Although Thadeus Ennis and other Jesuits accompanied the troops, and no doubt aided much by their advice, the Indians had as a general one Nicolas Ñeenguiru, styled in the Gazettes of the time the King of Paraguay. About this man all kinds of monstrous legends soon sprang up. One little lying book, entitled ‘Histoire de Nicolas I., Roy du Paraguai et Empereur des Mamalus’,[293] which bears upon its title-page ‘Saint Paul’,[294] 1756, especially excels. In that brief work of but one hundred and seventeen pages, printed on yellowish paper, and with one of the finest little vignettes of a basket of fruit and flowers upon its title-page that one could wish to see, a sort of parody of a Spanish picaresque novel in duodecimo is set forth with circumstance. Nicolas Roubioni is duly born in 1710, in a small ‘bourgade de l’Andalousie’ bearing the name of Taratos. The name carries conviction from the start, and pronounced à la française, with the accent equal upon all the syllables, is quite as Spanish as the most exigent of comic operas could possibly desire. His father, ‘ancien militaire’, left him alone to educate himself as he best liked. Arrived at eighteen years of age he runs away to Seville, and after several adventures in the style of those of Rinconete and Cortadillo, seen through French spectacles, enters the service of a lady bearing the well-known Spanish name of Donna Maria della Cupidità. Under the unnecessary alias of Medelino, and in the capacity of cook, he becomes the lady’s lover as in duty bound. ‘Chassé’ from Seville by a jealous brother of his love, he flies for refuge to a ‘bourgade’ (name not chronicled) some seven leagues away. He then becomes a muleteer, and at Medina Sidonia kills a man, and, forced to flee, repairs to Malaga, where he lives peacefully ten years. Finding life dull there, he journeys to Aragon and joins the Jesuits, and from henceforth his future is assured. After an interval he reappears at Huesca, and at once falls in love with ‘une belle espagnole’, Donna Victoria Fortini, whom he courts under the guise of a gentleman of Seville, returning every night to the convent of the Jesuits to change his clothes. So great becomes his effrontery that under the style and title of ‘Comte de la Emmandés’, he publicly marries ‘sa belle’, the Jesuits either consenting, or too astounded at the fact to intervene. Things getting hot in Huesca, he embarks for Buenos Ayres as a missionary, leaving poor Donna de la Victoria ‘dans une inquiétude mortelle’, as she might well have been. Arrived in Buenos Ayres just at the moment of the cession of the seven Jesuit towns, he sees his opportunity, learns Guaraní in the brief space of six or seven weeks, and joins the Indians. They naturally, having been trained to look on every foreigner outside the Order of the Jesuits as an enemy, receive him as their King. Under the title of the ‘Son of the Sun and Star of Liberty’ he rules them, looked on as a God. The brief