This was always
a favorite excursion of hers. She had come from time to time, escorted
by St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. But on the morning in question,
which was not long after Bishop Ildefonso had written his clever
treatise, "De Virginitate Stae Mariae," the Queen of Heaven came down to
matin prayers, and, taking the bishop's seat, listened to the sermon
with great edification. After service she presented him with a nice new
chasuble, as his own was getting rather shabby, made of "cloth of
heaven," in token of her appreciation of his spirited pamphlet in her
defence. This chasuble still exists in a chest in Asturias. If you open
the chest, you will not see it; but this only proves the truth of the
miracle, for the chroniclers say the sacred vestment is invisible to
mortal eyes.
But we have another and more palpable proof of the truth of the history.
The slab of marble on which the feet of the celestial visitor alighted
is still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel built on the very
spot where the avatar took place. The slab is enclosed in red jasper and
guarded by an iron grating, and above it these words of the Psalmist are
engraved in the stone, _Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus._
This story is cut in marble and carved in wood and drawn upon brass and
painted upon canvas, in a thousand shapes and forms all over Spain. You
see in the Museum at Madrid a picture by Murillo devoted to this idle
fancy of a cunning or dreaming priest.
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