A railway worker had a boy of two who lay dangerously ill of meningitis. The doctor, who had given up all hope, asked the priest to break the news to the young parents, who at once cried out, "We will write to the pope! We used to go to confession to him at Mantua when we were children; bishop as he was, he used to hear the confessions of the poor." A letter was written and posted, and Pius wrote with his own hand several lines in reply, bidding the young couple pray and hope. On the following day the child had completely recovered. These are only a few of the many graces obtained in the same way. The cure of a Redemptoristine nun in the acute stages of cancer by the application of a piece of stuff that had been worn by Pius X was borne witness to by Cardinal Vives y Tuto. The sudden return to life and speech of Don Rafael Merry del Val, father of the Cardinal Secretary of State, at the prayer of his wife who, when death was declared imminent, tried the same remedy; a French woman dying of heart disease, who denied the very existence of God, was not only healed by the pope's blessing, but reconciled to the Church and was henceforward a fervent Catholic: these are only a few more of the marvels wrought. Pope Pius did his best to hush the matter up. "I have nothing to do with it," he continually exclaimed; "it is the power of the keys." "I hear that you are a _santo_ and work miracles," said a lady one day, with more enthusiasm than tact. "You have made a mistake in a consonant," replied the pope, laughing, "it is a 'Sarto' that I am." No less witty was his reply to a man who came to solicit a cardinal's hat for one of his friends. "But I cannot give your friend a cardinal's hat," said the Holy Father. "I am not a hatter, only a tailor" (_sarto_). The Portuguese revolution in 1911 was a fresh heartbreak to the pope, for the Portuguese Republic was bitterly anti-Catholic and anti-clerical. The first action of its representatives was to expel the religious orders and to confiscate their buildings and belongings. This was done in the most brutal manner, nuns being driven off to prison after their convents had been looted and some of the inhabitants put to death. Many died of the privations endured, while others testified to the humanity of their gaolers by going mad. Religious instruction of any kind was prohibited in the government schools; priests were arrested and imprisoned; the Bishop of Oporto was driven from his diocese. The separation law of church and state fell more heavily on the Church in Portugal than even that of France, and its object was the elimination of the Christian faith from Portuguese society.