Though more remarkable for the natural beauty around its walls than for the vigor of the spiritual life within, Yuste did not fail to boast of its worthies. The prior Jerome, a son of the great house of Zuniga, was cited as a model of austere and active holiness. The lay brother, Melchor de Yepes, crippled in felling a huge chesnut-tree in the forest, was a pattern of bed-ridden patience and piety. Fray Hernando de Corral was the scholar and book collector of the house; although he was also, for that reason, perhaps, considered as scarcely of a sound mind. He left many copious notes in the fly-leaves of his black-letter folios. Fray Juan de Xeres, an old soldier of the great Captain, was distinguished by the gift of second-sight, and was nursed on his death-bed by the eleven thousand virgins. Still more favored was Fray Rodrigo de Caceres, for the Blessed Mary herself, in answer to his repeated prayers, came down in visible shape, and received his spirit on the eve of the feast of her Assumption. And prior Diego de San Geronimo was so popular in the Vera as a preacher, that when he grew old and infirm, the people of Garganta la Olla endeavored to lure him to their pulpit by making a road, which was called that of Fray Diego. In works of charity--that redeeming virtue of the monastic system--the fathers of Yuste were diligent and bounteous. Six hundred fanegas, or about one hundred and twenty quarters of wheat, in ordinary years, and in years of scarcity, as much as fifteen hundred fanegas, were distributed at the convent-gate; large donations of bread, meat, and oil, and some money, were made, either publicly or in private, by the prior, at Easter and other festivals; and the sick poor in the village of Quacos were freely supplied with food, medicine, and advice.