Convents -- Fiction; Spain -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Young women -- Spain -- Fiction
The great days of Jesuitism are gone but the society still lives. In
England and in other Protestant countries they continue to exist under
different names. The "Adorers of Jesus," the Redemptionists, the Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine, the Brothers of the Congregation of the Holy
Virgin, the Fathers of the Faith, the Order of St. Vincent de Paul--are
Jesuits. How far they belong to the heart and not to the head, is a
detail only known to themselves. Those who have followed the contemporary
history of France may draw their own conclusions from the trials of the
case of the Assumptionist Fathers.
"Los mismos perros, con nuevos cuellos"--said Sarrion to any who sought
to convince him that Spain owed her downfall to other causes, and that
the Jesuits were no longer what they had been. "The same dogs with new
collars." And he held that they were not a progressive but a
retrogressive society; that their statutes still held good.
"It is allowable to take an oath without intending to keep it when one
has good grounds for so acting."
"In the case of one unjustifiably making an attack on your honour, when
you cannot otherwise defend yourself than by impeaching the integrity of
the person insulting you, it is quite allowable to do so."
"In order to cut short calumny most quickly, one may cause the death of
the calumniator, but as secretly as possible to avoid observation."
"It is absolutely allowable to kill a man whenever the general welfare or
proper security demands it."
If any man has committed a crime, St. Liguori and other Jesuit writers
hold that he may swear to a civil authority that he is innocent of it
provided that he has already confessed it to his spiritual father and
received absolution. It is, they say, no longer on his conscience.
"Pray," said the founder of the society, "as if everything depended on
prayer, and act as if everything depended on action."
"Of what are you thinking?" Sarrion asked suddenly, when they had ridden
almost to the city gates in silence.
"I was wondering what Juanita will say, some day, when she knows and
understands everything."
"I was not wondering what Juanita will say," confessed Sarrion with a
laugh, "but what Evasio Mon will do."
For Sarrion persisted in taking an optimistic view of Juanita and that
which must supervene when she had grown into understanding and knowledge.
Marcos went back to the hotel. He had many arrangements to make. Sarrion
rode to the large house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria where the school
of the Sisters of the True Faith is located to this day. In an hour he
joined Marcos in the little sitting-room looking on to the Plaza de la
Constitucion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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