hands; whose charitable contributions he employed with great prudence in
Valladolid itself, and the adjacent country. Only perfect virtue could
stand the test of honors, amid which he appeared the most humble.
Humiliations seemed to be his delight: these he courted and sought, and
always underwent them with great alacrity. One day, when a woman called
him hypocrite, and loaded him with invectives, he gave her privately a
piece of money, and desired her to repeat all she had said in the
market-place.

Worn out at last by ten years' hard service in his hospital, he fell
sick. The immediate occasion of his distemper seemed to be excess of
fatigue in saving wood and other such things for the poor in a great
flood, in which, seeing a person in danger of being drowned, he swam in
his long clothes to endeavor to rescue him, not without imminent hazard
of his own life: but he could not see his Christian brother perish
without endeavoring at all hazards to succor him. He at first concealed
his sickness, that he might not be obliged to diminish his labors and
extraordinary austerities; but in the mean time he carefully revised the
inventories of all things belonging to his hospital, and inspected all
the accounts. He also reviewed all the excellent regulations which he
had made for its administration, the distribution of {546} time, and the
exercises of piety to be observed in it. Upon a complaint that he
harbored idle strollers and bad women, the archbishop sent for him, and
laid open the charge against him. The man of God threw himself prostrate
at his feet, and said: "The Son of God came for sinners, and we are
obliged to promote their conversion, to exhort them, and to sigh and
pray for them. I am unfaithful to my vocation because I neglect this;
and I confess that I know no other bad person in my hospital but myself;
who, as I am obliged to own with extreme confusion, am a most base
sinner, altogether unworthy to eat the bread of the poor." This he spoke
with so much feeling and humility that all present were much moved, and
the archbishop dismissed him with respect, leaving all things to his
discretion. His illness increasing, the news of it was spread abroad.
The lady Anne Ossorio was no sooner informed of his condition, but she
came in her coach to the hospital to see him. The servant of God lay in
his habit in his little cell, covered with a piece of an old coat
instead of a blanket, and having under his head, not indee