enjoining them to begin their work in Rome, and preach under the
authority of the Holy See. The principal churches were assigned them; and
that of St Laurence in Damaso was allotted to Xavier.

Being now freed from his quartan ague, and his strength being again
restored, he preached with more vigour and vehemence than ever.

Death, the last judgment, and the pains of hell, were the common subject
of his sermons. He proposed those terrible truths after a plain manner,
but withal so movingly, that the people, who came in crowds to hear him
preach, departed out of the church in a profound silence; and thought
less of giving praises to the preacher, than of converting their own
souls to God.

The famine, which laid waste the city of Rome at that time, gave
opportunity to the ten stranger-priests, to relieve an infinite number of
miserable people, oppressed with want, and unregarded. Xavier was ardent
above the rest, to find them places of accommodation, and to procure alms
for their subsistence. He bore them even upon his shoulders to the places
which were provided for them, and attended them with all imaginable care.

In the mean time, James Govea, a Portuguese, who had been acquainted with
Ignatius, Xavier, and Le Fevre, at Paris, and who was principal of the
college of Saint Barbe, when they lived together there, being come to
Rome on some in portant business, for which he was sent thither by John
III. King of Portugal, and seeing the wonderful effects of their
ministry, wrote to the king, as he had formerly done from Paris, on the
reports which were spread of them, that such men as these, knowing,
humble, charitable, inflamed with zeal, indefatigable in labour, lovers
of the cross, and who aimed at nothing but the honour of Almighty God,