’Tis true, he spoke but very ill; and his language was only a kind of Lingua Franca, a confused medley of Italian, French, and Spanish:  but he pronounced it with so much vehemence, and the matter of his sermons was so solid, that his ill accent and his improper phrases were past by.  His audience attended to him, as to a man descended from above, and his sermon being ended, came to cast themselves at his feet, and make confession.

These continual labours, during a very sharp winter, threw him into a relapse of sickness, much more dangerous than the former; as it were to verify the prediction of St Jerome; for he was seized with a quartan ague, which was both malignant and obstinate; insomuch that it cast him into an extreme faintness, and made him as meagre as a skeleton.  In the mean time, lean and languishing as he was, he ceased not to crawl to the public places, and excite passengers to repentance.  When his voice failed him, his wan and mortified face, the very picture of death, seemed to speak for him, and his presence alone had admirable effects.

Jerome Casalini profited so well by the instructions and example of the holy man, that he arrived in a short space to a high degree of holiness:  the greater knowledge he had of him, he the more admired him, as he himself related.  And it is from this virtuous churchman chiefly, that we have this account of Xavier, that having laboured all the day, he passed the night in prayer; that on Friday saying the mass of the passion, he melted into tears, and was often ravished in his soul; that he spoke but seldom, but that all his words were full of sound reason, and heavenly grace.

While Xavier was thus employing his labours at Bolognia, he was recalled to Rome by Father Ignatius; who had already presented himself before the Pope, and offered him the service both of himself and his companions.  Pope Paul the Third accepted the good will of these new labourers; enjoining them to begin their work in Rome, and preach under the authority of the Holy See.  The principal churches were assigned them; and that of St Laurence in Damaso was allotted to Xavier.

Being now freed from his quartan ague, and his strength being again restored, he preached with more vigour and vehemence than ever.

Death, the last judgment, and the pains of hell, were the common subject of his sermons.  He proposed those terrible truths after a plain manner, but withal so movingly, that the people, who came in crowds to hear him preach, departed out of the church in a profound silence; and thought less of giving praises to the preacher, than of converting their own souls to God.

The famine, which laid waste the city of Rome at that time, gave opportunity to the ten stranger-priests, to relieve an infinite number of miserable people, oppressed with want, and unregarded.  Xavier was ardent above the rest, to find them places of accommodation, and to procure alms for their subsistence.  He bore them even upon his shoulders to the places which were provided for them, and attended them with all imaginable care.