Among the merchants in this ship was Fernam Mendez Pinto, now in Japan for the third time, and who gives at some length the occurrences that took place after Xavier’s arrival at Fuchū, where he was received with great respect by the Portuguese, of whom more than thirty went out on horseback to meet him. The young king, whose name was Kiuan,[39] had already obtained, through intercourse with Portuguese merchants, some knowledge of their religion. He invited Xavier to an audience, to which the Portuguese merchants accompanied him with so grand a display as somewhat to shock the modesty of the saint, but which strongly impressed in his favor the people of Bungo, to whom he had been represented by the bonzes as so miserable a vagabond as to disgust the very vermin with which he was covered. The young king received him very graciously; and he preached and disputed with such success as greatly to alarm the bonzes, who vainly attempted to excite a popular commotion against him as an enchanter, through whose mouth a demon spoke, and a cannibal, who fed on dead bodies which he dug up in the night. Finally, after conquering, in a long dispute before the king of Bungo, the ablest and most celebrated champion of the bonzes,[40] and converting several of the order to the faith, Xavier embarked for Goa on the 20th of September, 1551, attended by two of his Japanese converts. Of those one died at Goa. The other, named Bernard, proceeded to Europe, and, after a visit to Rome, returned to Portugal, and, having entered the Society of Jesus, closed his life at the Jesuit college of Coimbra, a foundation endowed by John III for the support of a hundred pupils, to be prepared as missionaries to the East. At Yamaguchi, after Xavier’s departure, the bonzes, enemies of Catholicity, were more successful. An insurrection which they raised so alarmed the king, that he shut himself up in his palace, set it on fire, and, having slain his only son with his own hand, ended by cutting himself open. The missionaries, however, were saved by an unconverted princess, who even induced certain bonzes to shelter them; and a brother of the king of Bungo having been elected king of Nagato, the Catholics, not one of whom, we are told, had been killed in the insurrection, were soon on a better footing than ever.[41] CHAPTER VIII _Progress of the Missions under Fathers De Torres and Nugnes Barreto—Mendez Pinto a Fourth Time in Japan—A. D. 1551-1557._ The apostle of the Indies returned no more to Japan. He died in December, 1552, at the age of forty-six, on his way to China, at the island of Sancian, a little way from Macao, partly, it would seem, through vexation at having been disappointed, by the jealousy and obstinacy of the governor of Malacca, in a more direct mission to that empire, on which he had set his heart, and for which he had made every arrangement.