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In a few days two of ours are to go to Rome. You can go with them." Stanislaus was delighted. He was come into quiet waters at last. But Canisius spoke further: "First, however, you must get some decent clothes. Your old tunic," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "might do well enough for a noble, but not for a future Jesuit." So the college tailor made Stanislaus a simple, neat suit of clothes.

As Stanislaus waited, he kept asking himself, "What shall I do? What shall I do now?" And for a little while he could not think clearly. He felt almost sick. But he was not the kind to be discouraged long, and before the porter returned with the Father he had made up his mind. "Since Canisius is not in Augsburg, well, I'll go to whatever place he is in. The Father who came was all regrets.

The vast building was filled with a brilliant throng, on the fringe of which the people hung in dense crowds overflowing into the streets. But for the States of the Empire they would have cast him out of the city as one so dangerous to the Protestant cause that they declared it would be wrecked altogether if Canisius continued to preach there.

Ignatius appointed him professor of rhetoric at Messina, and Canisius wrote to his friends at Cologne: "As I am useless for any spiritual office I am entrusted with the insipid department of belles lettres. I teach rhetoric for which I have little aptitude, but I take pains to form these good youths, and am always ready, with God's help, to do all that obedience requires of me."

For this reason it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge." Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859.

Canisius wrote to entreat him to come, but Gropper was so thoroughly convinced of the uselessness of the disputations, that he persistently refused to take part in them. The organisation of the whole matter therefore devolved on Canisius, who prepared the plan of defence, and appointed to each Catholic theologian the subject of which he was to treat.

Society, moreover, was rotten to the core, and needed to be entirely reconstructed. Such was the condition of things when, at the call of the feeble but devout Ferdinand I., Blessed Peter Canisius arrived at Vienna in March 1552. Thirteen of his religious brethren had preceded him by nearly a year, and had opened a college which already promised well.

The Augsburg Lutherans at last succeeded in turning out the other sects, but ashamed of the spectacle they had presented to the eyes of the Catholics who were all united, they left Worms secretly, and contented themselves with attacking each other in the usual vituperative terms. "It was," wrote Canisius, "as if the giants of old were seeking to rebuild the Tower of Babel.

Ignatius would then cause inquiries to be made at the hospitals concerning the behaviour of his novice under this kind of treatment. In the spring of 1548, Canisius was sent with eleven companions to Messina, where the Viceroy, Don Juan de Vega, had founded a college. On the eve of their departure St. Ignatius put to them four questions in writing. Canisius answered the questions thus:

But meanwhile Vienna was suffering from his absence, and all sorts and conditions of men clamoured for his return. The episcopal see having become vacant, the king besought the Pope and St. Ignatius that it might be conferred on Father Canisius.