His personal life was simple, to the eye. A Bible, a breviary, and an _Imitation of Christ_ were the only books in his poor chamber, which is still shown to the visitor; and of these the breviary was not used, as he wept so much in reading the office that he endangered his sight, and the Pope excused him from reading it. He spent the first four hours of his early day in meditation and the saying of Mass, then worked until noon, when all dined together, in silence, and afterwards spent an hour in conversation under his observant eye. Then he returned to his desk, or took his stick and his sombrero, and limped to the hospital, or to the houses of the very poor or the rich, or to the chambers of cardinals or papal officials. Many a jeer and curse followed him as he walked, in neat black cloak, with downcast eyes and grave smile, courteous to every beggar or noble who addressed him. Rome was rich with monuments of his philanthropy--schools, orphanages, rescue-homes, etc.; but the fierce hostility never died, and at times it rose to the pitch of a gale. After his round of visits he limped back, grave and humble, to the house for the silent evening meal. When the novices were abed, the prefect came to give him a minute account of the day's life in the house, and, when the prefect was abed, the large eyes still flashed in the worn, olive-tinted face. He slept only four hours a night. But all these pages of the written biography of Ignatius are of less interest than the unwritten. To understand his real life during those fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays you have to study the adventures of his colleagues far away: to mark how the hostility of bishops and doctors and princes is disarmed by a papal privilege or a papal recommendation, how the Protestant plague cannot break out anywhere but a Jesuit appears, how the most nicely fitted man is sent for each special mission, how the man disappears when there is, rightly or wrongly, a cry of scandal, how the long white arms of Ignatius Loyola seem to stretch over the planet from Sta Maria della Strada, near the Pope's palace. This vast and obscure activity of the General will be best gathered from a short survey of the fortunes of the Jesuits during his reign.