easily proved by those who know them. After laying such foundations, Catherine began to raise the edifice of her perfection, like an industrious bee she profited by every occasion of advancing and took every means possible of living a more retired life and one more closely united to her divine Spouse. She proposed, in order to preserve herself unsullied by the world, to observe the most rigorous silence, and never to speak except when she went to confess her sins. Her Confessor who preceded me, declared and wrote that she observed this resolution during three years. She remained in her cell continually except when she went to Church; not even leaving it to take her food, which was, as we have already said, the veriest trifle; again, she bedewed her repasts with her tears, and never commenced one without offering to God the tribute of her grief. Who can recount her vigils, her prayers, her meditations and her sighs, in the solitude which she had found in her own house and amid the noise of the city. She had arranged her time so as to watch while the Dominicans whom she called her Brothers were sleeping, and when she heard the second toll for Matins, she said to her divine Spouse: "Lord, my brethren who serve you, have slept until now, and I have watched for them in thy presence, praying thee to preserve them from evil and the wiles of the enemy. Now that they are rising to offer thee their praises, protect them and suffer me to take a short repose" — and then she would lie down on her planks using, a piece of wood for her pillow.
He whom she loved, smiled upon her ardor and encouraged it by new graces, he was unwilling that so faithful a lamb should be destitute of a pastor, and a pupil so desirous of improvement without a good master; but he
