for various different individuals of the order, always felt happy with them, and in truth was indifferent to what religion they belonged, for he had, as previously mentioned, the toleration of carelessness. To him all confession was a mere phenomenon of historical culture. The pious exercises were empty pantomimes, on whose performance nothing depended except the approval of the fathers, and they were all the easier because he had grown up among Catholic ceremonies. The political and social influence of the Jesuits he considered too feeble for him to fear that he should ever be placed in a situation where he would be compelled to oppose it. But he was to learn too late how terribly he had erred. Thus his novitiate began, and what he had once undertaken he carried into execution most persistently. He appeared to be a most obedient, zealous pupil, and succeeded in blinding the good fathers so completely that, to serve their own ends, they gave him instruction in everything that could win him esteem at courts,--the most accurate information about all personal and diplomatic relations, the royal families, reports made by the emissaries of the Jesuits in every country, a quantity of secrets whose judicious use must procure him a great influence, and, in short, impressed their whole sophistical moral teachings upon his mind. But with these things, so important to him, he learned something which was to destroy the anticipated result of their efforts,--to undervalue the order more and more. The more equivocal and selfish these motives seemed to him, the more he thought himself justified in deceiving them and casting aside the claims of gratitude. He perceived with terror what an influence the Jesuits exerted over everything; how relentlessly, with a thousand weapons, they subdued everything that he numbered among the greatest intellectual blessings in the world. The farther he penetrated into their mysteries the greater his repugnance became, and the more distinctly he saw the wide gulf which lay between him and Jesuitism. When the first year of study was drawing to a close, he formed the resolution to seize upon the first good pretext to release himself from the distasteful bonds into which, with youthful carelessness, he had entered. He did not wish to burden himself with any further obligations, which he now knew he should never discharge. But he was too familiar with the power to which he had committed himself, not to be aware that an open breach with the Jesuits might make his career impossible, perhaps destroy his whole future. Therefore it seemed to him unavoidable to keep friends with them for the present, and under his father's authority he had already learned to submit to such "necessities."