The superior of the Jesuits at Saragossa was too well instructed in the policy dictated by Loyola not to understand wherein the main and real strength of the society consisted. Having, undoubtedly, full knowledge of the designs of Loyola, and molded to all his purposes, as the human form is chiseled from the lifeless block of marble, he proceeded at once to invoke the aid of the monarchical power of the Government of Spain, in order to bring the vicar-general of the Church, the Augustinian and the Franciscan monks, together with the priests and religious who adhered to them, and the people and local authorities of Saragossa, into absolute humiliation at his feet. For the first time, therefore, there was then opened to the Jesuits a new and broad field, wherein they were incited to display their wonderful capacity for intrigue. They were to be practically taught with what facility they could obtain the intervention of monarchical power to trample upon the rights of the ancient religious and monastic orders, violate the public laws, defy the ecclesiastical representatives of the Church, and make the people realize how powerless they were to influence the policy of the society, to modify its principles, or to impede its progress to the ultimate dominion it had started out to obtain. Charles V was then emperor; but, as he was absent from Spain, his daughter, the Princess Jane, was the acting regent, with the full possession of imperial power. The superior of the Jesuits at Saragossa appealed to her by arguments which, although not preserved, may be fairly presumed to have centered in the necessity for establishing and preserving the society as the best and most certain method of perpetuating the monarchical principle, so absolutely essential to kings that, if it were destroyed, they could not exist; or, if they did exist, it would be with greatly diminished powers, and subject, in some degree, to the control of popular opinion. The regent was fully informed of the determination of her imperial father to maintain this principle at every hazard, and was aware of the fact that he was not at all choice about the methods of doing so. She understood how well fitted he was, by his vacillating course, for any emergency he might encounter; and that she was not mistaken in his character, history attests by the facts that, although a native of the Netherlands, he persecuted his own countrymen for daring to assert freedom of conscience for themselves; and at one time plotted with the king of France against the pope, at another with the pope against the king of France, and at still another succeeded in enticing the Protestants of Germany into an offensive alliance against both. As the representative of such a monarch--so unscrupulous about the means employed, either by himself or by others, in his behalf--the regent became a willing and easy convert to the appeal of the Jesuit superior. Holding both the law