interment, had they not waited for Catherine to complete her prayer. The Most High beheld the anguish of Catherine's heart and her humble and fervent supplications penetrated to the mercy-seat. The God of mercy and of consolation heard her, for the body of Lapa suddenly recovered motion; life returned completely and she soon resumed her ordinary occupation. She lived until the age of eighty-nine years, in the midst of affliction, privations and trials, just as her daughter had announced to her on the part of God.
The witnesses of this miracle were, Catherine Getti, Angela Vannini, factually a Sister of Penance of St Dominic) and Lysa, Catherine's sister-in-law: and Lapa's daughter-in-law: they still live and are all in Sienna; they heard Catherine when she said beside her dear mother, "Lord are these thy promises?" Thousands of persons knew Lapa after that period. All this shows Catherine's merit before God, for she preserved her father's soul from purgatory and recalled to life the inanimate body of her mother. This miracle took place in the month of October, 1370.
The following fact I can particularly attest. Seventeen years ago, that is 1373 or 1374, religious obedience summoned me to Sienna, where I exercised in the Convent of my Order, the functions of Lector. I was serving God in a lukewarm manner, when the plague declared itself, and raged as it had done in many places during our time, but never so fearfully as in Sienna. The contagion attacked men and persons of all ages; one day, two or even three days at most, sufficed to make one the victim of its empoisoned breath. In consequence terror reigned everywhere; zeal for souls, which is the spirit of the Order of St. Dominic obliged me to devote myself to the
