" Would you not think it were impossible to prove a
charge so vague as this to be a calumny? An able man, however, has
found out the secret of it; and it is a Capuchin again, fathers. You
are unlucky in Capuchins, as times now go; and I foresee that you
may be equally so some other time in Benedictines. The name of this
Capuchin is Father Valerien, of the house of the Counts of Magnis. You
shall hear, by this brief narrative, how he answered your calumnies.
He had happily succeeded in converting Prince Ernest, the Landgrave of
Hesse-Rheinsfelt. Your fathers, however, seized, as it would appear,
with some chagrin at seeing a sovereign prince converted without their
having had any hand in it, immediately wrote a book against the
friar (for good men are everywhere the objects of your persecution),
in which, by falsifying one of his passages, they ascribed to him an
heretical doctrine. They also circulated a letter against him, in
which they said: "Ah, we have such things to disclose" (without
mentioning what) "as will gall you to the quick! If you don't take
care, we shall be forced to inform the pope and the cardinals about
it." This manoeuvre was pretty well executed; and I doubt not,
fathers, but you may speak in the same style of me; but take warning
from the manner in which the friar answered in his book, which was
printed last year at Prague (p.112, &c.): "What shall I do," he
says, "to counteract these vague and indefinite insinuations? How
shall I refute charges which have never been specified? Here, however,
is my plan.
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