Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/315

Rh who sends you to him.' Juan Diego answered: 'Do not be offended, my Queen and Holy Lady, at what I have said, which is not intended to excuse me from this office.' Desiring to satisfy the Most Holy Virgin, although fearful the bishop would not give credit to his story, he pledged himself to repeat the message the next day; and promised, that at the setting of the sun, he would be at that spot once more with the reply. Bidding adieu to the blessed apparition with profound humility, he went to his village and his house, but it is not known whether he mentioned to his wife, or other person, his strange adventure.

The following day, Sunday, December 10th, 1531, Juan Diego went again to hear mass and participate in the Christian worship. Upon the conclusion of the service, he went diligently to discharge his mission, and although the servants of the bishop delayed him a long time at the entrance of the palace, he succeeded at length in coming into the prelate's presence. With lively expressions of feeling, which made that dignitary shed tears of tender pleasure, he prostrated himself before the bishop, and told him he had a second time seen the Mother of God, who commanded him to return and repeat that it was her will a temple should be built in honor of her on the spot at which she appeared. The bishop listened with great attention, and examined him with many questions, in the answers to which he could detect no discrepancy; and, in fine, knowing it could neither be a dream nor fiction of the Indian, he told him that what he had said was not sufficient to ensure credibility; that he must ask some sign from the Holy Lady, by which it might be known that it was really the Mother of God who sent him.

The Indian, with intrepid confidence, replied that he would ask whatever the bishop desired; when the latter, observing that he was not abashed, but offered to ask for the signs, ordered him to go, but, meanwhile, secretly despatched two confidential members of his family to follow the Indian, and to observe with whom Juan Diego spoke on his arrival at the hill of Tepeyacac. They did so; but when they arrived at the bridge over the river that empties, at the foot of the hill, into the lake which lies to the east of Mexico, the Indian disappeared from the spies who were watching him. They examined the summit, brow, and circumference of the hill, without failing, in their anxious solicitude, to explore every ravine, fissure, and fragment of it, but not finding him in any part, they concluded that the native was a deceitful impostor, and confirmed in that idea, they returned to the bishop, begging him to punish the Indian if he repeated his imposition.