The _Lettres Provinciales_ of Pascal first stamped on public opinion the idea that the Jesuit was necessarily immoral and venomous; the implacable hatred of Michelet and Symonds has brought them as criminals before the bar of history.

On the other hand they have had their apologists and friends even outside their own order.
Let us neither praise nor blame, but seek to understand them.
[Sidenote: Loyola, c.

1493-1556] In that memorable hour when Luther said his ever-lasting nay at Worms one of his auditors was--or might have been for she was undoubtedly present in the city--Germaine de Foix, the wife of the Margrave John of Brandenburg.

The beautiful and frivolous young woman had been by a former marriage the second wife of Ferdinand the Catholic and at his court she had been known and worshipped by a young page of good family, Inigo de Loyola.

Like the romantic Spaniard that he was he had taken, as he told later, for his lady "no duchess nor countess but one far higher" and to her he paid court in the genuine spirit of old chivalry.