s labor. For when he was about to die (the candle being already
in his hand), without anyone perceiving it or having hope of it he
recovered his senses, and talked to those present who were watching
him and assisting him, to the astonishment of all the physicians,
who regarded him as a dead man. He declared what had happened, and
said that having offered in his heart his vows at the feet of the
said Virgin, when he was almost dead, as was thought, he heard her
near him talking to him, together with St. Nicolas de Tolentino;
and she graciously revivified him, saying that he was not to die
from that illness. That was a fact, for within a few days he arose,
just as if he had not been at the gates of death.

The third image that illumines and ennobles that convent is that of
the famous titular saint, Nicolas de Tolentino. He has chosen to make
himself known in those remote regions as much as in the other regions
of Christendom, by means of the continual prodigies and marvels that he
works there. A great volume might be written of those that have been
seen in Manila alone, and a greater volume of those outside. Suffice
it to say that, because of his having appeared to the sailors in
their greatest straits and troubles, they have all unanimously taken
him as their patron. The glorious saint rewards their pious devotion
by lofty marvels, and does not discontinue for all that to work them
very frequently on land--for which both the Spaniards and the Indians
of the Philippinas Islands venerate him as a refuge, in whom they
consider their relief very sure.

Strong religious have gone out from that very strict house to combat
the power of the devil, in order to remove his yoke from many souls,
as we shall see in the time of reporting their deeds of valor.

[The chapter concludes with the pious deaths of Fathers Andres de
San Joseph, Diego de Santa Ana, and Gaspar de la Madre de Dios, and
of Brother Simon de San Augustin, all of whose bodies were buried in
the Manila convent. [39]]

Chapter IX

_Father Fray Gregorio de Santa Catalina goes to Roma, and presents his
[claim for] justice in the tribunal of the supreme pontiff. The end
of the chapter is concerned with a mission that Ours tried to make
to the Philippinas Islands, the founding of two convents, and the
deaths of two great religious_.

[The provincial's mission to Roma results disastrously at first,
for he is doomed to many months of dreary waiting is denied