to undergo their punishment in the same place where they have committed their sins. We read in the chronicles of the Friars Minors,[1] that Blessed Stephen, Religious of that Order, had a singular devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, so that he passed a part of the night in adoration before it. On one occasion, being alone in the chapel, the darkness broken only by the faint glimmer of the little lamp, he suddenly perceived a Religious in one of the stalls. Stephen approached him, and asked if he had permission to leave his cell at such an hour. " I am a deceased Religious," he replied. " Here, by a decree of God's Justice, must I undergo my Purgatory, because here I sinned by tepidity and negligence at the Divine Office. The Lord permits me to make known my state to you, that you may assist me by your prayers."
Touched with these words, B. Stephen immediately knelt down to recite the De Profundis and other prayers; and he noticed that whilst he prayed, the features of the deceased bore an expression of joy. Several times, during the following nights, he saw the apparition in the same manner, but more happy each time as it approached the term of its deliverance. Finally, after the last prayer of B. Stephen, it arose all radiant from the stall, expressed its gratitude to its liberator, and disappeared in the brightness of glory. The following incident is so marvellous, that we should hesitate to reproduce it, says Canon Postel, had it not been narrated by Father Theophilus Renaud, theologian and controversialist, who relates it as an event which happened in his time, and almost under his very eyes.
The Abbe Louvet adds, that the Vicar-General of the Archbishop of Besancon, after having examined all the details, recognised its truth. In the year 1629, at Dole, in Franche-Compte, Hugette Roy, a woman of the middle station in life, was confined to bed by inflammation of the lungs, which endangered her life. The physician consider-
- ↑ Book iv. chap, xxx, ; cf. Rossignoli, Merveilles da Purgaloire.
