Page:Purgatory00scho.djvu/324

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the time and will to make an act of perfect contrition. We might fill a volume with the miraculous events which prove the fulfilment of this promise. Let it suffice to relate a few of them.

Venerable Father de la Colombiere tells us that a young person, who was at first pious and wore the holy scapular, had the misfortune to stray from the path of virtue. In consequence of bad literature and dangerous company, she fell into the greatest disorders, and was about to lose her honour. Instead of turning to God and having recourse to the Blessed Virgin, who is the refuge of sinners, she abandoned herself to despair. The demon soon suggested a remedy to her evils — the frightful remedy of suicide, which would put an end to her temporal miseries to plunge her into eternal torments. She ran to the river, and, still wearing the scapular, threw herself into the water. But, oh, wonder! she floated instead of sinking, and could not find the death she sought. A fisherman, who saw her, hastened to give her assistance, but the wretched creature prevented him: tearing off her scapular, she cast it far from her and sank immediately. The fisherman was unable to save her, but he found the scapular, and recognised that this sacred livery while she wore it had prevented the sinner from committing suicide.

In the hospital at Toulon there was an officer, a most impious man, who refused to see a priest. Death approached, and he fell into a sort of lethargy. The attendants profited by this to place a scapular about his neck, without his knowledge. On recovering soon after, he cried out in a fury, "Why have you put fire upon me, a fire which bums me? Take it away, take it away!" Then they invoked the Blessed Virgin, and tried again to put on the scapular. He perceived this, tore it off in a rage, threw it far away from him, and with a horrible blasphemy upon his lips he expired.

The second privilege, that of the Sabbatine or Deliver-