This word is meant to imply that I cannot write here even a skeleton outline of the Saint’s life or of the history of the Society he founded; still, I must say something of the Saint if we are to judge whether his ‘Company’ has continued to live by his spirit.

The preface to the Saint’s life is medieval—a talented, versatile courtier-soldier, he fences, dances, writes and vividly illuminates love-lyrics but professes himself the devotee of some princesse lointaine . . . possibly as distant as an ideal in the skies? During the siege of Pamplona the garrison is for surrendering: Inigo remembers Aeneas—he was a dastard for abandoning Troy! They stay: but a cannon-ball dislodges a stone which injures Inigo’s left leg and, ricochetting, smashes the right. The courteous French send him home to Loyola: the bone is set, but badly. ‘Break it again!’ Inigo becomes delirious and is anointed, but a dream of St Peter cures him. Alas, a bit of bone still protrudes—how can he now wear silk stockings? ‘Saw it off!’ His brother, aghast, watches, and sees that Inigo must spend weeks racked on an iron frame. He asks for romances to distract him: but the grim castle has only some Lives of Saints. He thinks—‘What they could do, could not you?’ and forthwith dreams of what dress he shall wear when he meets his mistress; of the secret code in which they would correspond. But the Saints have won. Off he goes to Montserrat, makes a three days’ confession, and inspired (says he) by Amadis of Gaul, stands in night-long vigil before our Lady.

After four months’ tendance of the sick, the divine assault begins. He crawls into a cave four foot by nine at Manresa, and his soul is tom to shreds. ‘How shall I stand this life for forty years?... If I had to go to a dog’s whelp to cine me, I would do it.’ Violently tempted to suicide, he vows not to eat or drink till he has conquered: after a week his confessor refuses him absolution if he will not eat. He obeys; peace returns; then for another week he lies, to human eyes, unconscious.