things, that during three days and three nights her body remained insensible; several persons present thought that she was dead, or at the point of death. Others better informed, believed that she was ravished with the Apostle to the third heaven. When the ecstacy had terminated, her mind remained so filled with the remembrance of what she had seen that she returned with difficulty to things of earth, and remained in a kind of slumber or inebriate from which she could not be aroused. In the mean while. Friar Thomas, her Confessor, and Friar Donato of Florence, determined to pay a visit to a venerable monk of the Order of Hermits, who resided in the country. They first came to see Catherine, whom they found in her holy somnolence and all inebriated with the spirit of God. To try to awaken her, they said "We are going to visit the Hermit, who lives out in the country — will you come with us?" Catherine, who liked such pilgrimages, answered yes in the midst of her drowsiness. But scarcely had she uttered this word, than she began to repent of it, as of a falsehood. The grief that she suffered, restored her completely to her senses, and she mourned this fault as many days and nights as she had been in ecstacy, "the most wicked and guilty of women," said she to herself "is it thus thou recognize the graces that God's infinite bounty has just granted thee; is it thus thou do profit by the verities that you have learned from heaven! Have the sublime instructions of the Holy Ghost only taught thee to lie, when returning to earth. Thou know full well, that thou had no intention of accompanying those Religious, and answered them, "yes." You have told a falsehood to thy Confessor and to the fathers of thy soul; what a grievous and aggravated fault! " She remained
