“It was at this epoch” (1584), says he, “that the League acquired all its consistency, and it is at the same epoch that you may see the Jesuits in Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, _joining the insurrection and organising it_.”[180] And of this insurrection, or civil war, Pasquier, an eye-witness, says,—“It was less a civil war than a _coupe-gorge_—a cut-throat. The colleges of the Jesuits were, as was notorious, the general rendezvous of persons hostile to the king. There were fabricated their gospels in cipher—_se forgoient leurs Evangiles en chiffre_—which they sent into foreign countries. There their apostles were distributed among the different provinces, some, to keep the troubles alive by their preaching, as did Father Commolet in Paris, and Father Rouillet at Bourges; others, to preach murder and assassination, as did Father Varade and the same Father Commolet.”[181] But we need not multiply quotations to prove that they had a great share in exciting these troubles. They themselves confess it with pride. In their _Litteræ Annuæ_ of 1589, they represent the murder of the king as a miracle which happened the very day they were expelled from Bordeaux. When Clement’s mother came to Paris, the Jesuits called upon the people to worship her; the portrait of the assassin, now called a martyr, was exposed on the altars to public veneration, and they even proposed to erect a statue to him in the cathedral of Notre Dame. We will, however, admit that all the Jesuits were not fanatic Leaguers; not because they disapproved of the League, but simply from good policy, or from interested motives. Auger, the king’s confessor, and who wished to be provincial, sided with his penitent; and the General Acquaviva, the ablest and most profound politician of his time, disapproved of the Society’s engaging so deeply with one party as to cause the ruin of the order if the other triumphed. He forbade the Jesuits who were in France to take part in the contest (which advice, however, they disregarded), and begged permission of the Pope to command his subordinate Father Matthieu to leave France, and betake himself to a distant country—which clearly proves, that the Jesuits in France acted under the Pope’s own authority. “But Sixtus V.,” says Crétineau, “was not so gentle as Gregory XIII.; when he met an enemy, he fought with him; accordingly he answered the General that the Leaguers acted very rightly, and only did their duty.”[182] Acquaviva, however, was as jealous of his authority as the imperious and terrible Sixtus. When Father Matthieu arrived at Loretto on his return to France, the General ordered him not to leave the town without his consent; and the poor messenger died a few months after, from sheer inactivity. Auger, for reasons unknown to us, was recalled. Another provincial, Father Pigenat, was sent to France—a man who, in the language of De Thou, “was a furious Leaguer, and as fanatic as a Corybante,”