wretched sleep I obtained, during the intervals of this visitation, was any thing but refreshing. I would awake in a cold perspiration, catching at the bed-furniture, and repeating in an inarticulate voice, the last sounds that had rung in my closing ears. I would start up and see the bed surrounded by monks, who assured me they had been disturbed by my cries,—that they had hurried in terror to my cell. Then they would cast looks of fear and consternation on each other and on me; say, “Something extraordinary is the matter,—something presses on your mind that you will not disburden it of.” They implored me, in the most awful names, and for the interests of my salvation, to disclose the cause of these extraordinary visitations. At these words, however agitated before, I always became calm. I said, “Nothing is the matter,—why do you intrude into my cell?” They shook their heads, and affected to retire slowly and reluctantly, as if from pity of my dreadful situation, while I repeated, “Ah, Brother Justin, ah Brother Clement, I see you, I understand you,—remember there is a God in heaven.”

“One night I lay for a considerable time without hearing any sound. I fell asleep, but was soon awoke by an extraordinary light. I sat up in my bed, and beheld displayed before me the mother of God, in all the glorious and irradiated incarnation of beatitude. She hovered, rather than stood, in an atmosphere of light at the foot of my bed, and held a crucifix in her hand, while she appeared to invite me, with a benign action, to kiss the five mysterious wounds(1). For a moment I almost believed in the actual presence of this glorious visitor, but just then the voice was heard louder than ever, “Spurn them,—spit on them,—you are mine, and I claim this homage from my vassal.” At these words the figure disappeared instantly, and the voice was renewing its whispers, but they were repeated to an insensible ear, for I fell into a swoon. I could easily distinguish between this state and sleep, by the deadly sickness, the cold sweats, and the horrid sense of evanition, that preceded it, and by the gasping, sobbing, choaking efforts that attended my recovery. In the mean time the whole community carried on and even aggravated the terrible delusion, which, while it was my torment to detect, it was my greater to be the victim of. When art assumes the omnipotence of reality, when we feel we suffer as much from an illusion as from truth, our sufferings lose all dignity and all consolation. We turn demons against ourselves, and laugh at what we are writhing under. All day long I was exposed to the stare of horror, the shudder of suspicion, and, worst of all, the hastily-averted glance of hypocritical commiseration, that dropt its 

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