then possessed and of which I am now deprived. The salvation of the neighbor is the cause of it; if I love so ardently the souls whose conversion God has confided to me, it is because they have cost me dear; they have separated me from my God, and deprived me of the enjoyment of his glory during a period to me unknown. But they will prove "my glory and my crown and my immortal joy." (Phil. iv. 1) I tell you these things, father, so as to console you for the anxiety caused you by those who murmur at the confidence I repose in you."
After God had bestowed on me the favor of hearing these things, I asked myself whether it was my duty to publish them at a time in which self-love renders men so blind and so incredulous. My Brethren and Sisters did not approve of my disclosing them during Catherine's life-time, and I remarked that several of those who at first followed her, when this circumstance, which they could not comprehend, was related to them went away. But now that she has gone to the home of the blessed, I thought myself obliged to speak; and I have revealed the whole, so that so great a miracle be not concealed through my fault. The following particulars give all possible authenticity to this event: at the approach of Catherine's death, the women who were with her and who were her daughters in the Lord, sent for Friar Thomas, her confessor, to assist her in her agony: he hastened there without a moments delay, with another Religious Friar Thomas Antonio, and began with tears to recite the customary prayers; the news spreading, another Religious, called Friar Antonio Bartholomew of Montucio, came speedily with John, a lay-brother of Sienna, now residing at Rome. These four Religious,
