One of the seven residences which the fathers had at Seville failed in 1644, and acknowledged a debt of two and a quarter million francs. The Jesuit system, it may be recalled, was to place the administration of the house in the hands of a "Lay Coadjutor" (or lay-brother, who had not made a vow of poverty), and their defence in this singular case is that Brother Villar, who held this charge at Seville, borrowed large sums of money and invested them in shipping and other concerns, without the knowledge of the fathers. His speculations proved disastrous, and the fathers found themselves bankrupt. Crétineau-Joly genially closes the episode with an assurance that the fathers found the money and expelled the offending brother from the fraternity. That the brother was expelled is quite certain, but I can find no trace that the Jesuits, in spite of their great collective wealth in Spain, ever paid more than a partial dividend, and the whole of the circumstances merit consideration. That we should be asked to believe that a community of Spanish Jesuits, the keenest business-men in the whole Society, suffered a lay brother to conduct vast operations, and to borrow large sums from their own followers in Seville, without their having the least knowledge how he conducted their affairs, is little short of impertinence. We have, however, positive knowledge that the Jesuit version is most untruthful. Not only does Bishop Palafox, one of their most conscientious adversaries, give a different version in his second letter to Pope Innocent X., but a paper written by one of the creditors and submitted to the King of Spain (who favoured the Jesuits) has survived, and must command our confidence. From this memoir or petition, which is reproduced in the _Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites_ (iii. 976), I propose to take the facts of the scandal.