What association founded on human interests has
ever commanded such devotion? And what merely human authority could
count on such unquestioning obedience, not in a mob of poor illiterate
monks, but in men chosen for their capacity and trained to the exercise
of their highest faculties? Yet there have never lacked such men to
serve the Order; and as one of our enemies has said--our noblest enemy,
the great Pascal--'je crois volontiers aux histoires dont les temoins se
font egorger.'"
He did not again revert to his connection with the Jesuits; but in the
farther course of their acquaintance Odo was often struck by the
firmness with which he testified to the faith that was in him, without
using the jargon of piety, or seeming, by his own attitude, to cast a
reflection on that of others. He was indeed master of that worldly
science which the Jesuits excelled in imparting, and which, though it
might sink to hypocrisy in smaller natures, became in a finely-tempered
spirit, the very flower of Christian courtesy.
Odo had often spoken to de Crucis of the luxurious lives led by many of
the monastic orders in Naples. It might be true enough that the monks
themselves, and even their abbots, fared on fish and vegetables, and
gave their time to charitable and educational work; but it was
impossible to visit the famous monastery of San Martino, or that of the
Carthusians at Camaldoli, without observing that the anchoret's cell had
expanded into a delightful apartment, with bedchamber, library and
private chapel, and his cabbage-plot into a princely garden.
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