It is in 1500, soon after Mariola’s return to her mistress (I take the maid’s state of health to have occasioned her absence from Catherine for two years or so), that this spiritual daughter is represented as declaring in the first stage of one of these attacks,--or rather “the unclean spirit” possessing her is said to have exclaimed to Catherine “We are both of us thy slaves, because of that pure love which thou possessest in thy heart”; and “full of rage at having made this admission, he threw himself on the ground, and writhed with the feet.” And then when,--all this is supposed to take place in the presence of both Catherine and Don Marabotto,--the possessed one has stood up, the Confessor forces the spirit step by step to speak out and to declare successively that Catherine is “Caterina,” “Adorna or Fiesca,” and “Caterina Serafina,” the latter being uttered amidst great torment.[142]
XIII. CATHERINE’S SYMPATHY WITH ANIMAL- AND PLANT-LIFE: HER LOVE OF THE OPEN AIR. HER DEEP SELF-KNOWLEDGE AS TO THE HEALTHINESS OR MORBIDNESS OF HER PSYCHO-PHYSICAL STATES.
1. _Increase of suffering and of range of sympathy._
It is indeed in this last period of her life that we can most clearly see a deeply attractive mixture of personal suffering and of tender sympathy with even the humblest of all things that live. And this is doubtless not simply due to the much fuller evidence possessed by us for these last years, but is quite as much owing to the actual increase of these twin things within herself. “She was most compassionate towards all creatures; so that, if an animal were killed or a tree cut down, she could hardly bear to see them lose that being which God had given them.”[143] And a beautiful communion of spirit can now be traced even between plant-life and herself; and an innocent self-diversion from a too exciting concentration, and help towards a patient keeping or a bracing reconquering of calmness, is now found by her, Franciscan-like, in the open air and amidst the restful flowers and trees. Thus “at times she would seem to have her mind in a mill; and as if this mill were indeed grinding her, soul and body”; and then “she would walk up and down in the garden, and would address the plants and trees and say: ‘Are not you also creatures created by my God? Are not you, too, obedient to Him?’”--even though, I think she meant to say, your life moves on so instinctive, calm, and freely expansive in the large, liberal air, as I feel it to do, by its very contrast to my own eager, crowded life, struggling in vain for a sustained perfection of equipoise and for an even momentary adequacy of self-expression. “And doing thus, she would gradually be comforted.”[144]