A remarkable proof of this may be seen in the dispute you had with M. Puys, curate of St. Nisier at Lyons; and the story exhibits so complete an illustration of your spirit, that I shall take the liberty of relating some of its leading circumstances. You know, fathers, that, in the year 1649, M. Puys translated into French an excellent book, written by another Capuchin friar, “On the duty which Christians owe to their own parishes, against those that would lead them away from them,” without using a single invective, or pointing to any monk or any order of monks in particular. Your fathers, however, were pleased to put the cap on their own heads; and without any respect to an aged pastor, a judge in the Primacy of France, and a man who was held in the highest esteem by the whole city, Father Alby wrote a furious tract against him, which you sold in your own church upon Assumption-day; in which book, among other various charges, he accused him of having “made himself scandalous by his gallantries,” described him as suspected of having no religion, as a heretic, excommunicated, and, in short, worthy of the stake. To this M. Puys made a reply; and Father Alby, in a second publication, supported his former allegations. Now, fathers, is it not a clear point, either that you were calumniators, or that you believed all that you alleged against that worthy priest to be true; and that, on this latter assumption, it became you to see him purified from all these abominations before judging him worthy of your friendship? Let us see, then, what happened at the accommodation of the dispute, which took place in the presence of a great number of the principal inhabitants of the town, whose names will be found at the foot of the page,[270] exactly as they are set down in the instrument drawn up on the 25th of September, 1650. Before all these witnesses M. Puys made a declaration, which was neither more nor less than this: “That what he had written was not directed against the fathers of the Society of Jesus; that he had spoken in general of those who alienated the faithful from their parishes, without meaning by that to attack the Society; and that so far from having such an intention, the Society was the object of his esteem and affection.” By virtue of these words alone, without either retractation or absolution, M. Puys recovered, all at once, from his apostasy, his scandals, and his excommunication; and Father Alby immediately thereafter addressed him in the following express terms: “Sir, it was in consequence of my believing that you meant to attack the Society to which I have the honor to belong, that I was induced to take up the pen in its defence; and I considered that the mode of reply which I adopted was _such as I was permitted to employ_. But, on a better understanding of your intention, I am now free to declare, that _there is nothing in your work_ to prevent me from regarding you as a man of