March 22, without meeting in their passage any
of those dreadful whirlwinds which infest those seas; as if the presence
of this holy corpse was endued with virtue to dispel them. Before they
had gained the port, they sent in their chalop to give them notice in the
town of the present which they were about to make them: though none of
the Society were in Malacca, and that the plague was there violently
raging, yet the whole nobility, and all the body of the clergy, came with
James Pereyra to the shore, to receive the blessed body, each with a
waxen taper in his hand, and carried it in ceremony to the church of Our
Lady of the Mount, followed by a crowd of Christians, Mahometans, and
Idolaters, who on this occasion seemed all to be joined in the same
religion.

Don Alvarez was the only person who was wanting in his reverence to the
saint: he was then actually at play in his palace, while the procession
was passing by; and, at the noise of the people, putting his head out at
the window, he miscalled the public devotion, by the names of silliness
and foppery; after which, he set him again to gaming. But his impiety did
not long remain unpunished, and the predictions of the man of God made
haste to justify their truth.

The viceroy of the Indies, upon the complaints which were brought against
Don Alvarez for his tyrannical proceedings, deprived him of the
government of Malacca; and causing him to be brought to Goa as a prisoner
of state, sent him to Portugal under a sufficient guard. There all his
goods were confiscated to the king's exchequer; and for himself, he was
condemned to perpetual imprisonment Before his departure from the Indies,
he had gotten an obscene disease, which increased to that degree in
Europe, that he died of it at last in a shameful manner, no remedy
availing to his cure; the stench of his polluted body having first made
him insupportable to all the world. As for Pereyra, who had sacrificed
his whole estate for the benefit of souls, and propagation of the faith,
though the governor had so unjustly made a seizure of his fortunes, yet
King John III. restored him all with interest, and heaped his royal
favours on him in succeeding years, according to the prediction of the
Father.

But the devotion of the people failed not of an Immediate reward. The
pestilence, which for some weeks had laid waste the town, as the saint
had foretold not long before his death, in his letter to Father Francis
Perez, on t