For those who read these Constitutions without any preconceived notions, the meaning is obvious, whereas the intention of discovering something mysterious and malignant in them inevitably leads to the most ridiculous misinterpretations of the text. Thus, for instance, some writers inform us that St. Ignatius is not the author of the Constitutions, but Laínez, Mercurian or Acquaviva. Others assure their readers that no Pope can ever alter or modify even the text; that the General has special power to absolve novices from any mortal sins they may have committed before entering; that the general confessions of beginners are carefully registered and kept; that a special time is assigned to them for reading accounts of miraculous apparitions and demoniacal obsessions; that before the two years of novitiate have elapsed a vow must be taken to enter the Society; that all wills made in favor of one's family must be rescinded; that in meditating, the eyes must be fixed on a certain point and the thoughts centered on the Pater Noster until a state of quasi-hypnotism results; that the grades in the Society are reached after thirty or thirty-five years of probation, after which the applicant becomes a probationer; the professed are called "ours"; the spiritual coadjutors "externs." The latter do the plotting and have aroused all the ill-will of which the Society has been the object; whereas the professed devote themselves to prayer and are admired and loved. There are also, we are assured, secret, outside Jesuits. The Emperors Ferdinand II and III, and Sigismund of Poland are put in that class, and probably also John III of Portugal and Maximilian of Bavaria; while Louis XIV is suspected of belonging to it. The Father-General dispenses such members from the priesthood and from wearing the soutane. "Imagine Louis XIV," says Brou, who furnishes these details, "asking the General of the Jesuits to be dispensed from wearing the soutane!" Unlike the other Jesuits, these cryptics would not be obliged to go to Rome to pronounce their vows. Again, it is said, Pope Paul IV had great difficulty in persuading the Jesuits to accept the dispensation from the daily recitation of the breviary. Perhaps the most charming of all of these "discoveries" is that the famous phrase _perinde ac cadaver_, "you must obey as if you were a dead body," was borrowed from the Sheik Si-Senoussi who laid down rules for his Senoussis in Africa, about two centuries after St. Ignatius had died. The authors of these extraordinary conceptions are Müller, Reuss, Cartwright, Pollard, Vollet and others, all of whom are honoured with a notice posted in the British Museum, as worthy of being consulted on the puzzling subject of Jesuitry, and yet the Constitutions of the Society and the explanations of them, by prominent Jesuit writers, can be found in any public library. CHAPTER II INITIAL ACTIVITIES