In spite of all this experience of the pleasure of the Lord in this exercise, he still desired to retire and to prepare himself for a holy death; and he constantly begged the superior of this province to send him a successor, that he might return to it.] The province sent father Fray Matheo de la Villa, who has several times been mentioned with praise. Thereupon father Fray Diego, after obtaining the necessary licenses and decrees, gathered twenty companions and came to live and die with them in this province--nearly all the members of which were his sons, whom he had sent or brought from España, as has been recounted. Hence he was received as the general father of all, and was by all much beloved for the great good which he had wrought for all of them, for each one in particular, and for the whole province in general, by means of many royal decrees and grants which he had obtained at court for medicine for the sick, wine for the masses, oil for the lamps which burned before the most holy sacrament, and habits for the religious, which are great sources of relief in our great poverty. Among these things the provision for the dress of the religious ought not to be passed over in silence. Neither the province nor any house within it had any regular source of income; and it provided for all its expenses entirely with alms received from the faithful. Since serge for our habits had to be brought from Nueva España, it was a difficult thing for the province to send every year the money for all the clothing of the religious, at the price in Mexico. The province provides the religious with clothing, for no member of it cares for himself, or has any deposit or anything else of his own, not even with the permission of his superior. Hence the province sent directions to father Fray Diego to ask his Majesty to give as alms the clothing for all the religious of the province--and this not for one year or two, but forever, since the same need and poverty were to continue forever. Father Fray Diego, who was acquainted with the heavy demands upon the royal treasury, regarded it as impossible to obtain this; and he put off asking for it until he felt obliged to send an answer to the province. Feeling practically certain that it would not be granted, he asked for it in a memorial of his own, sending in other memorials in which he asked for things which seemed to him very easy to grant; and when he looked over the answers he found that the royal Council had unhesitatingly allowed the grant and gift of the clothing (which he had regarded as impossible), but had refused everything which he asked for in the other memorial. From this it was plain that it was God who had in His hand the heart of the king; and that He had done more than what human prudence might hope for. This truth was all the more confirmed by the fact that when the royal decree came to be presented before the royal officials in Mexico, who were always accustomed to put a