These Jesuit outrages, however, seem to have stimulated the Pope, and on 25th September (1769) he gave Bernis a written assurance for Louis XV. that he intended to suppress the Society. A little later Charles III. of Spain received the same secret assurance. Thirty-four of the bishops of Spain, led by their cardinals and the Archbishop of Seville, had written to demand the suppression, and prove that it was not merely liberal politicians who opposed the Society. In the following February the seminary at Frascati was taken from the Jesuits and put under the control of secular priests. The spring and summer passed without giving fresh hope to the Jesuits. They reported Clement gloomy and inaccessible, and it is not impossible that they learned that a search was now being made in the Vatican Archives, and a report being drawn up on the history of the Society since its establishment. From that time, in fact, Clement secretly gathered the historical material with which he was to frame his crushing indictment of the Society. In June, it is true, Count Kaunitz visited Rome; but, as we know the attitude of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II., we must accept Theiner's statement that he urged the Pope to suppress the Society, rather than the French historian's light assertion that he pleaded for the Jesuits. The Society seemed to be doomed. Then, in the month of December, Choiseul fell from power in France, and the news fired a train of rejoicing throughout the Provinces of the Society. D'Aiguillon, believed to be a friend of the Society, had (with the aid of Mme. du Barry) displaced their great opponent, and the policy of France would, no doubt, now be reversed. The Jesuits, and the noble ladies who worked for them at Paris, affected at least to believe that they would be recalled to France, and that the Pope would no longer be exposed to the unanimous pressure of the Catholic Powers. But in his first dispatch to Cardinal Bernis, D'Aiguillon maintained the policy of his predecessor in regard to the Society. Spain also replaced its ambassador with a more vigorous representative, Count Florida Blanca, and the Pope was assailed more vehemently than ever. A piquant picture is offered to us of the robust Spanish count bullying the aged Pontiff, who plaintively bares his skin to show Florida Blanca the eruption which proves that he is ill and cannot be pressed. Bernis's letters are more reliable; the French ambassador candidly admires the noble resistance of the Pope to the intriguers on both sides, and his determination to have his inquiry justly and patiently completed before he condemns the Society.