About the middle of the seventeenth century there lived at Seville a young gallant, Don Miguel de Mañara by name, whose excesses and escapades horrified even that lax generation. Marriage with the heiress of the Mendozas did not sober him. Of him, at this period of his life, this much good may be said, that he patronised and encouraged Murillo. But one day something happened: quite suddenly the rake changed into a devotee, an ascetic--a saint in the seventeenth-century acceptation of the word. The wine-bibber forswore even chocolate as too tempting a beverage. What had happened to produce this startling reformation? Accounts vary. Some say that Don Miguel, traversing the streets in insensate rage against some custom-house officials, was suddenly and vividly made conscious of the enormous wickedness of his life. A more picturesque version is the following: Returning from a carousal one night, the Don found himself absolutely unable to discover his house or the way thither. Wandering desperately up and down distressed, and in perplexity of mind, he perceived a funeral cortège approaching. Impelled by irresistible curiosity, he stepped up to the bearers of the bier and asked whose body they were carrying. Came the reply: “The corpse of Don Miguel de Mañara.” The horror-stricken prodigal tore aside the pall, and lo! the face of the dead man was his own. The vision disappeared, and the same instant the Don found himself at the door of his own house. He entered it a changed man. The church and hospital of La Caridad are the existing fruits of Don Miguel’s conversion. As far back as 1578, there had existed at Seville a confraternity, the objects of which were to assist condemned criminals at their last moments and to provide them with Christian burial. To this association the reformed rake turned his attention. He converted the chapel into a hospital for the sick, the poor, and the pilgrims of all nations, and liberally endowed it out of his ample resources. The edifice is in the decadent Greco-Roman style, and was designed by Bernardo Simón de Pereda. The Baroque façade is adorned with five large blue faïence designs on a white ground, the subjects being Faith, Hope, and Charity, St James, and St George. Tradition has it that these were made after drawings by Murillo at the _azulejo_ factory of Triana. The church hardly appears to us to warrant the description “one of the most elegant in Seville,” applied to it by Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell. Under the High Altar is buried the founder, Don Miguel. His own wish was to be buried at the entrance to the church, with the epitaph: _Aqui yacen los huesos y cenizas del peor hombre que ha habido en el mundo_ (Here lie the bones and ashes of the worst man that ever lived in this world). His sword, and his portrait painted by Valdés Leal, are preserved in the Hospital.