fidelity in opposition to the formal words of Jesus Christ and of all the
Scripture."

My words transported the Jesuit, for I had touched the right spring in
spite of his effort to hide it. He said nothing personal to me, but he
fumed. The more he restrained himself for me the less he did so for the
matter in hand. As though to indemnify himself for his moderation on my,
account, he launched out the more, upon the subject we were discussing.
In his heat, no longer master of himself, many things escaped him,
silence upon which I am sure he would afterwards have bought very dearly.
He told me so many things of the violence that would be used to make his
constitution accepted, things so monstrous, so atrocious, so terrible,
and with such extreme passion that I fell into a veritable syncope. I
saw him right in front of me between two candles, only the width of the
table between us (I have described elsewhere his horrible physiognomy).
My hearing and my sight became bewildered. I was seized, while he was
speaking, with the full idea of what a Jesuit was. Here was a man who,
by his state and his vows, could hope for nothing for his family or for
himself; who could not expect an apple or a glass of wine more than his
brethren; who was approaching an age when he would have to render account
of all things to God, and who, with studied deliberation and mighty
artifice, was going to throw the state and religion into the most
terrible flames, and commence a most frightful persecution for questions
which affected him in nothing, nor touched in any way the honour of the
School of Molina!

His profundities, the violence he spoke of--all this together, threw me
into such an ecstasy, that suddenly I interrupted him by saying:

"My father, how old are you?"