that, if one is helped
by vicarious prayer, I would rather trust a convent of devoted women
(though many of them are ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and
none are fair to see) to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse
monks which I have seen.

But the order came down from Naples to pack off all the nuns of the
Sacred Heart on a day named, to close up the gates of the nunnery,
and hang a flaming sword outside. The nuns were to be pulled up by the
roots, so to say, on the day specified, and without postponement, and to
be transferred to a house prepared for them at Massa, a few miles down
the promontory, and several hundred feet nearer heaven. Sorrento was
really in mourning: it went about in grief. It seemed as if something
sacrilegious were about to be done. It was the intention of the whole
town to show its sense of it in some way.

The day of removal came, and it rained! It poured: the water came
down in sheets, in torrents, in deluges; it came down with the wildest
tempest of many a year. I think, from accurate reports of those who
witnessed it, that the beginning of the great Deluge was only a moisture
compared to this. To turn the poor women out of doors such a day as this
was unchristian, barbarous, impossible. Everybody who had a shelter was
shivering indoors. But the officials were inexorable. In the order for
removal, nothing was said about postponement on account of weather; and
go the nuns must.

And go they did; the whole town shuddering at the impiety of it, but
kept from any demonstration by the tempest. Carriages went round to the
convent; and the women were loaded into them, packed into them, carried
and put in, if they were too infirm to go themselves. They were driven
away, cross and wet and bedraggled. They found their dwelling on the
hill not half prepared for them, leaking and cold and cheerless. They
experienced very rough treatment, if I can credit my informant, who says
she hates the government, and would not even look out of her lattice
that day to see the carriages drive past.

And when the Lady Superior was driven away from the gate, she said to
the officials, and the few faithful attendants, prophesying in the midst
of the rain that poured about her, "The day will come shortly, when you
will want rain, and shall not have it; and you will pray for my return."

And it did not rain, from that day for three years.

And the simple people thought of the good Superior, whose de