We will give one more example of her spiritual exertions.  One morning she gave her friend a little bag containing some rye-flour and eggs, and pointed out to him a small house where a poor woman, who was in a consumption, was living with her husband and two little children.  He was to tell her to boil and take them, as when boiled they would be good for her chest.  The friend, on entering the cottage, took the bag from under his cloak, when the poor mother, who, flushed with fever, was lying on a mattress between her half-naked children fixed her eyes bright upon him, and holding out her thin hands, exclaimed:  ’O, sir, it must be God or Sister Emmerich who sends you to me!  You are bringing me some ryeflour and eggs.’  Here the poor woman, overcome by her feelings, burst into tears, and then began to cough so violently that she had to make a sign to her husband to speak for her.  He said that the previous night Gertrude had been much disturbed, and had talked a great deal in her sleep, and that on awaking she had told him her dream in these words:  ’I thought that I was standing at the door with you, when the holy nun came out of the door of the next house, and I told you to look at her.  She stopped in front of us, and said to me:  “Ah, Gertrude, you look very ill; I will send you some rye-flour and eggs, which will relieve your chest.”  Then I awoke.’  Such was the simple tale of the poor man; he and his wife both eagerly expressed their gratitude, and the bearer of Anne Catherine’s alms left the house much overcome.  He did not tell her anything of this when he saw her, but a few days after, she sent him again to the same place with a similar present, and he then asked her how it was she knew that poor woman?  ‘You know,’ she replied, ’that I pray every evening for all those who suffer; I should like to go and relieve them, and I generally dream that I am going from one abode of suffering to another, and that I assist them to the best of my power.  In this way I went in my dream to that poor woman’s house; she was standing at the door with her husband, and I said to her:  “Ah, Gertrude, you look very ill; I will send you some rye-flour and eggs, which will relieve your chest.”  And this I did through you, the next morning.’  Both persons had remained in their beds, and dreamed the same thing, and the dream came true.  St. Augustine, in his City of God, book 18, c. 18, relates a similar thing of two philosophers, who visited each other in a dream, and explained some passages of Plato, both remaining asleep in their own houses.

These sufferings, and this peculiar species of active labour, were like a single ray of light, which enlightened her whole life.  Infinite was the number of spiritual labours and sympathetic sufferings which came from all parts and entered into her heart—­that heart so burning with love of Jesus Christ.  Like St. Catherine of Sienna and some other ecstatics, she often felt the most profound feeling of conviction that our Saviour had taken her heart out of her bosom, and placed his own there instead for a time.