As in the same way that in Matabeleland, perhaps, a German, Frenchman, or Italian is less hateful to the natives than an Englishman, so in Paraguay the Indians liked the Jesuits better than the other Orders, for there were many foreigners amongst their ranks. The Jesuits soon comprehended that the Bishop wished to make them odious to the public by overpraise. To set to work in such a manner almost requires an early training in a seminary, and that such tactics should have been put in force against such skilled diplomatists as were the Jesuits argues no ordinary capacity for diplomatic work in Cardenas. With him, however, the Spanish proverb, ‘Betwixt the word and deed the space is great’, had little application. The vicar of a place called Arecayá, close to Asuncion, had fallen into disgrace; the Bishop removed him from his parish, and asked the rector of the Jesuit college to send a priest to take his place. The answer he received was politic, and to the effect that there was no Jesuit who could be spared, and even if there was it ill-befitted any Jesuit to infringe upon the duties of the secular clergy; but that, if Cardenas intended to found a new reduction with all the privileges that the King had always given to that kind of establishment, the rector himself would ask permission from his Provincial to undertake the work. A splendid answer, and one which proved that the man who gave it was a man wasted in Paraguay, and that his place by rights was Rome or, at the least, some court.