256 MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON.

montanes admit the nullity of the excommunication ? Is it
not null as soon as it is unjust ? If the Pope has the power to
excommunicate unjustly, and to enforce obedience to his ex-
communication, who can limit power so unlimited, and why
should not his false (or nullified) excommunication be as much
obeyed and respected as his unjust excommunication ? Sup-
pose the case I have imagined were to happen. Suppose the
Pope were to excommunicate one of the two brothers. Da
you think it would be easy to make your subtle distinction
between a false and an unjust excommunication understood by
the people, the soldiers, the bourgeois, the officers, the lords,
the women, at the very moment when they would be preparing
to act and to take up arms ? You see I point out great incon-
veniences that may arise if the new doctrine be accepted, and
if the Pope should claim the power of deposing kings, dispos-
ing of their crowns, and releasing their subjects from the oath
of 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 him-
self for me the less he did so for the matter in hand. As
though to indemnify himself for his moderation on my ac-
count, 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 consti-
tution accepted, things so monstrous, so atrocious, so terrible,.
and with such extreme passion that I fell into a veritable syn-
cope. I saw him right in front of me between two candles,
only the width of the table between us (I have described else-
where 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 riot expect an apple or a glass of