nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy
Church, and weened not to have lived till day. And after this I lay two
days and two nights, and on the third night I weened oftentimes to have
passed, and so weened they that were with me.... And I understood in my
reason, and by the feeling of my pains that I should die, and I assented
fully with all the will of my heart, to be at God's will. Thus I endured
till day, and by then, was my body dead to all feeling from the midst
down." She is then raised up in a sitting position for greater ease, and
her curate is sent for, as the end is supposed to be near. On arrival,
he finds her speechless and with her eyes fixed upwards towards heaven,
"where I trusted to come by the mercy of God." He places the crucifix
before her, and bids her bend her eyes upon it. "I assented to set my
eyes in the face of the crucifix if I could; and so I did; for methought
I could endure longer to look straight in front of me than right up"--a
touch that shows the previous upturning of the eyes to have been
voluntary and not cataleptic. At this moment we seem to pass into the
region of the abnormal: "After this my sight began to fail; it waxed as
dark about me in the chamber as if it had been night, save in the image
of the cross, wherein I beheld a common light, and I wist not how. And
all that was beside the cross was ugly and fearful to me, as it had been
much occupied with fiends." Then the upper part of her body becomes
insensible, and the only pain left is that of weakness and
breathlessness. Suddenly she is totally eased and apparently quite
cured, which, however, she regards as a momentary miraculous relief, but
not as a deliverance from death. In this breathing space it suddenly
occurs to her to beg for the second of those three wounds which were the
matter of her unconditional third request; namely, for a deepened sense
and sympathetic understanding of Christ's Passion. "But in this I never
desired any bodily sight, or any manner of showing from God; but such
compassion as I thought that a kind soul might have with our Lord
Jesus." In a word, the remembrance of her two conditional and
extraordinary requests of bygone years was not in her mind at the time.
"And in this, suddenly I saw the red blood trickling down from under the
garland;"--and so she passes from objective to subjective vision;[4] and
the first fifteen revelations follow, as she tells us later, one after
another