THE APOSTLE OF YOUTH
novena to Our Lady, Help of Christians—the Pater, Ave Maria, Gloria and Salve Regina—in which he promised to unite. An offering to the new church was to be the willing testimony of her gratitude. On the eighth day he again called with some anxiety upon the invalid. The servant, on opening the door, exclaimed: "Why, Father, have you not heard? Madame is cured; she has been out twice." The mistress came to Don Bosco at once, joyous and well; and handing him one thousand francs, just the sum he needed, she said smilingly: "The first gift but not the last."
Don Bosco's reputation as a thaumaturgus began to grow. Spiritual maladies of the most inveterate kind had yielded for years to the medicinal balm of his gentle treatment. And now corporal cures were being effected at his word, in answer to his prayer. The walls of his great basilica could tell a whole history of wonders that were wrought into all parts of the stately structure, mosaics of light, of charity, visible to Mary and the angels who watch around the sacred altar. Don Bosco, the humble, the lowly-hearted peasant, still more amid divine favors and caresses than amid the earthly honors often lavished upon him, regarded them as utterly beyond his merits and inflicted upon himself more severe penances, sought a more complete death to self and courted humiliations with a deeper joy and a more solid conviction of his nothingness.
One day he trembled from head to foot with
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