In this situation, Martinico, which had already been so fatal to these fathers, by occasioning the law-suit which they had lost, hastened, it is said, their ruin, by a singular circumstance. We received, at the end of March, 1762, the melancholy news of the taking of that colony. This capture, so important to the English, occasioned a loss of several millions to our commerce: the wisdom of the government was desirous of preventing the complaints which so great a loss would occasion to the publick. They bethought them, by way of causing a diversion, of furnishing the French with another subject of conversation; as heretofore Alcibiades thought of cutting off his dog’s tail, in order to prevent the Athenians from talking of weightier matters. They declared then to the principal of the college of the Jesuits, that nothing more remained for them but to obey the parliament, and to put a stop to their lectures, by the 1st of April, 1762. From that time the colleges were shut up, and the society began seriously to despair of its fortune: at length the 6th of August, 1762, the day so wished for by the publick, arrived: the institute was unanimously condemned by the parliament, without any opposition on the part of the sovereign: their vows were declared not binding, the Jesuits secularised and dissolved, their effects alienated and sold; the greater part of the parliaments, sooner or later, treated them pretty nearly in the same manner; some mingled still more rigour in their judgements, and drove them away without other form of process. They lived therefore dispersed here and there, and wearing the secular habit; but they remained still about the court, and were even in greater numbers there than ever: they seemed there to brave in silence their enemies, and to wait, in order to recover themselves, a more favourable season. It was said pretty loudly, that these foxes were not destroyed, if they proceeded not at last to shut them up in the hole where they thought themselves secure; and that they were not martyrs so long as they were confessors. “They are very sick;” it was added, “perhaps dieing, but their pulse yet beats.” They were thought to be so little annihilated, notwithstanding their dispersion, that a superior of a seminary, to whom their house for novices was offered, replied, that he would not accept of it, out of fear of _spirits_.