At sea, the ship tackling served him for a bed; on land, a mat, or the earth itself.  He eat so little, that one of his companions assures us, that, without a miracle, he could not have lived.  Another tells us, that he seldom or never drank wine, unless at the tables of the Portuguese; for there he avoided singularity, and took what was given him.  But, afterwards, he revenged himself on one of those repasts, by an abstinence of many days.

When he was at Cape Comorine, the viceroy; Don Alphonso de Sosa, sent him two barrels of excellent wine.  He did not once taste of it, though he was then brought very low, through the labours of his ministry, but distributed the whole amongst the poor.

His ordinary nourishment, in the Indies, was rice boiled in water, or some little piece of salt fish; but during the two years and a half of his residence in Japan, he totally abstained from fish, for the better edification of that people; and wrote to the Fathers at Rome, “that he would rather choose to die of hunger, than to give any man the least occasion of scandal.”  He also says, “I count it for a signal favour, that God has brought me into a country destitute of all the comforts of life, and where, if I were so ill disposed, it would be impossible for me to pamper up my body with delicious fare.”  He perpetually travelled, by land, on foot, even in Japan, where the ways are asperous, and almost impassible; and often walked, with naked feet, in the greatest severity of winter.

“The hardships of so long a navigation,” says he, “so long a sojourning amongst the Gentiles, in a country parched up with excessive heats, all these incommodities being suffered, as they ought to be, for the sake of Christ, are truly an abundant source of consolations:  for myself, I am verily persuaded, that they, who love the cross of Jesus Christ, live happy in the midst of sufferings; and that it is a death, when they have no opportunities to suffer.  For, can there be a more cruel death, than to live without Jesus Christ, after once we have tasted of him?  Is any thing more hard, than to abandon him, that we may satisfy our own inclinations?  Believe me, there is no other cross which is to be compared to that.  How happy is it, on the other side, to live, in dying daily, and in conquering our passions, to search after, not our proper interests, but the interests of Jesus Christ?”

His interior mortification was the principle of these thoughts, in this holy man; from the first years of his conversion, his study was to gain an absolute conquest on himself; and he continued always to exhort others not to suffer themselves to be hurried away by the fury of their natural desires.  He writes thus to the fathers and brethren of Coimbra, from Malacca:—­“I have always present, in my thoughts, what I have heard from our holy Father Ignatius, that the true children of the Society of Jesus ought to labour exceedingly in overcoming of themselves.