in the hidden society of a midwife and nurse brought forth a young Spartacus, who now lives to thank his father for his endeavours to murder him. A "damned priest," the good Bishop of Freyfingen, knowing the cogent reasons, procured the dispensation, and Spartacus was obliged, like another dim-sighted mortal, to marry her. The scandal was hushed, and would not have been discovered had it not been for these private writings.
But Spartacus says "that when you think him sunk to the bottom, he will spring up with double vigour." In a subsequent work, called Short Amendment of my Plan, he says, "If men were not habituated to wicked manners, his letters would be their own justification." He does not say that he is without fault; "but they are faults of the understanding—not of the heart. He had, first of all, to form himself; and this is a work of time." In the affair of his sister-in-law he admits the facts, and the attempts to destroy the child; "but this is far from proving any depravity of heart. In his condition, his honour at stake, what else was left him to do? His greatest enemies, the Jesuits, have taught that in such a case it is lawful to make away with the child," and he quotes authorities from their books.4 "In the introductory fault he has the example of the best of men. The second was its natural consequence, it was altogether involuntary, and, in the eye of a philosophical judge" (I presume of the Gallic School) "who does not square himself by the harsh letters of a blood-thirsty lawgiver, he has but a very trifling account to settle. He had become a public teacher, and was greatly followed; this example might have ruined many young men. The eyes of the Order also were fixed on him. The edifice rested on his credit; had he fallen,