The sallow General pocketed his snuff-box; and produced the stony mild smile which is used upon eccentricity. The Pope remarked that the Company of Jesus appeared to be in a verisimilar position to the Wesleyans, in that they had departed a very long way from the will and spirit of their founder. He used His slowly biting monotone, because He wished to save this General the trouble of misunderstanding Him. He said that, with the word "Borgia" and the word "Nero," the word "Jesuit" perhaps was the eponym for all that was vilest in the world. That was very undesirable. Not that the good opinion of the world was desirable. Far from that. But Christians ought not to enjoy anything, not even an evil reputation, under false pretences. He wished to do something to rectify the erroneous opinion which the world had formed about the Company of Jesus, to straighten-out the tangle, correcting and directing; and, as men were wont to judge more by actions than by words, He did not propose to beat the air with vain expostulations, explanations, expositions of virtue, and so forth. It had been done a thousand times before. Historic calumnies had been refuted from pulpits and in pamphlets with unanswerable logic: but still the man-in-the-street said "Jesuit" when he meant "a foxy wolf." The Pontiff was not going to try to persuade the world away from its nonsense. He wished the Company of Jesus to give the world a proximate occasion of persuading itself. Therefore, He proposed to the General, in private, a return to the observance of the good old rule and a cultivation of the saintly spirit of St. Iñigo Lopez de Recalde. He wished the Jesuits to reconsider their position, as it were: to surcease from the--not always mortally sinful--not always tangibly illegal--but perhaps--generally shady transactions---- The General interrupted. He was prepared to bully.