The melodramatic temper which the Jesuit spirit fostered in members of the Society counted for a good deal in this singular development of their missionary enterprise. Regarded from the point of view of the purpose which they held to justify it, one must pronounce it a failure. Very few high-caste Hindus were converted, and even these few only accepted a quite emasculated version of Christianity, as a rule. Some of the Jesuit-Saniassi did succeed in obtaining considerable prestige. They rode about on fine horses, and were borne in palanquins while natives cooled them with peacock-feather fans, and greatly impressed the ignorant natives. One of them, Beschi, so captivated a local prince that he became his first minister, and rode about with an escort of thirty horsemen and a native band. These successes among the educated Hindus were, however, only won by a concealment of the distinctive elements of the Christian faith and an insinuation that the enlightened priests at Rome itself (as distinct from the common missionaries) held the same liberal view of the creed.
It was still mainly among the poorer classes and the pariahs, whose poverty made them more susceptible to missionary influence, that the converts were found. We may regard with suspicion the enormous figures of conversions effected by them which individual Jesuits sent to Europe,--one of the Apostolic Vicars for India bluntly describes them as "lies,"--but hundreds of thousands of the natives were in some measure gathered into the Christian fold. We are sometimes asked to admire the levelling of caste-barriers which this inclusion in a common fold would entail, but the Jesuits fully respected the caste-barriers. Some of their number are entitled to high praise for becoming pariahs among the pariahs,--dressing in their ragged clothes and eating their vile food,--but the high-caste Jesuit would not glance even at his pariah-colleague if he met him on the road. He would not enter a pariah's hut; the dying pariah had to be carried out under a tree to receive his ministration, and, if he were too ill to be removed, he died without the sacraments. The pariahs were not allowed in the church; they were herded in an enclosure by the side of it to hear the Mass, and the sacraments were often administered to them through a window.