Descended from an illustrious family, Ignatius had in his youth been a courtier and a cavalier, and, if not a poet, at least a cultivator of poetry. At the siege of Pampeluna his leg was broken, and, after the failure of mere vulgar leeches, was set by a touch from the hand of the prince of apostles. Yet St. Peter’s therapeutic skill was less perfect than might have been expected from so exalted a chirurgeon; for a splinter still protruded through the skin, and the limb was shrunk and shortened. To regain his fair proportions, Ignatius had himself literally stretched upon the rack; and expiated by a long confinement to his couch this singular experiment to reduce his refractory bones and sinews. Books of knighthood relieved the lassitude of sickness, and when these were exhausted, he betook himself to a series of still more marvelous romances. In the legends of the Saints the disabled soldier discovered a new field of [Illustration: LOYOLA.] emulation and glory. Compared with their self-conquests and high rewards, the achievements and the renown of Roland and of Amadis waxed dim. Compared with the peerless damsel for whose smiles Palladius had fought and died, how transcendently glorious the image of female loveliness and angelic purity which had irradiated the hermit’s cell and the path of the way-worn pilgrims! Far as the heavens are above the earth would be the plighted fealty of the knight of the Virgin Mother beyond the noblest devotion of merely human chivalry. In her service he would cast his shield over the Church which ascribed to her more than celestial dignities, and bathe in the blood of her enemies the sword once desecrated to the mean ends of worldly ambition. Nor were these vows unheeded by her to whom they were addressed. Environed in light, and clasping her infant to her bosom, she revealed herself to the adoring gaze of her champion. At that heavenly vision all fantasies of worldly and sensual delight, like exorcised demons, fled from his soul into eternal exile. He rose, suspended at her shrine his secular weapons, performed there his nocturnal devotions, and with returning day retired to consecrate his future life to the glory of the _Virgo Deipara_. To these erotic dreams succeeded stern realities; convulsive agonies of prayer, wailings of remorse, and self-inflicted bodily torments. Exchanging dresses with a beggar, he lined his gabardine with prickly thorns, fasted to the verge of starvation, assumed the demeanor of an idiot, became too loathsome for human contact, and then, plunging into a gloomy cavern, surrendered himself up to such wrestlings with the evil spirit, and to such vicissitudes of rapture and despair, that in the storm of turbid passions his reason had nearly given way.