As Their Number Was Very Great, We Cried Aloud, Those Of
This Rank Are Named Peter, Those Of That Rank Anthony.
And did the
same amongst the women, whom we separated from the men.
We then
confessed them, and admitted them to the communion. After mass we
applied ourselves again to catechise, to instruct, and receive the
renunciation of their errors, scarce allowing ourselves time to make
a scanty meal, which we never did more than once a day.
After some time had been spent here, we removed to another town not
far distant, and continued the same practice. Here I was accosted
one day by an inhabitant of that place, where he had found the
people so prejudiced against us, who desired to be admitted to
confession. I could not forbear asking him some questions about
those lamentations, which we heard upon our entering into that
place. He confessed with the utmost frankness and ingenuity that
the priests and religious have given dreadful accounts both of us
and of the religion we preached; that the unhappy people were taught
by them that the curse of God attended us wheresoever we went; that
we were always followed by the grasshoppers, that pest of Abyssinia,
which carried famine and destruction over all the country; that he,
seeing no grasshoppers following us when we passed by their village,
began to doubt of the reality of what the priests had so confidently
asserted, and was now convinced that the representation they made of
us was calumny and imposture.
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