and had died in peace, fortified by the last sacraments, and attended by her former enemy.  Anne Catherine gave a small sum of money for the burial and funeral-service of this person.  Her sweatings, cough, and fever now left her, and she resembled a person exhausted with fatigue, whose linen has been changed, and who has been placed on a fresh bed.  Her friend said to her, ’When this fearful illness came upon you, this woman grew better, and her hatred for another was the only obstacle to her making peace with God.  You took upon yourself, for the time, her feelings of hatred, she died in good dispositions, and now you seem tolerably well again.  Are you still suffering on her account?’ ‘No, indeed!’ she replied; ’that would be most unreasonable; but how can any person avoid suffering when even the end of this little finger is in pain?  We are all one body in Christ.’  ’By the goodness of God,’ said her friend, ‘you are now once more somewhat at ease.’  ‘Not for very long, though,’ she replied with a smile; ’there are other persons who want my assistance.’  Then she turned round on her bed, and rested awhile.

A very few days later, she began to feel intense pain in all her limbs, and symptoms of water on the chest manifested themselves.  We discovered the sick person for whom Anne Catherine was suffering, and we saw that his sufferings suddenly diminished or immensely increased in exact inverse proportion to those of Anne Catherine.

Thus did charity compel her to take upon herself the illnesses and even the temptations of others, that they might be able in peace to prepare themselves for death.  She was compelled to suffer in silence, both to conceal the weaknesses of her neighbour, and not to be regarded as mad herself; she was obliged to receive all the aid that medicine could afford her for an illness thus taken voluntarily for the relief of others, and to be reproached for temptations which were not her own; finally, it was necessary that she should appear perverted in the eyes of men; that so those for whom she was suffering might be converted before God.

One day a friend in deep affliction was sitting by her bedside, when she suddenly fell into a state of ecstasy, and began to pray aloud:  ’O, my sweet Jesus, permit me to carry that heavy stone!’ Her friend asked her what was the matter.  ‘I am on my way to Jerusalem,’ she replied, ’and I see a poor man walking along with the greatest difficulty, for there is a large stone upon his breast, the weight of which nearly crushes him.’  Then again, after a few moments, she exclaimed:  ’Give me that heavy stone, you cannot carry it any farther; give it to me.’  All on a sudden she sank down fainting, as if crushed beneath some heavy burden, and at the same moment her friend felt himself relieved from the weight of sorrow which oppressed him, and his heart overflowing with extraordinary happiness.  Seeing her in such a state of suffering, he asked her what the matter was, and she looking at him with a smile, replied:  ’I cannot remain here any longer.  Poor man, you must take back your burden.’  Instantly her friend felt all the weight of his affliction return to him, whilst she, becoming as well again as before, continued her journey in spirit to Jerusalem.