Apart from these, Gresset also may be claimed as a Jesuit poet, but unfortunately it was his poetry that blasted his career as an apostle, for the epicureanism of one of his effusions compelled his dismissal from the Society. His brilliant talents counted for nothing in such a juncture. He left the Order with bitter regret on his part, but never lost his affection for it, and never failed to defend it against its calumniators. His "Adieux aux Jésuites" is a classic. In vain Voltaire and Frederick the Great invited him to Potsdam. He loathed them both, and withdrew to Amiens, where he spent the last eighteen years of his life in seclusion, prayer and penance, never leaving the place except twice in all that time. On both occasions it was to go to the French Academy, of which his great literary ability had made him a member. In 1750 he founded at Amiens the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters which still exists. It is said that before he died he burned all his manuscripts, and one cannot help regretting that instead of publishing he had not committed to the flames the poem that caused his withdrawal from the Society. For Gresset the Jesuits have always had a great tenderness, and it might be added here that he is a fair sample of most of those who, for one reason or another, have severed their connection with the Society. There have been only a few instances to the contrary, and even they repented before they died. In the matter of oratory, the Society has had some respectable representatives as for example, that extraordinary genius, Vieira, the man whose stormy eloquence put an end to the slavery of the Indians in Brazil, and whose "Discourse for the success of the Portuguese arms," pronounced when the Dutch were besieging Bahia in 1640, was described by the sceptical Raynal to be "the most extraordinary outburst of Christian eloquence." He is considered to have been one of the world's masters of oratory of his time, and to have been equally great in the cathedrals of Europe and the rude shrines of the Maranhão. He was popular, practical, profoundly original and frequently sublime. He has left fifteen volumes of sermons alone. Though brought up in Brazil he is regarded as a Portuguese classic. Paolo Segneri, who died in 1694, is credited with being, after St. Bernardine of Siena and Savonarola, Italy's greatest orator. For twenty-seven years he preached all through the Peninsula. His eloquence was surpassed only by his holiness, and to the ardor of an apostle he added the austerities of a penitent. He has been translated into many languages, even into Arabic.