nds upon his
head, and cry, 'Go forth, my servant, and fear not!' The chivalrous
admiration for women mixes with religious awe to form the reverence
which these saints inspire. Human and heavenly love, chaste and
ecstatic, constitute the secret of their power. Catherine then
subdued the spirit of Tuldo and led him to the altar, where he
received the communion for the first time in his life. His only
remaining fear was that he might not have strength to face death
bravely. Therefore he prayed Catherine, 'Stay with me, do not leave
me; so it shall be well with me, and I shall die contented;' 'and,'
says the saint, 'he laid his head in the prison on my breast, and I
said, "Comfort thee, my brother, the block shall soon become thy
marriage altar, the blood of Christ shall bathe thy sins away, and I
will stand beside thee."' When the hour came, she went and waited
for him by the scaffold, meditating on Madonna and Catherine the
saint of Alexandria. She laid her own neck on the block, and tried
to picture to herself the pains and ecstasies of martyrdom. In her
deep thought, time and place became annihilated; she forgot the
eager crowd, and only prayed for Tuldo's soul and for herself. At
length he came, walking 'like a gentle lamb,' and Catherine received
him with the salutation of 'sweet brother.' She placed his head upon
the block, and laid her hands upon him, and told him of the Lamb of
God. The last words he uttered were the names of Jesus and of
Catherine. Then the axe fell, and Catherine beheld his soul borne by
angels into the regions of eternal love. When she recovered from her
trance, she held his head within her hands; her dress was saturated
with his blood, which she could scarcely bear to wash away, so
deeply did she triumph in the death of him whom she had saved. The
words of S. Catherine herself deserve to be read. The simplicity,
freedom from self-consciousness, and fervent faith in the reality of
all she did and said and saw, which they exhibit, convince us of her
entire sincerity.

The supernatural element in the life of S. Catherine may be
explained partly by the mythologising adoration of the people ready
to find a miracle in every act of her they worshipped--partly by her
own temperament and modes of life, which inclined her to ecstasy and
fostered the faculty of seeing visions--partly by a pious
misconception of the words of Christ and Bible phraseology.

To the first kind belong the wonders which are