Besides this, Oxindono assigned them, for their lodgings, an old monastery of the Bonzas, which was disinhabited.  They were no sooner established in it, than great numbers of people resorted to them:  Some out of policy, and to please the king; others to observe their carriage, and to pick faults in it; many out of curiosity, and to learn something that was new.  All in general proposed their doubts, and disputed with so much vehemence, that most of them were out of breath.  The house was never empty, and these perpetual visits took up all the time of the man of God.

He explains himself on this subject, and almost complains, in the letters which he writes to Father Ignatius concerning his voyage to Japan.  For after he had marked out to him the qualities which were requisite in a labourer of the Society, proper to be sent thither, “That he ought, in the first place, to be a person of unblameable conversation, and that the Japonese would easily be scandalised, where they could find occasion for the least reproach; that, moreover, he ought to be of no less capacity than virtue, because Japan is also furnished with an infinite number of her own clergymen, profound in science, and not yielding up any point in dispute without being first convinced by demonstrative reasons; that, yet farther, it was necessary, that a missioner should come prepared to endure all manner of wants and hardships; that he must be endued with an heroic fortitude to encounter continual dangers, and death itself in dreadful torments, in case of need,” Having, I say, set these things forth, and added these express words in one of his letters, “I write to Father Simon, and, in his absence, to the rector of Coimbra, that he shall send hither only such men as are known and approved by your holy charity,” he continues thus: 

“These labourers in the gospel must expect to be much more crossed in their undertaking than they imagine.  They will be wearied out with visits, and by troublesome questions, every hour of the day, and half the night:  They will be sent for incessantly to the houses of the great, and will sometimes want leisure to say their prayers, or to make their recollections.  Perhaps, also, they will want time to say their mass or their breviary, or not have enough for their repast, or even for their natural repose, for it is incredible how importunate these Japonians are, especially in reference to strangers, of whom they make no reckoning, but rather make their sport of them.  What therefore will become of them, when they rise up against their sects, and reprehend their vices?” Yet these importunities became pleasing to Father Xavier, and afterwards produced a good effect.  As the Japonese are of docible and reasonable minds, the more they pressed him in dispute, they understood the truth the more:  So that their doubts being satisfied, they comprehended easily, that there were no contradictions in our faith, nothing that would not abide the test of the most severe discussion.