m and said: "Reginald, get up, light a candle, and take the book in
which you have been writing upon Isaias and make ready to write once
more." Then Reginald wrote whilst the Saint dictated as though he were
reading out of a book, with such facility did he speak. And then, at
Reginald's insistent petition, he said to him: "My son, you have seen
the affliction under which I have been of late owing to this passage of
Isaias which I have just been expounding, and you know how I besought
God with tears that I might understand it. God, then, this very night
had pity upon me, and sent His Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul whom I
had prayed to intercede for me, and they have most fully explained it
all!"[13] How gladly would one know what passage of Isaias it was which
was thus Divinely interpreted!

And so this truly marvellous life went on till the end drew near. Day by
day he ascended the steps of the altar, his face bathed in tears; day by
day he returned to his work more and more illumined regarding the
_Mysterium Fidei_, and with his soul still more closely knit to its
Maker. His ecstasies became more frequent, and in one of these he was
told that the close of his life was at hand. For it was at San Severino,
not far from Salerno, that he fell into so prolonged an ecstasy that his
sister who was present appealed to Reginald to know what had happened to
her brother. Even Reginald was astonished. "He is frequently rapt in
spirit," he said, "but never before have I seen him thus abstracted!"
"Then," says William of Tocco, "Master Reginald went to him, and,
plucking him by the cloak, roused him from this deep sleep of
contemplation. But he sighed and said: 'My son Reginald, I tell thee in
secret, and I forbid thee to reveal it to anyone during my life, the
close of my writing has come; for such things have been revealed to me
that all I have written and taught seems to me of small account. Hence I
hope in my God that as there is an end to my writing, so too will
speedily come the end of my life.'"[14]

And S. Thomas was ready for the end, for not long previously, when he
was in the convent at Naples and was praying in the Church, there
appeared to him Brother Romanus, whom he had left teaching at Paris.
Brother Thomas said to him: "Welcome! Whence dost thou come?" But
Romanus said to him: "I have passed from this life, and I am allowed to
come to thee by reason of thy merits." Then Brother Thomas, summoning up
his courage, fo