ccompanied by the merchants, who were to set sail within few days after.
The departure of the saint was joyful to the Bonzas, but the glory of it
was a great abatement to their pleasure. It appeared to them, that all
the honours he had received redounded to their shame; and that after such
an affront, they should remain eternally blasted in the opinion of the
people, if they did not wipe it out with some memorable vengeance. Being
met together, to consult on a business which so nearly touched them, they
concluded, that their best expedient was to raise a rebellion in Fucheo,
as they had done at Amanguchi, and flesh the people by giving up to them
the ship of the Portuguese merchants, first to be plundered, then burned,
and the proprietors themselves to be destroyed. In consequence of this,
if fortune favoured them, to attempt the person of the king, and having
dispatched him, to conclude their work by extinguishing the royal line.
As Xavier was held in veneration in the town, even amongst the most
dissolute idolaters, they were of opinion they did nothing, if they did
not ruin his reputation, and make him odious to the people. Thereupon,
they set themselves at work to publish, not only what the Bonzas of
Amanguchi had written of him, but what they themselves had newly
invented; "That he was the most wicked of mankind; an enemy of the living
and the dead; his practice being to dig up the carcases of the buried,
for the use of his enchantments; and that he had a devil in his mouth, by
whose assistance he charmed his audience." They added, "That he had
spelled the king, and from thence proceeded these new vagaries in his
understanding and all his inclinations; but that, in case he came not out
of that fit of madness, it should cost him no less than his crown and
life: That Amida and Xaca, two powerful and formidable gods, had sworn to
make an example of him and of his subjects; that therefore the people, if
they were wise, should prevent betimes the wrath of those offended
deities, by revenging their honour on that impostor of a Bonza, and these
European pirates who made their idol of him." The people were too well
persuaded of the holiness of Xavier, to give credence to such improbable
stories as were raised of him; and all the Bonzas could say against him,
served only to increase the public hatred against themselves. Thus
despairing of success amongst the multitude, they were forced to take
another course, to destroy him in