It is not versatile grace which has been their ruin, nor the fraudulent bankruptcy of the reverend Father Lavalette, prefect of the apostolic missions. A whole order has not been expelled from France and Spain and the two Sicilies, because that order contained a single bankrupt. Nor was it affected by the odious deviations of the Jesuit Guyot-Desfontaines, or the Jesuit Fréron, or the reverend father Marsy, so injurious, in the latter instance, to the youthful and high-born victim. The public refused to attend these Greek and Latin imitations of Anacreon and Horace. What is it then that was their ruin?--_pride_, What, it may be asked by some, were the Jesuits prouder than any other monks? Yes; and so much so that they procured a _lettre de cachet_ against an ecclesiastic for calling them monks. One member of the society, called Croust, more brutal than the rest, a brother of the confessor of the second dauphiness, was absolutely, in my presence, going to beat the son of M. de Guyot, afterwards king's advocate (prêteur-royal) at Strasburg, merely for saying he would go to see him in his convent. It is perfectly incredible with what contempt they considered every university where they had not been educated, every book which they had not written, every ecclesiastic who was not "a man of quality." Of this I have myself, times without number, been a witness. They express themselves in the following language, in their libel entitled "It is Time to Speak Out": "Should we condescend even to speak to a magistrate who says the Jesuits are proud and ought to be humbled?" They were so proud that they would not suffer any one to blame their pride! Whence did this hateful pride originate? From Father Guinard's having been hanged? which is literally true. It must be remarked that after the execution of that Jesuit under Henry IV., and after the banishment of the society from the kingdom, they were recalled only on the indispensable condition that one Jesuit should always reside at court, who should be responsible for all the rest. Coton was the person who thus became a hostage at the court of Henry IV.; and that excellent monarch, who was not without his little stratagems of policy, thought to conciliate the pope by making a hostage of his confessor.