onsoling her. If, when quite
prostrate from illness and the sufferings of others which she had taken
upon herself, she entered into communication with a saint, either by
participation in the celebration of his feast, or from his relics being
brought to her, she sometimes saw passages of the childhood of
martyrdom. In her greatest sufferings she was usually consoled,
instructed, or reproved (whichever the occasion called for) by
apparitions under the form of children. Sometimes, when totally
overcome by trouble and distress, she would fall asleep, and be carried
back in imagination to the scenes and perils of her childhood. She
sometimes dreamed, as her exclamations and gestures demonstrated, that
she was once more a little country girl of five years old, climbing
over a hedge, caught in the briars, and weeping with fear.

These scenes of her childhood were always events which had really
occurred, and the words which escaped her showed what was passing in
her mind. She would exclaim (as if repeating the words of others): 'Why
do you call out so?' 'I will not hold the hedge back until you are quiet
and ask me gently to do so.' She had obeyed this injunction when she was
a child and caught in the hedge, and she followed the same rule when
grown up and suffering from the most terrible trials. She often spoke
and joked about the thorn hedge, and the patience and prayer which had
then been recommended to her, which admonition she, in after-life, had
frequently neglected, but which had never failed her when she had
recourse to it. This symbolical coincidence of the events of her
childhood with those of her riper years shows that, in the individual
no less than in humanity at large, prophetic types may be found. But,
to the individual as well as to mankind in general, a Divine Type has
been given in the person of our Redeemer, in order that both the one
and the other, by walking in his footsteps and with his assistance, may
surpass human nature and attain to perfect wisdom and grace with God
and man. Thus it is that the will of God is done on earth as in heaven,
and that this kingdom is attained by 'men of good will.'

She then gave a short account of the visions which had, on the
previous night, interrupted her visions of the Passion at the
commencement of the feast of St. Joseph.

CHAPTER XXV.

Description of the Personal Appearance of the Blessed Virgin.

While these sad events were taking place I was in Jerusal