He commanded it should be carried to the queen, his mother.  She was also charmed with it, and prostrated herself by the same instinct, with all the ladies of her train, to salute the Mother and the Son.  But as the Japonian women are yet more inquisitive than the men, she asked a thousand questions concerning the Blessed Virgin and our Saviour, which gave Paul the desired opportunity of relating all the life of Jesus Christ; and this relation so much pleased the queen, that some few days after, when he was upon his return to Cangoxima, she sent one of her officers to have a copy of the tablet which she had seen; but a painter was not to be found to satisfy her curiosity.  She required, that at least she might have an abridgment in writing of the chief points of Christianity, and was satisfied therein by Paul.

The Father, overjoyed at these good inclinations of the court, thought earnestly of making himself capable to preach in the language of the country.  There is but one language spoken through all Japan; but that so ample, and so full of variety, that, in effect, it may be said to contain many tongues.  They make use of certain words and phrases, in familiar discourse; and of others in studied compositions.  The men of quality have a language quite differing from the vulgar.  Merchants and soldiers have a speech proper to their several professions, and the women speak a dialect distinct from any of the rest.  When they treat on a sublime subject, (for example, of religion, or affairs of state,) they serve themselves of particular terms; and nothing appears more incongruous amongst them, than to confound these different manners of expression.

The holy man had already some light notions of all these languages, by the communication he had with the three Japonian Christians; but he knew not enough to express him with ease and readiness, as himself acknowledges in his epistles, where he says, “that he and his companions, at their first arrival, stood like statues, mute and motionless.”  He therefore applied himself, with all diligence, to the study of the tongue, which he relates in these following words:  “We are returned to our infancy,” says he, “and all our business at present is to learn the first elements of the Japonian grammar.  God give us the grace to imitate the simplicity and innocence of children, as well as to practise the exercises of children.”

We ought not to be astonished in this passage last quoted, that a man to whom God had many times communicated the gift of tongues, should not speak that of Japan, and that he should be put to the pains of studying it.  Those favours were transient, and Xavier never expected them; insomuch, that being to make abode in a country, he studied the language of it as if he could not have arrived to the knowledge of it but by his own industry.  But the Holy Spirit assisted him after an extraordinary manner, on those occasions, as we have formerly observed.  And we may say, that the easiness wherewith he learnt so many tongues, was almost equivalent to the lasting gift of them.