These so considerable favours ought to have obliged the inhabitants to have honoured the body of their benefactor with a sepulchre which was worthy of him.  In the mean time, whether the fear of their governor withheld them, or that God permitted it for the greater glory of his servant, having taken the body out of the chest, they buried it without the church, where the common sort of people were interred; and, which was yet more shameful, they made the grave too scanty; so that crushing the body to give it entrance, they broke it somewhere about the shoulders, and there gushed out blood, which diffused a most fragrant odour.  And farther, to carry their civility and discretion to the highest point, they trampled so hard upon the earth, which covered the blessed corpse, that they bruised it in many parts; as if it had been the destiny of that holy man to be tormented by the people of Malacca, both during his life, and after his decease.  The sacred corpse remained thus without honour, till the month of August, when Father John Beyra came from Goa, in his return to the Moluccas, with two companions whom Gaspar Barzaeus, the vice-provincial, had given him, pursuant to the orders of Father Xavier.  This man, having always had a tender affection for the saint, was most sensibly afflicted for his death; and could not think of continuing his voyage to the Moluccas, till he had looked upon the body, of which so many wonders were related.  Opening himself on that subject to James Pereyra, and two or three other friends of the dead apostle, they took up his body privately one night.  The corpse was found entire, fresh, and still exhaling a sweet odour; neither had the dampness of the ground, after five months burial, made the least alteration in him:  they found even the linen which was over his face tinctured with vermilion blood.

This surprising sight so wrought upon their minds, that they thought it their duty, not to lay it again into the ground, but rather to contrive the means of transporting it to Goa.  Pereyra ordered a coffin to be made of a precious wood, and after they had garnished it with rich China damask, they put the corpse into it, wrapping it in cloth of gold, with a pillow of brocard underneath the head.  The coffin was afterwards bestowed in a proper place, known only to the devoted friends of Father Xavier; and it pleased the Almighty to declare, by a visible miracle, that their zeal was acceptable to him:  For a waxen taper, which they had lighted up before the coffin, and which naturally must have burnt out within ten hours, lasted eighteen days entire, burning day and night; and it was observed, that the droppings of the wax weighed more than the taper itself at the beginning.