sometimes for half a day, and her pulse would cease to beat, and she
would, seem all dead. And then she would quiver and come to herself
again, and prophesy the future, and threaten disaster. And again:
"One morning two of her teeth were found to have fallen out, which had
happened in fighting with the devil; and, for the many intercessions
which she made, and the scandals which she repaired by her prayers, the
people came to call her saint."

Notwithstanding all this, and the fact that she lived without
nourishment, he tells us that the brothers of St. Francis had little
faith in her. Nevertheless, the community built her a very fine
monastery, which was richly endowed, and many nuns took the habit of her
Order.

Now it happened that whilst at Perugia in his student days, Cesare had
witnessed a miracle performed by this poor ecstatic girl; or rather he
had arrived on the scene--the Church of St. Catherine of Siena--to
find her, with a little naked boy in her lap, the centre of an excited,
frenzied crowd, which was proclaiming loudly that the child had been
dead and that she had resurrected him. This was a statement which the
Prior of the Dominicans did not seem disposed unreservedly to accept,
for, when approached with a suggestion that the bells should be rung
in honour of the event, he would not admit that he saw any cause to
sanction such a course.

In the few years that were sped since then, however, sister Colomba
had acquired the great reputation of which Matarazzo tells us, so that,
throughout the plain of Tiber, the Dominicans were preaching her fame
from convent to convent. In December of 1495 Charles VIII heard of
her at Siena, and was stirred by a curiosity which he accounted
devotional--the same curiosity that caused one of his gentlemen to
entreat Savonarola to perform "just a little miracle" for the King's
entertainment. You can picture the gloomy fanatic's reception of that
invitation.

The Pope now took the opportunity of his sojourn in Perugia to pay
Colomba da Rieti a visit, and there can be no doubt that he did so in a
critical spirit. Accompanied by Cesare and some cardinals and gentlemen
of his following, he went to the Church of St. Dominic and was conducted
to the sister's cell by the Prior--the same who in Cesare's student-days
had refused to have the bells rung.

Upon seeing the magnificent figure of the Pontiff filling the doorway of
her little chamber, Sister Colomba fell at his feet, a