None of them had chosen his dwelling place or his vocation for himself.

Whether the Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others.

If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet.

If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan.

If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom.