In 1565 Padre Jago Laynez died. Deliberately shutting their ears to his appeals, the Jesuits elected Padre Francisco de Borja Prepositor-General of the Company of Jesus on the second of July. With the single exception of the Roman Pontiff, he now was the most powerful ruler in Christendom, general of an army unrivalled in discipline, utterly reliable, because voluntarily enlisted and morally ruled. Yet he gave no sign of pride or pleasure. He was a perfect Jesuit, humanely sensitive, completely self-distrustful. He said “It is evident that our Lord has condescended to assume the government of this Company since He sees fit to use so deplorably unworthy an instrument.” What words could express more sincerely abject and unworldly humility than those? _Aut pati aut mori_ was his motto. As General, he relaxed not one of the stern rigorous austerities with which he kept under his body and brought it into subjection. Every passion and appetite of his human nature he deliberately killed. He slept little. He ate little. He had freed himself from every earthly love. What he might have been! What he was! A brilliant and gracious duke, master of territories and boundless wealth, father of a noble family allied with the bluest blood of Spain, honoured by his sovereign, reverenced by his equals, loved by his kin, adored by his dependants. A sinister shadow of a man, wracked with continual pain, deliberately apart from all his kind, feared, disliked, distrusted, alone, suffering,—alone. Every day he systematically meditated during five hours on superhuman things. Every morning and every night, he subjected his conscience to rigorous examination, and confessed even every impulse to evil thought. He prayed without ceasing. Once, when travelling in Spain with Padre Bustamente, the two slept side by side on the bare floor of a loft, because there was no room for them in the inn. Padre Bustamente, being asthmatic, spat all night long, unknowingly on the face of his companion, who never moved. In the morning light, he was horrified to see what he had done: but Padre Francisco consoled him, saying that in all the world no more suitable place could have been found. He had been very urgent with his sister Doña Juana, Abbess of the Poor Clares at Gandia, that she should persevere in penance and mortification till her life’s end. Has there ever been a case of a consistent Roman Catholic who has committed suicide from religious melancholomania? Rarely; if ever: for the Church, wisely recognising that peculiar temperament, has provided a system where voluntary mortification has its places, its rules, and may be practised by whoever will.