From their house beside the old church the keen eyes of the General followed the travels of his subjects to the ends of the earth and kept watch on Rome. He was now approaching his fiftieth year: a bald, worn man, with piercing black eyes in his sallow face, concealing an immense energy and power of intrigue under his humble appearance. Under his eye the novices were trained, and it was characteristic that he used to protest, when others urged him to expel an unruly brother, that--to put it in modern phrase--he liked a little "devil" in his novices. One of the first was young Ribadeneira, a cardinal's page, a noble by birth. He had come to their house one day when he was playing truant, and had been caught by the romance of the life. He was only fourteen years old, yet Ignatius received him and bore his fits of temper and rebellion until he became a useful and obedient member. Between the fiery Spanish boy and the aged and simple Codacio, the former papal official, there was every shade of character to be studied and humoured. The younger novices--they went down to the age of eleven--were encouraged to laugh and play, and come to the General's room to have fruit peeled for them; perhaps on the very day on which he was stirring the Pope to set up an Inquisition on the Spanish model at Rome or in Portugal. He loved the flowers of their garden, and tender ladies had no more sympathetic confidant. Great austerities, of the Manresa type, he rigorously forbade. The Jesuit was to be neat, clean, cheerful, strong, industrious, guarded in speech--and obedient. When it was necessary to strike, he struck at once. One night, when the prefect of the house came to make his report, it appeared that one of the novices (a young nobleman) had ridiculed the excessive zeal of another. Brother Zapata was at once summoned from bed and put out of doors.