"Do you perceive, O reader!" continues the biographer, "with what order all the graces and virtuous operations of this Holy Virgin are powerfully and sweetly regulated by that Wisdom which disposes all things? In the _sixth_ year of her age, while yet seeing her spouse with the eyes of the body, she gloriously received his benediction. In the _seventh_ year, she made the vow of chastity. The first of these numbers is superior to all others in perfection: and the latter is called by all theologians, the number of Universality. What then can be understood from this, if not that this Virgin was destined to receive from the Lord the _Universal Perfection_ of all the virtues; and consequently to possess a perfect degree of glory? Since the first number signifies Perfection, and the second Universality, what can they signify, when put together, other than Universal Perfection? Wherefore she was properly called Catherine,[9] which signifies, as has been shown, Universality." This, and some three or four hundred closely printed pages of similar material, has recently (1851) been published at a price, which only a very large circulation could make possible. "And yet," cry the priests and priest-ridden rulers of the nations for whom this spiritual food is provided, "we are accused of keeping our people in ignorance, and discouraging reading! On the contrary, we carefully teach our flocks, and seek but to provide them wholesome instead of poisonous mental food. Here is reading, calculated to make men good Christians, good subjects—and to keep them quiet." [Sidenote: IMMORTALITY OF FALSEHOOD.] Volumes might yet be written, and not superfluously, though many have been written already, on the deliberate, calculated, and intentional soul-murder perpetrated by this "safe" literature! And it is curious to mark how this poor sainted Catherine, and her "blessed" confessor are still active agents for evil nearly five hundred years after the sepulchre has closed on them! "Like vampyres they steal from their tombs, To suck out life's pith with their lying," as a poet sings, who has well marked the working of saints and saint-worship in that unhappy land. Truth is immortal! as is often said. Yes! but men do not perhaps so often consider, that, as far as human ken may extend, falsehood unhappily is in its consequences equally immortal. CHAPTER III. THE FACTS OF THE CASE.