“I have begged to be removed from both my offices, in order to remove suspicion, and to obtain peace, for I see that I am not agreeable to my provincial, he having forbidden me to hear the confessions of the archduke and those of the dowager archduchess, who with her daughters insists on confessing to me.

“If any one has told the provincial that the college is in a bad state, ocular demonstration will prove the contrary; everything goes on in an orderly way.  The archduke receives Holy Communion every Sunday.  He is burning with desire to reinstate the Catholic religion, and he labours for the conversion of the nobility.  Only yesterday a man in a very high position was received into the Church.  As for your Paternity’s exhortation to guard against the spirit of the world, I thank you, but I do not see how I am to do it, unless I flee from the court and from those about it.  I will take pains to satisfy my conscience and obedience, but I fear that I shall not content those who look on the dark side.  If your Paternity thinks that I seek the favour of princes more for my own sake than that of the Society, it is a bitter reproach, for I would rather die than be guilty of such a fault.  The archdukes will bear me out how often I have spoken to them on this subject, and how I have begged them to write nothing on my behalf to the General or to the provincial; but they insist that if I lay down the rectorate I must retain the confessorship."*

* Orig.  G. Epist., 35, 479.

In the end, this suggested compromise was effected.  Father Viller was no longer rector of Gratz, but remained confessor to the archducal family.  Nevertheless, complaints of him did not cease, and he had to defend himself against the charge of clinging inordinately to the worldy advantages of his position.  In a confidential letter to the German Resident in Rome he wrote:—­

“I call God to witness that I do not value the court and my present office more than any other service which my superiors may call upon me to render to the Society.  I am cheerfully ready to leave the court at any moment, and at the risk of losing the prince’s favour, whenever my superior expresses a wish that I should do so, to say nothing of receiving a decided order.  I have not so high an opinion of my person that I seek consideration on account of the favour and affection of the prince.”

Still the attacks on Father Viller did not cease.  Those who were for unmitigated austerity looked on his broad views with horror.  Father Scherer, one of the most rigid, called him “the synagogue of Libertines.”  The provincial, and the Spaniard, Father Ximenes, were among those who judged him most severely.  He was, moreover, involved—­and this is perhaps less to his credit than any supposed laxness with which he was charged—­in the squabbles between the Hapsburg and Wittelsbach royal families, concerning the bishopric of Passau.  This had for long been an apple of contention between