If crosses make a saint, about this time Don Bernardino had his full share of them. News came from Itatines, where the two Jesuits had been marooned, that both of them were ill. Cardenas, who, we may remember, was _homme à visions_, called in the rector of the Jesuit college to inform him that the Company of Jesus had a new martyr in their ranks. Though martyrs (even to-day) enter the ranks of General Loyola’s army pretty frequently, it still seemed strange that the Bishop should know of this particular recruit before the rector. Pressed for an explanation, he replied that a pious person who was vouchsafed communication with the Lord in prayer had seen Father Domenecchi in heaven shining in glory and with a halo round his head. Nothing could be more satisfactory. All the essentials of a well-attested miracle had been complied with. A man was dead, another man had seen the dead man in an ecstasy of prayer, and, to make all complete, refused to testify himself, sending the Bishop as a sort of pious phonograph. No true believer in such a case could doubt, and all went well till it appeared a man from Itatines, charged with a message to the Jesuit college, had passed the night before he gave his message at the Bishop’s house. In Holy Writ we read the wicked man shall have no rest; if this is so, it is as it should be, though generally the good seem just as troubled in their lives as the most erring of their brethren. He who would be a saint must be a-doing, year in, year out, just like a common workman, and Cardenas was no exception to the rule. The pseudo-miracle not having been quite a success, he turned to other fields, and summoned all the inhabitants of Paraguay to attend at the Cathedral upon a certain day. The Governor, thinking there was a revolution likely to break out, fixed a review of all the troops for the same date. A Jesuit priest waited upon the Bishop to persuade him that the crowds which would assemble might break the peace. The Bishop reassured him, and sent him to the Governor to say that his intention was to preach to the people and explain to them the faith; further, that he intended on that day to raise his excommunication and be reconciled: only he asked him to allow the troops to attend and hear his sermon. The crowd was great; the Bishop mounted the pulpit, and, extending his forefinger in the attitude of malediction so dear to Bishops, straight began to preach. For a time all went well. The Governor, presumably, was waiting for the circulation of the hat—that awful mystery which makes all sects kin—when to his horror Cardenas began to enumerate all his offences: he was anathema, was excommunicated, a disbeliever, and had endeavoured to cast down that which the Lord Himself had set on high. The Bishop then informed the crowd that God was angry with the Governor, talked about Moses, and dwelt with unction on the fact that the great lawgiver had been swift to slay.