The report of his life had reached the quiet valley at the foot of the Pyrenees, and he found his brother and many admirers waiting in the last stage of his journey. He remained three months in Azpeitia, and, as no one could now interfere with his fiery preaching, he urged his townsmen to repent and startled the province. His sanctity was now beyond question, because a woman had recovered the use of a withered arm by washing his linen. Then he arranged the affairs of his disciples and went to Venice. Here Hozes and the Eguia brothers were added to the secret fraternity, and a year was spent in tending the sick and other work of edification. The year 1537 broke at last, and in its first week the six disciples, worn and ragged from the long journey, joined their master. Walking in demure pairs, a staff in one hand and a chaplet in the other, begging their bread and exhorting all they met to virtue and repentance, the six learned students of the Paris University had covered afoot, in the depth of winter, the hundreds of miles that lay between Paris and Venice; flying before the advances of bold women, beaming under the abuse of the new heretics, facing the Alps more bravely than a Hannibal or a Napoleon. Strong efforts had been made to keep them at Paris. Why abandon their precious work at the University for an unknown world? They had a secret vow, they said; though they probably had little more idea than Ignatius of going to Palestine. None of them learned Arabic or Turkish, or studied the Koran: what they did learn was the Catholic doctrine assailed by the followers of Luther. For a month or two the strange missionaries mystified and edified Venice. It was known that some of them were nobles, and all brilliant scholars, yet they performed the most repulsive offices for the sick, and at times put their mouths to festering wounds. Cardinal Caraffa, a stern Neapolitan reformer, asked Ignatius to join the new Theatine order which he had just founded, and Ignatius replied that they had vowed to go to Palestine. They would remember their refusal when Caraffa became Pope. At last, in the middle of Lent, Ignatius sent his followers to Rome to ask the Pope's blessing on their mission. He would not go himself, as he feared the enmity of Caraffa and of the Spanish envoy Ortiz, who had opposed them at Paris. There was, in fact, little danger of Ignatius going without the Pope's blessing, as a new war with the Turk had broken out, and it would not be unjust to conclude that the real object of Ignatius was to bring his little troop to the notice of Paul III. Ortiz himself procured them an audience, and they received the papal blessing to accompany them to Palestine--if they could get there, the Pope lightly said. It is singular that Ignatius, after waiting so long, should choose a time for their departure when the seas were closed against them.