Again, in 1614, we find him in Asuncion combating calumnies spread by the Spanish settlers against the Jesuits. In the same year (as he informs us[76]) he was witness in the Reduction of Loreto of a strange circumstance. ‘An Indian,’ he says, ‘of intelligence and pious conduct called me to administer the last Sacraments, and to confess him before he died, and this I did. As there seemed little hope of his recovery, and pressing business called me away, I quitted him after having given orders for his burial. He died in a short time—at least, all those who were with him had no doubt of this; on my return I found the man whom I had charged to stay beside the Indian till his death preparing for his funeral. Toward mid-day they came to tell me that the dead man had come to life, and wished to speak to me. I ran there, and found him with a cheerful face in the middle of a crowd of Indians. I asked him what had happened since I last saw him, and he answered me that the instant that I quitted him his soul had taken its departure from his body; then, at a point which he thought near to his hammock, a devil had appeared, who said to him, “You are my prey,” and that he answered it could not be, for he had confessed himself to the best of his ability, and had received the holy Viaticum before his death; that the devil had sustained that his confession had been incomplete, and that he had forgotten to confess that twice he had been drunk, to which he answered that it was an oversight, and he hoped that God would not remember it. Then, on the devil sustaining that he had committed a sacrilege, St. Peter had appeared, followed by angels, and driven off the fiend. I asked him how he had known St. Peter, and he replied by describing him, though he had never seen an image of the saint. “The saint,” he said, “covered me with his mantle, and I felt myself instantly carried through the air. First I perceived a lovely landscape, and further on a great city, from which a shining light appeared. Then the Apostle and the angels stopped, and the first said to me, ‘This is the city of the Lord; we live here with Him, but the time of your entry is not yet. It is written that your soul shall once more join your body, and in three days you must appear in church.’ Then all was dark, and in an instant I woke up alive and well.” ‘I,’ says Montoya, ‘understood by the last words of St. Peter that the man had to die in three days, and I asked what he thought himself. “I think,” said he, “that next Sunday they will carry my body to the church, and I am certain that I only returned to life in order to exhort my relatives and my friends to listen to your instructions.” . . . When Sunday came he made his general confession,[77] admitted the two sins the devil had reproached him with, exhorted all to live a Christian life, and a few moments afterwards quietly gave up the ghost.’