As Christina had little to do with the Jesuits after her conversion, and the Swedes promptly closed the gates against further Catholic invasions, we might leave the story, but it is of some interest to consider whether the "conversion" was genuine. There is good reason to believe that Christina was tired of the bleak north, and decided to secure her revenue, change her creed, and spend the rest of her years in the sunny and artistic south. The Jesuits were to be the guarantors of her orthodoxy to the Pope, on whom she must rely if the angry Swedes cut off supplies (as eventually happened). She had no deep religious feeling. When a Belgian Jesuit remarked that they might yet see her among the saints, she answered that she would prefer to be put among the sages; and it is said--though with less authority--that when she was told that there was to be a comedy on the day of her public reception into the Church at Innspruck, she observed that it was very proper "after this morning's farce." She is, at all events, described by some who knew her as "almost libertine in speaking of religion and morals," and the amorous attentions of Roman cardinals did not improve her piety. After a few years' enjoyment of her liberty, her passionate nature brought serious difficulties upon her, and her life proved a lamentable failure and waste of ability. In the kingdom of Poland the Jesuits found the most congenial home that they ever discovered apart from the southern Latin countries to which most of them belonged. Nor is this the only or the most serious parallel; Poland, like Portugal, Spain, and France (after 1700), decayed rapidly after the Jesuits attained the height of their power in the country. Catholic writers in the latter part of the seventeenth century used to contrast the prosperity of the States which had adhered to the Vatican with the failure or stagnation of States which accepted the Reformation. France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria were the great world-Powers, and, under Sobieski, Poland promised to attain an important position. England, on the other hand, was still a small empire; Holland was falling from its momentary greatness; Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were regarded as half-barbaric; the Swiss cantons were a small pastoral folk; the German Protestant States were exhausted and distracted. The argument has recoiled on the Romanist with terrible force. The Catholic States have increasingly decayed, or defied the authority of the Pope; the Protestant States are the great world-Powers. The Protestant colonies in America have become a great civilisation; the Catholic colonies rise to prestige only in proportion as (like Argentina) they abandon their creed.