sweetness and debonairty that the ladies saw in their good mother, that she alleged and took away their sorrow, whereof the ladies, her daughters, couthe her much thanks. And thus learned they do well by devotion and to love their good mother more sweetly, and followed by the right way the works of their abbess. And they marvelled much of the great abundance of holiness that God had given to his spouse.
When she had been forty years in the state of right holy poverty it pleased to our Lord to call her to be rewarded in heaven, and sent to her a great malady, and multiplied her languor and sickness. She had sometime done so sharp penance that her body ne her flesh had no strength. And at the last she was over sick and much more than she was wont to be, for as our Lord had given to her in her health, riches of merits, of good virtues and of good works, right so would God enrich her in her sickness, to the end that she would suffer for him great pain and torments, for in suffering of sickness is virtue perfect. How and in what wise she was virtuous in her malady and perfect, ye may hear. For howbeit that she had been eight and twenty years in langour and malady, yet never she grudged, ne murmured, ne plained, but always said holy words and rendered thankings to our Lord, howbeit that she was marvellously aggrieved and sick, so that it seemed that she hasted much to draw to her end.
It pleased nevertheless to our Lord that he respited her from the death unto the time that her end might be honoured, and enhanced her by the presence of the pope and of the cardinals, to whom she was
