For hear and consider well the virtues of this pearl above price, whose daughters, alas! are so sadly to seek while she dusts the Apostles’ chairs in heaven.  She was persuaded that labour was according to the will of God, nor did she ever harbour any complaint under contradictions, poverty, hardships; still less did she ever entertain the least idle, inordinate, or worldly desire!  She blessed God for placing her in a station where she was ever busy, and where she must perpetually submit her will to that of others.  “She was even very sensible of the advantages of her state, which afforded all necessaries of life without engaging her in anxious cares, ... she obeyed her master and mistress in all things, ... she rose always hours before the rest of the family, ... she took care to hear Mass every morning before she was called upon by the duties of her station, in which she employed the whole day with such diligence and fidelity that she seemed to be carried to them on wings, and studied to anticipate them!” Is it any wonder her fellow-servants hated her, called her modesty simplicity, her want of spirit servility?  Ah, we know that spirit, we know that pride, S. Zita, and for those wings that bore you, for that thoughtfulness and care, S. Zita, we should be willing to pay you quite an inordinate wage!  Nor would your mistress to-day be prepossessed against you as yours was, neither would your master be “passionate,” and he would see you, S. Zita, without “transports of rage.”  Your biographer tells us that it is not to be conceived how much you had continually to suffer in that situation.  Unjustly despised, overburdened, reviled, and often beaten, you never repined nor lost patience, but always preserved the same sweetness in your countenance, and abated nothing of your application to your duties.  Moreover, you were willing to respect your fellow-servants as your superiors.  And if you were sent on a commission a mile or two, in the greatest storms, you set out without delay, executed your business punctually, and returned often almost drowned, without showing any sign of murmuring.  And at last, S. Zita, they found you out, they began to treat you better, they even thought so well of you that a single word from you would often suffice to check the greatest transports of your master’s rage; and you would cast yourself at the feet of that terrific man, to appease him in favour of others.  And all these and more were your virgin virtues, lost, gone, forgotten out of mind, by a world that dreams of no heavenly housemaid save in Lucca where you lived, and where they still keep your April festa, and lay their nosegays on your grave.

So I passed in Lucca from church to church, finding here the body of a little saint, there the tomb of a soldier, or the monument of some dear dead woman.  In S. Francesco, that desecrated great mausoleum that lies at the end of the Via di S. Francesco not far from the garden tower of Paolo Guinigi, I came upon the humble grave of Castruccio Castracani.  In S. Romano, at the other end of the city behind the Palazzo Provinciale, it was the shrine of that S. Romano who was the gaoler of S. Lorenzo I found, a tomb with the delicate flowerlike body of the murdered saint carved there in gilded alabaster by Matteo Civitali.