maintain their own temporal powers within their dominions, or else allow the Jesuits to rule over them according to their pleasure. To this they could not submit without absolute degradation. Howsoever strange it may now appear that the pope did not see this sooner, it should be regarded as creditable to him that, when he did see it, he bowed his head humbly before the pelting storm, and yielded to a necessity he could not avoid. Due credit should not be withheld from the man who does right, even at the last extremity, especially when, as in this case, after Clement XIII decided to change his course, he went to the extent of promising the sovereigns that "he would pronounce the _abolition of the society_ in a public consistory," and leave the Jesuits to suffer the consequences of their own folly. Having made up his mind to this, a day was appointed for the performance of the solemn act of signing the death-warrant of the Jesuits. But this postponement led to a result which had not been dreamed of--one that furnished new evidence of the capacity of the Jesuits for intrigue. During the night preceding the day appointed for the public ceremony of announcing the abolition of the Jesuits, Clement XIII was suddenly seized with convulsions, and died, leaving the act unperformed, and the Jesuits victorious. Cormenin, writing in France, where the Jesuits are better known and understood than here, records this event in these terse and expressive words: "_The Jesuits had poisoned him._"[132]