Their detractors were already beginning to forget their
faults and remember their merits. The people had been taught to hate the
Society as the possessor of wealth and privileges which should have been
theirs; but when the Society fell its possessions were absorbed by the
other powers, and in many cases the people suffered from abuses and
maladministration which they had not known under their Jesuit landlords.
The aristocracy had always been in sympathy with the order, and in many
states the Jesuits had been banished simply as a measure of political
expediency, a sop to the restless masses. In these cases the latent
power of the order was concealed rather than diminished by the pretence
of a more liberal government, and everywhere, in one form or another,
the unseen influence was felt to be on the watch for those who dared to
triumph over it too soon.
Such conditions fostered the growth of social satire. Constructive
ambition was forced back into its old disguises, and ridicule of
individual weaknesses replaced the general attack on beliefs and
institutions. Satirical poems in manuscript passed from hand to hand in
coffee-houses, casinos and drawing-rooms, and every conspicuous incident
in social or political life was borne on a biting quatrain to the
confines of the state. The Duke's gift of Boscofolto to the Countess
Belverde had stirred up a swarm of epigrams, and the most malignant
among them, Crescenti averred, were openly ascribed to Gamba.
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