wretched creature I moaned and cried for feeling of my bodily pains and for failing of comfort, spiritual and bodily.
Then came a Religious person to me and asked me how I fared. I said I had raved to-day. And he laughed loud and heartily.[1] And I said: The Cross that stood afore my face, methought it bled fast. And with this word the person that I spake to waxed all sober and marvelled. And anon I was sore ashamed and astonished for my recklessness, and I thought: This man taketh in sober earnest[2] the least word that I might say. Then said I no more thereof. And when I saw that he took it earnestly and with so great reverence, I wept, full greatly ashamed, and would have been shriven; but at that time I could tell it no priest, for I thought: How should a priest believe me'? I believe not our Lord God. This [Shewing] I believed verily for the time that I saw Him, and so was then my will and my meaning ever for to do without end; but as a fool I let it pass from my mind. Ah! lo, wretch that I am! this was a great sin, great unkindness, that I for folly of feeling of a little bodily pain, so unwisely lost for the time the comfort of all this blessed Shewing of our Lord God. Here may you see what I am of myself.
But herein would our Courteous Lord not leave me. And I lay still till night, trusting in His mercy, and then I began to sleep. And in the sleep, at the beginning, methought the Fiend set him on my throat, putting forth a visage full near my face, like a young man's and it was long and wondrous lean: I saw never none such. The
