire that M. Freyssinous strove with much
more pomp than point ; and he never failed to exhibit in
favourable contrast the then present times, and to commend
the beneficent influence of the clergy and of religion, and
the necessity of strengthening the altar and the throne.
These sermons were well attended. The politicians of the
royalist party, some of them epicureans and unbelievers,
were assiduous hearers of the abbe. It was a way of
putting one's self in a good light. The congregation had
branches in the provinces. In those days there was a
rage for obtaining admission into the congregation,
and the reason of this was simple : — there was no having

256 SECEET PLAN
powerful patronage or lucrative places unless one was a
member."* " Such," says the advocate of Jesuitism, disdainfully
resuming the discourse after this quotation, " such is the
origin of the occult power so gratuitously attributed to the
congregation. That power has existed, it has been
exercised, but absolutely apart from, and independently of
the congregation. The royalist coteries concealed their
political manoeuvres under its name ; the liberal party
seized upon that name to frighten France with the noise it
wanted to make. The enemies of the church and the
monarchy admirably calculated their blows ; they depopu-
larised the royalists, and hung a cloak of hypocrisy on the
shoulders of Christians. Yet all this was but a part of
what was to be done. They annihilated the present gener
ation, but the grand thing was to kill the future. "f As for
the Jesuits, it is a great mistake to suppose that at that
period they concerned themselves about anything else than
the interests of religion. They reorganised their houses,
and founded new ones with purely pious views, that
was all.
The Bourbons, however, who had put themselves in
the hands of the Jesuits, paid dearly for their excessive
complaisance. The sun of July forced their evil counsellors
to keep themselves concealed for a while ; but by degrees,
as the bright luminary grew dim, they came forth again,
and renewed the struggle, but in a reversed manner. For
* Histoire de la Restoration, par un Homme d'Etat, iv. p. 100.
f Histoire religieuse, politique, et litteraire de la Compagnie de
Jesus, vi. p. 187, 197.

OF THE JESUITS. 257
now the clergy, finding themselves compelled to fight against
authority, yet unwilling frankly to embrace liberty, adopted
that Machiavellic attitude which it is partly the object of
the second portion of this work to make known. Thus we
can account for the embarrassments and the contradictions
of their apologists.
Many persons have inveighed against Eugene Sue for
having dared to personify the Jesuitic genius in Rodin.
They could not bring themselves to believe that a consider
able number of men, and those, too, men invested with a
religious character, could have concerted together to wear
all sorts of masks and play all sorts of parts, in order to
secure the services of all sorts of individuals for a work
which every one would abhor if he knew its aim and
scope. This system of graduated fraud, which it has been
thought unjust to attribute to the majority of the Jesuits,
have I not proved that it is fair to impute it to numerous
writers, to preachers, and to a large portion of the upper
clergy ? Can there be a doubt that there exists among
them a close compact, and a well understood mot d'ordre,
to mystify not only Europe but the whole world ?

XIV.

We have sought to open the eyes of persons who may in
good faith be or become accomplices, beguiled by artifices
which often impose on the most adroit. We believe we
have cast a flood of light into the theocratic sanctuary, and
convinced the most obstinate that the dogma of suffocation
and oppression, and the most despotic genius, evermore
w 2

258 SECEET PLAN
receive there divine honours, and that at this day the spirit
of fraud, deprived of its old weapons, desperately defends its
threatened empire by base sophisms and stratagems. Is it
not time to purge the church from such foul impurities ?
But if this radical and divine reform proceeds not from
Pius IX., if he lends an ear to those whose interest it is to
turn him aside from the sublime task to which Providence
invites him, and urge him upon the same erroneous courses
as his predecessors, still the first steps he has taken will
have immense results in spite of him and against him.
The Jesuits, as we have seen, have commissioned one
of their liegemen to write the life of Ganganelli, in order to
dismay and stop Pius IX. The dedication of the work is
implied in this epigraph, A bon entendeur demimot, "A hint
for one who can take it."
After all, if, as some begin to fear, the reforms of
Pius IX. are to be nothing but administrative ameliora
tions, and if Rome refuse to institute a religious renovation
which is imperatively demanded by our epoch, we possess
the means of forcing the Vatican to break silence, and
acknowledge, as evangelical, doctrines adequate to the reach
and dignity of modern thought. The documents sent
forth by the Roman presses, to which we here allude, have
been stamped by Catholic authority with all possible marks
of approbation. The following is an epitome of the principles thus
solemnly recognised as having been primitively admitted by
the church : — The people is sovereign ; it is the sole source
of all authority; every government which does not submit
its deliberations and its acts to the controul of the people is
anti-christian. It follows thence that theocracy is convicted

OF THE JESUITS. 259
of rebellion. In fact, it is depicted in colours as severe as
those which its most implacable enemies have employed to
hold it up to execration. It would be impossible to prefer
against it a more terrible bill of indictment, backed by a
more overwhelming mass of decisive proofs. Its own
organs confidentially predict to it that the impatient peoples
will be driven to shake off an intolerable tyranny, if they
despair of seeing it reformed ; and they remind it of the
mission it ought to have accomplished, and which consisted
in reconciling and uniting men by love and justice, prevent
ing their sufferings by an equal partition of burthens,
bestowing its just remuneration on labour, and guaranteeing
a real independence to each individual. Instead of this,
the most formal avowal is made that this hierarchy, devoured
with pride, drunk with pomp, enslaved to its own exclusive
interests, has given itself out for infallible, not being so ;
that it has renounced the spirit of Christ, and would neither
itself penetrate it, nor suffer others to do so. Therefore
it is, that by the same hands is delivered to us the key of
initiation into every evangelical work ; the true sense of
dogmas is unveiled ; we now know what we are to think
of miracles ; reason and faith are astonished that a mis
understanding should so long have sundered them. It is
said again and again in the documents we are speaking of
that the reign of the dead letter must be abolished, for, as
St. Paul says, " the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life;"
and the same apostle tells us that the worship which is not
rational is not christian.
We venture to affirm, that the instructions, of which I
merely state the heads, are more than sufficient to justify
and call forth the largest and most radical reforms in the

260 SECEET PLAN
religious and the political world, and in the whole organisa
tion of society. They emancipate the spirit of the Gospel
from the prison of a fosilised religion.
Did I not possess these weapons of proof, I should
perhaps have been forced to abstain from publishing the
Secret Plan. Those who may remain incredulous as regards
it, will be compelled, by irrefutable proofs, to admit a far
more extraordinary fact, authenticated by documents that
will silence all the cavillings of self-interest.
The fact, which I will make known in a special publica
tion, concerns the seventeenth century and a part of the
eighteenth. I will demonstrate that Voltairianism prevailed
in Italy during a whole century before Voltaire ; that those
who attacked mysteries and dogmas with language and
sarcasms like his, were not libertines repudiated and con
demned by the religious authority, or a handful of savans
whose incredulity was confined to the circle of the cultivated
class ; but that the attack on the foundations of religion
and morality was made in the very churches, from the
pulpit, and by numerous preachers ; that the numbers who
flocked to hear them were immense, and that they enjoyed
the countenance of the bishops and prelates. This horrible
disorder was practised in the most celebrated churches of
Rome ; it resisted the few feeble efforts made to put it
down, and was still in existence when Voltaire appeared.
The sacred buildings rang with loud shouts of laughter in
approval of the most shameless commentaries. The acts
of the patriarchs were held up to ridicule ; the Song of
Songs afforded an ample theme for obscene jesting ; the
visions of the prophets were turned into derision, and
themselves treated as addle-headed and delirious. The

OF THE JESUITS. 261
Apostles were not spared, and it was taught that every
thing concerning them was mere fable. Finally, Christ
himself was outraged worse than he had ever been by
his most rancorous enemies, and was accused of criminal
intercourse with the Magdalen, the woman taken in adul
tery, and the woman of Samaria. Thus was absolute
irreligion preached, and for so long a time did this poison
flow from the pulpits. The Bible was scoffed at, and
Christianity likened to a mythology
My greatest strength has been derived from the docu
ments I have briefly alluded to ; and but for them I should
have succumbed beneath the force of Dante's apothegm,
which many a time recurs to my mind : — " A man should
always beware of uttering a truth which has all the aspect
of a lie." But as I could count on such a revelation, a
thousand times stranger than the one I myself have just
made, I hesitated no longer, being convinced that in our
days, more than ever, these words of Jesus must be fulfilled,
" There is nothing hidden that shall not be brought
to light."

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