Statements of this character pertain to a low order of partisanship, and are discreditable to their authors. No facts whatsoever have ever been given, or can be, upon which to base them. Clement XIV lived until September 22, 1774, fourteen months after his decree abolishing the Jesuits. The French ambassador, Bernis, in a letter written at Rome, November 3, 1773, three months and twelve days after the decree, said: "_His health is perfect_, and his gayety more remarkable than usual."[144] Nicolini says "all the authors are unanimous upon this point," and quotes the historian Botta to the same effect. He retained this condition of health for eight months, when his sudden sickness gave rise, as already stated, to the belief that he had been poisoned by the Jesuits. Certainly if he had experienced any such remorse as the Jesuits allege, it would have been exhibited before that time. After his illness his faculties may have become somewhat impaired, but this was the natural result of intense physical suffering. The Jesuits represent him, when in the agony of pain, as having exclaimed, "I have been compelled," which they interpret to mean that he was unduly influenced by the sovereigns. They fail in this to exhibit their usual shrewdness by deriving an argument from an expression used by him when in what they say was a demented condition. If he did speak the words alleged, it is far more probable, as Nicolini suggests, that he intended to express regret that the iniquities of the Jesuits had been so enormous and so clearly established that he was compelled to suppress and abolish their society, because of the injury they had already inflicted, and would be likely to inflict in the future, upon the Church and Christianity. It should also be remarked in this connection that neither Cormenin nor De Montor, in their separate histories of the pontificate of Clement XIV, says anything about his having been demented, or about his remorse. That accusation is the fruit of Jesuit revenge.