remove us from these scenes of perpetual cruelty and
oppression. Our nerves had become so strained that the slightest knock
at the door would make us start; the sound of the great onbeia made us
positively tremble. Almost half the total number of Europeans, Greeks,
Syrians, and Jews were dead, and all we hoped for was that we should
soon follow them.

The death of one of our sisters only increased in me the desire to die
as well. On the 4th of October, 1891, Sister Concetta Corsi, who was in
a very weak state of health, was suddenly carried off by typhus.
According to the Sudan custom, we wound her body in a cloth, tied it up
in a mat (for there were no coffins to be had), and carried her, almost
immediately after death, to a spot some six miles north of the town--the
direction in which her eyes in lifetime had been so often turned. All
the Greeks and Syrians followed, and there in the stillness of the
desert we laid her in the warm sand, protecting her body from the
ravenous hyenas by a few thorns. A short prayer was offered up for her
and for the souls of those who had gone before; then we turned sadly
back, hoping that before long we too might be lying beside her.

But I felt that my life was in God's hands, and comforted myself with
the belief that God was dealing with me as He thought best, and that I
must submit to His Divine will. My hut was gloomy in the extreme; for
several days I did not speak to any one, and when night came I threw
myself down on my angarib, but sleep would not come to me; then I would
gaze up into the great vault of heaven and think that this same sky was
over my fatherland, from which I was an exile, surrounded by suffering
and sickness.

On the night of the 28th of October, 1891, Ahmed Hassan quite
unexpectedly made his appearance. I took him to my hut, and after the
usual Arabic greetings, he said to me, "Here I am, are you coming?" For
a moment I was speechless, I quite understood what he meant; but a
thousand thoughts flashed through my mind, my heart was beating
violently, the dangers to which my frail companions in adversity would
be subjected loomed before me, and for a few moments I could make no
reply; then I collected my wandering thoughts and said: "If I did not
intend to go with you I would not have sent you."

Then I began asking him all sorts of questions about Cairo, and he
informed me briefly that he had seen Archbishop Sogaro and had made an
arrangement with him regard