Now Philip's change of faith had but strengthened, and in a manner embittered, the old Cavalier devotion to the house of Stuart. Being commissioned by that great religious society of which he was a member, and whose power is as far-reaching as its means are often hidden and subtile, to travel from London through the southern and western parts of England, exhorting, persuading, and commanding the Catholic gentry to remain constant in the royal cause, he had, at the end of two months so spent, at last arrived among us. He now told his father that he held it within the spirit of his commission, if not of its letter, to use upon him, did he waver in that political faith of which his life hitherto was so noble an exhibition, the same arguments and modes of appeal he was daily employing upon those of the true faith. "You lack, however, in dealing with me, my son, one weapon--and that your strongest," said his father. "And that, sir?" said Philip. "The appeal to religious authority, my boy. And yet I scarce see by what means you do bring it in use; for I hear that His Holiness is ever at war of one kind or another with King Lewis, and favors rather the cause of that alliance of the Empire with the Protestant Princes, of which His young Highness of Orange is the soul and spirit. I warrant, lad," said the old man, with some grimness of humor, "you find the Pope but an unhandy weapon in your schemes and plots." "I obey orders, sir, but do not deal in plots," the son replied, with a pride that matched the father's. "Art not a Jesuit?" asked Sir Michael. And Philip answering, proudly and yet with much humility, that he was, Sir Michael would have known of him what he did when the bidding of the Society of Jesus ran counter to His Holiness's policy, or enjoined action inconvenient with the honor of a gentleman. But Philip, avoiding the former question, was yet stung into reply on the second, saying boldly that the spiritual descendants of Loyola were much belied, and had no traffic in the plotting of underhand schemes. To this his father, with much warmth, but with a greater kindness than had yet appeared in his address, replied: "Truly, I think they do not--through such as thou, my son. Believe your old father, lad; your superiors are men of a boundless statecraft and a subtile, and well know their tools. Who that has knowledge uses an axe to do the office of a file? But files they have, and augers even down to the finest gimlet; and these also work among us." "Be that as it may, sir," answered Philip, "my mission is honest and open. I come to conjure you to hold faith with the cause in which you have so nobly spent your blood, your sons, your land, and your gold."