Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/504

330 prison, and condemned to pay damages. "I, therefore," he proceeded, "am the offender; he is the innocent person: I have sinned—I have erred!" and he called before him the man, who by chance was present, and gave him, before the public, two farms, which belonged to him. We shall pass over the particular circumstances of success which attended his preaching: it will be sufficient to apprize our readers, that as soon as he preached against the immodest attire of the women, it disappeared; that the same day he denounced gaming, the gamesters threw their dice into the river; that the courtezans made holy pilgrimages on foot, and the blasphemers ceased to curse.

"Although this sketch of the life of Ignatius Loyola bears no proportion to the details which have been given of it by about twenty biographers, it is, we conceive, sufficiently ample to enable the reader to form a correct judgment of his character. It has been thought that the society of Jesuits owed its origin to the enthusiasm, rather than the policy, of its founder . Let the reader trace him from his conversion to his death, follow him through his rigorous infliction of self-punishment, his fastings