her. She said to him: 'How good
and beautiful all this is!' And again: 'May God be a thousand times praised
and thanked!'

The approach of death did not wholly interrupt the wonderful union
of her life with that of the Church. A friend having visited her on the
1st of February in the evening, had placed himself behind her bed where
she could not see him, and was listening with the utmost compassion to
her low moans and interrupted breathing, when suddenly all became
silent, and he thought that she was dead. At this moment the evening
bell ringing for the matins of the Purification was heard. It was the
opening of this festival which had caused her soul to be ravished in
ecstasy. Although still in a very alarming state, she let some sweet
and loving words concerning the Blessed Virgin escape her lips during
the night and day of the festival. Towards twelve o'clock in the day, she
said in a voice already changed by the near approach of death, 'It was
long since I had felt so well. I have been ill quite a week, have I
not? I feel as though I knew nothing about this world of darkness! O,
what light the Blessed Mother of God showed me! She took me with her,
and how willingly would I have remained with her!' Here she recollected
herself for a moment, and then said, placing her finger on her lip: 'But
I must not speak of these things.' From that time she said that the
slightest word in her praise greatly increased her sufferings.

The following days she was worse. On the 7th, in the evening, being
rather more calm, she said: 'Ah, my sweet Lord Jesus, thanks be to thee
again and again for every part of my life. Lord, thy will and not mine
be done.' On the 8th of February, in the evening, a priest was praying
near her bed, when she gratefully kissed his hand, begged him to assist
at her death and said, 'O Jesus, I live for thee, I die for thee. O Lord,
praise be to thy holy name, I no longer see or hear!' Her friends wished
to change her position, and thus ease her pain a little; but she said, 'I
am on the Cross, it will soon all be over, leave me in peace.' She had
received all the last Sacraments, but she wished to accuse herself once
more in confession of a slight fault which she had already many times
confessed; it was probably of the same nature as a sin which she had
committed in her childhood, of which she often accused herself, and
which consisted in having gone through a hedge into a neighbour's garden,
and coveted so