formation of the Company of Jesus.  Those long years of his novitiate and wandering were not without their uses now.  They had taught him, while clinging stubbornly to the main projects of his life, prudence in the choice of means, temperance in expectation, sagacity in the manipulation of fellow-workers selected for the still romantic ends he had in view.  His first two disciples were a Savoyard, Peter Faber or Le Fevre, and Francis Xavier of Pampeluna.  Faber was a poor student, whom Ignatius helped with money.  Xavier sprang from a noble stock, famous in arms through generations, for which he was eager to win the additional honors of science and the Church.  Ignatius assisted him by bringing students to his lectures.  Under the personal influence of their friend and benefactor, both of these men determined to leave all and follow the new light.  Visionary as the object yet was, the firm will, fervent confidence, and saintly life of Loyola inspired them with absolute trust.  That the Christian faith, as they understood it, remained exposed to grievous dangers from without and form within, that millions of souls were perishing through ignorance, that tens of thousands were falling away through incredulity and heresy, was certain.  The realm of Christ on earth needed champions, soldiers devoted to a crusade against Satan and his hosts.  And here was a leader, a man among men, a man whose words were as a fire, and whose method of spiritual discipline was salutary and illuminative; and this man bade them join him in the Holy War.  He gained them in a hundred ways, by kindness, by precept, by patience, by persuasion, by attention to their physical and spiritual needs, by words of warmth and wisdom, by the direction of their conscience, by profound and intense sympathy with souls struggling after the higher life.  The means he had employed to gain Faber and Xavier were used with equal success in the case of seven other disciples.  The names of these men deserve to be recorded; for some of them played a part of importance in European history, while all of them contributed to the foundation of the Jesuits.  They were James Lainez, Alfonzo Salmeron, and Nicholas Bobadilla, three Spaniards; Simon Rodriguez d’Azevedo, a Portuguese; two Frenchmen, Jean Codure and Brouet; and Claude le Jay, a Savoyard.  All these neophytes were subjected by Ignatius to rigid discipline, based upon his Exercitia.  They met together for prayer, meditation, and discussion, in his chamber at the College of S. Barbe.  Here he unfolded to them his own plans, and poured out on them his spirit.  At length, upon August 15, 1534, the ten together took the vows of chastity and poverty in the church of S. Mary at Montmartre, and bound themselves to conduct a missionary crusade in Palestine, or, if this should prove impracticable, to place themselves as devoted instruments, without conditions and without remuneration, in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff.