Page:Tale of Paraguay - Southey.djvu/214

208 years after this marriage Mary the most holy was born; and the three years and a half of her Highness's age make sixty-nine and a half, a few days more or less.

"The holy Patriarch and father of our Queen being dead, the holy Angels of her guard returned incontinently to her presence, and gave her notice of all that had occurred in her father's transit. Forthwith the most prudent child solicited with prayers for the consolation of her mother St. Anna, intreating that the Lord would, as a father, direct and govern her in the solitude wherein, by the loss of her husband Joachin, she was left. St. Anna herself sent also news of his death, which was first communicated to the Mistress of our divine Princess, that in imparting it she might console her. The Mistress did this, and the most wise child heard her, with all composure and dissimulation, but with the patience and the modesty of a Queen; but she was not ignorant of the event which her Mistress related to her as news."—Mistica Ciudad de Dios, par. 1. 1. 2. c. 16. § 664—669. Madrid, 1744.

It was in the middle of the seventeenth century that the work from which this extract is translated was palmed upon the Spaniards as a new revelation. Gross and blasphemous as the imposture is, the work was still current when I procured my copy, about twenty years ago; and it is not included in the