"Full of joy with his success he retired, one evening, to a little grove on the banks of the Ebro, with his eight new friends, and there, after long and holy converse, they fell asleep under the orange trees; but between the night and morning they were awakened by hearing a choir, possessed of a harmony that was divine, singing 'Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus tecum;' yet they saw not from whence the sound proceeded. "Louder swelled this mysterious harmony, and louder still, until they seemed to be in the midst of it. "Listening in wonder and awe they fell on their knees, and lo, senor! a marvellous silver light, brighter than that of day, filled all the orange grove, and amid a choir of angels, whose golden hair floated over their shoulders, whose wings and robes were white as the new fallen snow, and whose faces bloomed with the purity and radiance of heaven, there, on the summit of a white marble pillar, stood the blessed Madonna, with her fair brow crowned by thirteen stars, and her robe all of a dazzling brightness. With a divine smile on her face, she listened to the choir, who went through the whole of her matin service. "When it was ended, when the voices of the angels were hushed, their eyes cast down, and their hands meekly folded on their bosoms, "'Santiago,' said she, 'here on this spot raise them the church of which I told thee, and build it round this pillar, which I have brought hither by the hands of angels; here shall it abide until the end of the world, and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against it!' "The saint and his eight disciples, who were all on their knees in reverence and awe, bowed low at this command; when they looked up, the Virgin had disappeared with all her shining choir, and nothing remained but the miraculous pillar of polished marble, standing cold, white, and solitary, amid the moonlight, by the bank of the Ebro. "So around that column he built the famous church of Our Lady del Pilar, which has been the scene of a thousand miracles; about it, ere long, grew the vast Christian city now named Zaragossa, which, as my father the professor always assured me, is but a corruption of the original name, Cæsarea-Augusta. "Santiago rests from his holy labours in Compostella, where he was martyred by the barbarous Galicians, and where his bones were discovered in after years by a miraculous star that burned over his grave. When danger threatens Spain, the clashing of arms and of armour is heard within his tomb, for he is her tutelary guardian, and so greatly do we venerate him, that of the canons of his cathedral seven, at least, must be cardinal priests: and there, at Compostella, he appeared in a vision to the king, Don Ramiro, before his famous battle with the Moors, and promised him victory for withholding the annual tribute of a hundred Christian girls.