Henry IV of France interested himself in this quarrel, and finally succeeded in having the papal and Venetian representatives meet to discuss their grievances. After protracted negotiations, the republic finally came to terms, but on one condition, namely that the Jesuits should not be allowed to return. As both the Pope and Henry absolutely refused to admit that clause, a deadlock ensued, until Aquaviva declared himself unwilling to allow any such difficulty to stand in the way of reconciliation: and as a consequence, the Society did not return to Venice until after fifty years of exile. Henry, however, had his revenge on Sarpi. He intercepted a letter written by a minister of Geneva to a Calvinist in Paris which revealed the fact that the Doge and several senators had already made arrangements to introduce the Reformation into Venice; and that Sarpi and his associate, Fulgenzio, had formed a secret society of more than a thousand persons, among whom were three hundred patricians, who were merely awaiting the signal to abandon the Church (Daru, Hist. de la république de Venise). The letter was read in the Senate, and many a guilty face grew pale. That was the end of Sarpi's influence. It was, probably also Henry IV who prevented him from going to England when the friar wrote to Casaubon to provide him a home there in case he had to leave Venice. In view of all that Henry IV had done for the Society, the sixth general congregation voted unanimously and enthusiastically to establish a French assistancy in the Society as an expression of gratitude to the monarch.
In Mexico the storm evoked by Palafox did not, it is true, result in expulsions, confiscations and executions as elsewhere, nevertheless it was deadly in its effects; and a century later it furnished the Jansenists of Europe with an exhaustless supply of calumnies against the Society. Its arraignment by Palafox was particularly efficacious because it expressed the mind of a distinguished functionary of the Church who was held by some to be a saint and whose canonization was insisted on by the politicians and nobility of Spain.
The character of this extraordinary personage has always been a mystery, and perhaps it would have been better or, at least, more comfortable to have left it in its shroud instead of revealing the truth about his life. He tells us himself in his "Vida interior" that his university days were wild; but though the text is explicit enough, it may be a pious exaggeration. In 1628 occurred what he calls his conversion. He made a general confession and determined to embrace an ecclesiastical career. His preparation for it was amazingly brief, and we find him soon occupying the post of grand almoner of the Princess Mary, whom he accompanied to Germany. On his return to Spain, he resumed his occupation as fiscal, and in 1639 was consecrated Bishop of Puebla in Mexico and, in the following year, was sent to America with the most extravagant plenipotentiary powers. Besides being Bishop of Puebla, he was simultaneously administrator of the vacant see of the city of Mexico and visitor of the _audiencia_ of the colony, with the absolute right to depose any civil official whom he judged unsuitable.