The house of Marseilles, Leoncy, held the Society responsible for the debt of its member, and applied to the General for payment. Ricci, the then chief of the order,[339] committed the irreparable error of refusing to recognise the debt. The Widow Grou & Son, of Nantez, then commenced a process before the consular tribunal of Paris. Leoncy followed the example. The Jesuits having been condemned, were blind enough to bring the cause before the parliament. This supreme court of judicature, the better to estimate the merit of the cause, ordered that the Constitutions of the Society should be brought before the tribunal. The Jesuits consented, and this decided their ruin. After prolonged examination, the parliament gave its judgment, by which the Society was condemned to pay all the engagements incurred by Lavallette, for which, according to the tenor of their Constitution, the whole order was answerable.[340] Many authors, speaking of this affair, have expressed their astonishment that the Jesuits, who were accounted so cunning, could have committed such blunders. We have nothing to answer to this, except that they may be compared to those generals who, having lost their presence of mind in a difficult and critical moment, have suffered defeat by committing errors that a simple non-commissioned officer would never have been guilty of; or they may be compared perhaps to those consummate criminals who, having long eluded the vigilance of the police with extraordinary dexterity, at last commit such blunders, that one could almost swear they conspired for their own capture. Or it would be more correct to say that God had numbered their days, and their hour was come. _Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat._ From the moment when the Constitutions of this mysterious and dread Society were brought to light, Constitutions which had been kept jealously secret, all minor questions disappeared. Father Lavallette, the bankrupt, the bankers (who were never paid), all were forgotten in the great question affecting the Society itself. “Dogmatic disputes, which had so long been forgotten, now resumed all the force of present interest, and all the attraction of novelty. There was a universal eagerness to discover and apply those mysterious Constitutions. Women, and even children, were animated with the ardour of old practised lawyers. Pascal became the idol of the day, and La Chalatois its hero.”[341] Innumerable writings were daily printed and read with the greatest avidity by all classes of persons; and for a while nothing else was spoken of but the Society of Jesuits.