h to me
just as if he were dead, who, when I commanded him to arise in the name
of Christ, straightway arose."

Noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. Tursellinus, writing in
1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa to Malacca, Xavier having
left the ship and gone upon an island, was afterward found by the
persons sent in search of him so deeply absorbed in prayer as to be
unmindful of all things about him. But in the next century Father
Bouhours develops the story as follows: "The servants found the man of
God raised from the ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and
rays of light about his countenance."

Instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive accounts of
his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in 1544 Xavier in
his letters makes no reference to anything extraordinary; and Emanuel
Acosta, in 1571, declares simply that "Xavier threw himself into the
midst of the Christians, that reverencing him they might spare the
rest." The inevitable evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty
years later Tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages,
"they could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour
and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him they
spared the others." The process of incubation still goes on during
ninety years more, and then comes Father Bouhours's account. Having
given Xavier's prayer on the battlefield, Bouhours goes on to say that
the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed at the head of the people toward the
plain where the enemy was marching, and "said to them in a threatening
voice, 'I forbid you in the name of the living God to advance farther,
and on His part command you to return in the way you came.' These few
words cast a terror into the minds of those soldiers who were at the
head of the army; they remained confounded and without motion. They who
marched afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance, asked the
reason of it. The answer was returned from the front ranks that they had
before their eyes an unknown person habited in black, of more than human
stature, of terrible aspect, and darting fire from his eyes.... They were
seized with amazement at the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate
confusion."

Curious, too, is the after-growth of the miracle of the crab restoring
the crucifix. In its first form Xavier lost the crucifix in the sea,
and the earlier biographers dwell on the sorrow