Page:Lifeofsaintcatha.djvu/228

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sufficed for five among them. When the mendicant Friars returned, it was announced that their collection would serve another time, because God had perfectly provided for the necessities of his servants. After the repast, I conversed with our invited friends; I was talking at length of the virtues of Saint Catherine, when the Prior with some other Religious arrived, and recounted to us the miracle that had just taken place: I consequently observed to my hearers: " Our blessed mother would not deprive us on her feast of a prodigy which she often effected during her sojourn on earth: and this is a new proof that she accepts our homage and is continually with us; hence let us return thanks to God, and to her, for her maternal kindness."

Besides the above wonders, God worked many miracles by his Spouse,— on flowers for example (for the Saint was very fond of this poetry of nature;) on broken, or injured articles, and indeed on every grade of inanimate objects; but I observe silence concerning them in order to avoid prolixity. I must however indulge myself in narrating a circumstance, testified by twenty persons, as well as myself, and well-known to the citizens of Pisa in general. In 1375, Catherine and her suit lodged at the house of Gherard Buonconti — and during her sojourn there her continual ecstasies so enfeebled her body that we thought her at the point of death. I dreaded losing her, and reflected upon what means I could adopt for reviving her: she held meat, eggs and wine in abhorrence, and for a stronger reason she would certainly decline any kind of cordials. I asked her to suffer them to put a little sugar in the cold water that she was taking: she directly answered: " Would you extinguish