organization, so complicated yet so harmonious, a mighty machine moved
from the centre by a single hand, was an image of regulated power, full of
fascination for a mind like his. But if it was likely that he would be
drawn into it, it was no less likely that he would soon wish to escape. To
find himself not at the centre of power, but at the circumference; not the
mover, but the moved; the passive instrument of another's will, taught to
walk in prescribed paths, to renounce his individuality and become a
component atom of a vast whole,--would have been intolerable to him.
Nature had shaped him for other uses than to teach a class of boys on the
benches of a Jesuit school. Nor, on his part, was he likely to please his
directors; for, self-controlled and self-contained as he was, he was far
too intractable a subject to serve their turn. A youth whose calm exterior
hid an inexhaustible fund of pride; whose inflexible purposes, nursed in
secret, the confessional and the "manifestation of conscience" could
hardly drag to the light; whose strong personality would not yield to the
shaping hand; and who, by a necessity of his nature, could obey no
initiative but his own,--was not after the model that Loyola had commended
to his followers.

La Salle left the Jesuits, parting with them, it is said, on good terms,
and with a reputation of excellent acquirements and unimpeachable morals.
This last is very credible. The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of
an insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and achievement
subdued in him all other passions; and in his faults, the love of pleasure
had no part. He had an elder brother in Canada, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, a
priest of St. Sulpice. Apparently, it was this that shaped his destinies.
His connection with the Jesuits had deprived him, under the French law, of
the inheritance of his father, who had died not long before. An allowance
was made to him of three or, as is elsewhere stated, four hundred livres a
year, the capital of which was paid over to him, and with this pittance he