10th April, 1834. Nothing eaten since. 10th January, 1834. Stigmata, hands, feet and side. 31st January, 1834. Crown of thorns.
An altar is in the room, at which the bishop allows mass to be celebrated once or twice every week, according to the convenience of the priest, and on saints' days.
We spoke of the bishop. She was much interested also in all that the doctor said. He kept fanning her with a large feather fan: her only relief. She suffers most on Thursdays. The issue of blood Fridays unaccompanied with pain: rather a relief. A woman and boy came to see her. Cheerful when _freer_ from pain (she always suffers). Was told we were English. Looks very intently at one. Light blue or blue gray eyes; hair fine,--a cold brown. Face awfully wasted. Her smile sweet. Says, when most in pain, "Dio mio, mio Dio!" Friday morning, at five, we were again with her. She was in an insensible state: waking up at intervals. The hands still clasped, but the head shaking, and her teeth chattering. The blood was bright red and fresh (flowing) from all the upper row of holes and the rest, though clotted below generally, for she suffers great heat of fever. The wounds of the hands were open and ran, but outside (on the surface) the blood had run down the back of the hand in a broad stream to a little below the wrist, and there stopped; one small current had trickled across to the bottom of the hand. It was clotted. I looked as close as I could by stooping to the inside of the left hand. My impression was of an open wound, much deeper; long, with lips standing out upon the upper side; much blood had run over the inside of her hand: it ran to the wrist and all over the palms. Her teeth whole, though the two centre much apart. Her face, above and below the blood, was not livid, but of a good complexion. Her voice when she spoke was much stronger than yesterday. She saw me trying to draw the outline of her face, and said, she supposed a portrait would appear of her. We commended ourselves and England to her prayers. All English (she said) who had seen her had done the same. She commended herself by us to the Bishop's blessing and intercession with "Il vescovo di tutti," (something she said quite indistinct). This is the substance of my notes written on the spot. I must add to it, that every Friday since the date above, and only on Friday, the wounds have bled; that the doctor told us he had seen her feet a hundred times, which are marked like the hands, but the blood runs _up_ towards the toes; as it does up the nose, which we saw. Her side wound has been seen by several women, her sister among others, whom we talked much to. She was perfectly simple, wanted no money, and treated her sister more as an invalid than anything else. The Dr. Yoris's presence was, I think, a very great advantage to us. It put all reserve out of the question, if any would otherwise have been observable, and enabled us to see her more as she always is, and no doubt to stay longer, to draw the curtain aside, &c. My impression was of great awe at the sight: the day Friday, and the supernatural facts of the flow of blood from a person taking no nourishment or food of any kind, the course taken by the blood,--but the sight of the dark mask of blood was what first and most painfully struck me. The simplicity, and apparent domesticity, of her way of speaking--her smiling and answering the doctor's questions--struck me next. As he said, a secular question is answered in the tone of this world, a religious one in that of the other. She seems conscious herself of nothing beyond God's chastisement for her sins; therefore she is shy of showing or speaking of herself beyond what is necessary as information to serious inquirers. The wound in her side she refused to show any man, though she said any number of women, physician's wives, if they would, might see it, for it needed no medical treatment. She does not seem conscious of being in any extraordinary or miraculous way the vehicle, as such, of Divine Grace; but she is patient, exceedingly, and strives, as she says, to do all God's will. Nothing remarkable in a religious way is recorded of her early character. "Una buona ragazza," the doctor called her, but no more; he said especially not "bigotta." Is it not a palpable evidence of our Lord's presence to us in His sufferers, to bring home the actuality of what is taught us of the spiritual things we have been born into, yet to confound spiritual pride? "Thy ways are in the sea, and Thy paths are in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known."
