and extend its hands and arms. Her countenance was inflamed; she remained a long time motionless and with her eyes closed. Then, as though she had received a deathly wound, we saw her suddenly fall, and resume a few moments after the use of her senses. She sent for me and said to me in a low tone: " Father, I announce to you that, by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, I bear his sacred stigmata in my body. " I answered her, that I suspected after what passed in her ecstacy, and I asked what our Lord did to her. "I saw," said she, "my crucified Saviour who descended upon me with a great light; the effort of my soul to go forth to meet its Creator, forced my body to arise.
"Then from the five openings of the sacred wounds of our Lord, I saw directed upon me bloody rays which struck my hands, my feet and my heart. I understood the mystery, and cried out: Ah ! Lord my God, I entreat thee, that these cicatrixes may not appear exteriorly on my body. While I was speaking, the bleeding beams became brilliant, and reached in the form of light, these five places on my person, my hands, my feet and my heart." Then I said to her, did no beam of light reach your right side? She replied to me: " No, on the left side and directly above the heart. The luminous line that emanated from the right side, did not strike me obliquely but directly." "Do you feel," said I, "a sharp pain in each of those places?" she then answered me, heaving a deep sigh: "I feel at these five places, and especially in my heart, a pain so violent, that without a new miracle, it appears to me impossible to live in this state."
These words filled me with grief, and I examined whether I could observe any signs of her grievous sufferings. When she had finished what she had confided
