However, the decisions of the parliament, archbishop, and university, were hailed throughout France with a shout of jubilee. The Jesuits were obliged to leave Paris, and as all the parliaments of France had echoed the resolution of that of the capital, they would be nowhere received, and, as a last and momentary refuge, they went and hid themselves in the Abbey of St Germain des Près. The more warlike and inconsiderate members of the order would have replied to the terrible sentence of the Sorbonne, but Ignatius was too consummate a politician to yield to their imprudent desires. For open wars, the Jesuits had no predilection. When their opponents were too strong for them, their practice was, and still is, to give way, as if in submission; but then they begin a hidden and mysterious war of intrigues and machinations, that in the end they are always the victors. So acted Ignatius in this affair in France. The Jesuits contented themselves with living for some time in obscurity and complete seclusion from all society, and preparing the way for future triumph. Nor had they long to wait. Soon were they called into France to help and cheer that atrocious and cruel hecatomb, that bloody debauch of priests and kings—the Saint Bartholomew. But what is worthy of more serious reflection, is the fact, that in Rome—the centre of their power and glory—the Jesuits were also publicly accused as a set of heretics, dangerous and immoral persons; and the famous book of _The Spiritual Exercises_ was submitted to the Inquisition. It is indeed true that this little manual got a certificate for orthodoxy, and that the priest who had traduced them before the tribunal, having to struggle alone against the Society, was condemned (we don’t wonder at it) as a calumniator; but how can you, you subtle sons of Ignatius, explain this concurrence; this accumulation of accusations and hostilities? How is it that nations, separated from one another by diversities of interest, custom, opinion—that citizens of different classes, characters, principles, interests—that all men and nations, widely separated in every thing else, united only by a common tie—the Catholic religion—should exactly agree in this one thing—hatred to and abhorrence of the avowed champion of Catholicism? And remember we don’t speak of Protestant countries, or Protestant opponents. All your adversaries were bigoted Catholics. There is but one way to explain this strange coincidence. We fear that from the very beginning, the Jesuits, notwithstanding all their prudence, could not conceal from the eye of the observer those subtle arts, that duplicity of character, that skill in accomplishing dark and mysterious exploits, for which they were in later times opposed, and at length abolished.