presents a most revolting and disgusting spectacle. Many of the lazzaroni go round, laughing and shouting, and address those who impersonate our Saviour and the Virgin, in the most insulting and profane language. You may hear many saying, “Ha, ha! thou art here, Theresa! Thou art the Virgin, art thou not? Ah, ah! you”—(modesty forbids us to repeat the remainder of the sentence). “Ah! Frances, thou art the Magdalen! By my troth, it is not long since thou repentedst”—or, “Oh, Paul! Paul! there is some mistake. Thou oughtest to represent the impenitent robber, and not the Christ, thou arrant thief!” But we must draw a veil over the rest of that infernal scene. So abhorrent is idolatry to the Court of Rome! [Illustration: _Jacques Lainès._ _Hinchliff._] CHAPTER VIII. 1556-1581. THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH GENERALS OF THE ORDER. Many were the trials the Jesuits had to encounter after the death of Loyola. The moment he expired, the professed members who were at Rome appointed Lainez Vicar-General, although he was at the time dangerously ill, fixing, at the same time, the month of November for the election of the new General. No objection could be raised against the nomination of Lainez, he being without contradiction the most prominent living member of the Society. The difficulties only began when the Vicar-General adjourned the General Congregation _sine die_. Lainez was constrained to take this step because Philip II. of Spain had forbidden any of his subjects to leave his dominions, as he was then at war with the Pope. Since that fatal epoch in which Clement VII., for the benefit of his family (the Medici), had betrayed the glory and destinies of Italy into the hands of the house of Austria, the unfortunate peninsula (if we except Venice) became an imperial fief, and the subsequent popes the Emperor’s chief vassals. Paul IV., although worn out with years, conceived the bold idea of freeing Italy from the Austrian yoke. “He would sit,” says Ranke, quoting Navagero, “for long hours over the black, thick, fiery wine of Naples, his usual drink, and pour forth torrents of stormy eloquence against these schismatics and heretics—accursed of God—that evil generation of Jew and Moor—that scum of the world, and other titles equally complimentary, which he bestowed with unsparing liberality on everything Spanish.”[112] And so intense was his hatred against the house of Austria, that he made a strict alliance with the Protestant leader, Albert of Brandenburg, and formed his regiments almost entirely of Protestants, to fight against a Roman Catholic king. And, as if this were not enough, the Pope, the so-called chief of Christianity, made proposals to Soliman I., the great enemy of the Christian name, to enter into an alliance with him, in order to destroy the ultra-Roman Catholic and bigoted Philip II.