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 CHAPTER VI

A JESUIT'S TASK

Of all armies on earth, there is none with a discipline so perfect as exists in the ranks of the Jesuits. No similar brotherhood embraces so extensive a scheme; no society spreads its ramifications so wide and deep. The soldier who enlists under that black banner abandons at once and for ever his own affections, his own opinions, his own responsibilities; nay, his very identity becomes fused in the general organisation of his order. Florian de St. Croix, with his warm, impulsive disposition, his tendency to self-sacrifice, and his romantic temperament, had better have hanged round his neck any other millstone than this.

As he walked rapidly down a long perspective of paved road, between two lofty rows of poplars, his head bent low, his hands clenched, his lips muttering, and his swift unequal strides denoting both impetuosity and agitation, he seemed strangely and sadly altered from the bright enthusiastic youth who sat with Abbé Malletort under the limes at Versailles.

His very name had been put off, with every other association that could connect the past life of the layman with the future labours of the priest. He was known as Brother Ambrose now in the muster-rolls of the order; though, out of it, he was still addressed as Florian by his former friends. It was supposed, perhaps, in the wisdom of his superiors, that the devoted knight could fight best under a plain shield on which no achievements might ever be emblazoned, but which, in theory at least, was to be preserved pure and stainless, until he was carried home on it from his last field.