[66] This curious scene is the subject of another picture in the cloisters of Saint Francis, at Seville. The bishop is seen in his bed, where Saint Francis has neatly severed the head from the body with Saint Paul’s sword, which he had borrowed for this pious purpose. As the good friars might have been suspected of having a hand in this miracle, the saint performed an additional wonder. The figures of Saint Paul and Saint Francis stood side by side in a painted glass window of the principal convent of the order. The apostle had a sword in his hand, while his companion was weaponless. To the great surprise of the fathers, it was observed, one morning, that Saint Paul had given away the sword to his friend. The death of the bishop, which happened that very night, explained the wonder, and taught the world what those might expect who thwarted the plans of Heaven in the establishment of the Franciscans. The fear of a similar punishment abated the fierceness of the nobleman, and he ordered his servants to give the friars some clean straw for a bed, and a couple of eggs for their supper. Having given this explanation, the painter trusts to the appropriate language of his art, and takes up the story immediately after the death of the noble sinner. Michael the archangel--who by a traditional belief, universal in Spain, and probably common to all Catholic countries, is considered to have the charge of weighing departed souls with their good works, against the sins they have committed--is represented with a large pair of scales in his hand. Several angels, in a group, stand near him, and a crowd of devils are watching, at a respectful distance, the result of the trial. The newly-departed soul, in the puny shape of a sickly boy, has been placed, naked, in one scale, while the opposite groans under a monstrous heap of swords, daggers, poisoned bows, love-letters, and portraits of females, who had been the victims of his fierce desires. It is evident that this ponderous mass would have greatly outweighed the slight and nearly transparent form which was to oppose its pressure, had not Saint Francis, whose figure stands prominent in the painting, assisted the distressed soul by slipping a couple of eggs and a bundle of straw into its own side of the balance. Upon this seasonable addition, the instruments and emblems of guilt are seen to fly up and kick the beam. It appears from this that the Spanish painter agrees with Milton in the system of weighing Fate; and that, since the days of Homer and Virgil, superior weight is become the sign of victory, which with them was that of defeat--_quo vergat pondere lethum_. NOTE D. _On the Moral Character of the Spanish Jesuits,_ p. 77.