Catherine's searching eye at once realised the situation. These two hundred Polish Jesuits had an immense influence over her million and a half new subjects, and their advances must be met generously. Peter the Great had excluded Jesuits from Russia for ever; Catherine at once decreed that this prohibition was repealed as far as her Polish dominion was concerned, and she expressed a flattering admiration of their colleges. Her feeling was, obviously, that they would prove excellent teachers of loyalty to the Poles, but within a few months the Society was abolished by Clement and a new situation arose. Playing one of those little comedies which adorn their annals, the Polish Jesuits addressed to their new sovereign a most respectful entreaty that she would permit them to obey the command of the Pope. There is no doubt that this letter, which is reproduced with admiration in complimentary histories of the Jesuits, is genuine; it is, however, not explained how the Jesuits would lessen their usefulness to Catherine by changing their name and costume, and why they needed this imperial permission to make a change which did not concern her. Catherine and the Jesuits had enough in common to understand each other. They wished her to forbid them to obey the Pope, and they would prove grateful. Catherine at once refused to allow them to change their names and their coats, and they reported to Rome that the secular power forbade them to comply with the brief, and, in the interest of religion, they must obey her. The situation was so scandalous, since the Papal Nuncio insisted on the dissolution of the province, that some of the more scrupulous of the fathers were abandoning their houses and seeking secularisation. To meet these secessions a letter from Clement to the Bishop of Warmie (an ex-Jesuit) was published, and in this letter Clement was represented as approving the existence of the Society in Russia. Although this letter is reproduced seriously by the French historian of the Society, it is a flagrant forgery. Clement and his Nuncio protested to the end against the position of the Polish Jesuits, and the course of the story will show that they themselves took no serious notice of this supposed authorisation. It is not the only untruth we shall have to trace to them.