h the thought of Dante in our mind, the tones
of an organ, singularly sweet and mellow, fall upon our ears, and we
remember how he heard _Te Deum_ sung within the gateway of
repentance.

Continuing our walk, we descend the hill on which the Duomo stands,
and reach a valley lying between the ancient city of Siena and a
western eminence crowned by the church of San Domenico. In this
depression there has existed from old time a kind of suburb or
separate district of the poorer people known by the name of the
Contrada d' Oca. To the Sienese it has especial interest, for here
is the birthplace of S. Catherine, the very house in which she
lived, her father's workshop, and the chapel which has been erected
in commemoration of her saintly life. Over the doorway is written in
letters of gold 'Sponsa Christi Katherinae domus.' Inside they show
the room she occupied, and the stone on which she placed her head to
sleep; they keep her veil and staff and lantern and enamelled
vinaigrette, the bag in which her alms were placed, the sackcloth
that she wore beneath her dress, the crucifix from which she took
the wounds of Christ. It is impossible to conceive, even after the
lapse of several centuries, that any of these relics are fictitious.
Every particular of her life was remembered and recorded with
scrupulous attention by devoted followers. Her fame was universal
throughout Italy before her death; and the house from which she went
forth to preach and heal the sick and comfort plague-stricken
wretches whom kith and kin had left alone to die, was known and well
beloved by all her citizens. From the moment of her death it became,
and has continued to be, the object of superstitious veneration to
thousands. From the little loggia which runs along one portion of
its exterior may be seen the campanile and the dome of the
cathedral; on the other side rises the huge brick church of San
Domenico, in which she spent the long ecstatic hours that won for
her the title of Christ's spouse. In a chapel attached to the church
she watched and prayed, fasting and wrestling with the fiends of a
disordered fancy. There Christ appeared to her and gave her His own
heart, there He administered to her the sacrament with His own
hands, there she assumed the robe of poverty, and gave her Lord the
silver cross and took from Him the crown of thorns.

To some of us these legends may appear the flimsiest web of fiction:
to others they may seem quite explicabl