But it seems strange, that she should write elaborate letters to a person inhabiting the same town, and with whom she was doubtless in the habit of having frequent personal intercourse. And the suspicion naturally arises that these compositions were intended, at all events in great measure, for the perusal of others besides the person to whom they were avowedly written. One of them is extant in the form of a Latin translation by Father Raymond. It is true, that that language was probably the only medium of communication between the Italian Saint and the French Pope. Nevertheless, the question,—Did this letter ever originally exist in any other form than the Dominican's Latin presents itself. The following testimony however of the historian Ammirato, who wrote about two hundred years after the events of which we are speaking, seems to show decisively, that from her own time to that of the author, she was generally considered to have been the principal cause of the restoration of the Papal Court to Rome. "There was living," he writes,[15] "in those days a young virgin born in Siena, who from the great austerity of her life, from the fervour of her zeal of charity, and indefatigable perseverance in all good works, was even in her lifetime deemed holy by all, and is so by the writer of these lines, though the reader may perceive, that he has no special devotion to her. Nor was this opinion conceived without the appearance to many persons of wonderful signs of a miraculous and supernatural character." Having briefly described these wonders in words, which certainly do not reveal any disbelief of them in his own mind, he continues thus:— "It came into the minds therefore of those, who then governed Florence, that she might be of use in effecting a treaty of peace with the Pope. And if they had themselves no really sincere desire for this, yet the employment of her in the matter served to prove to others, who were opposed to the war with the Pope, that no efforts were wanting on their part to obtain peace. Being, therefore, urged by the war[16] commissioners to proceed to Avignon on this mission, she did not refuse to undertake it, but went thither, as is related by herself in one of her letters. And it is a certain fact, not only that she was well received and affectionately listened to by the Pope, but that by her instances he was induced to restore the Apostolic seat to Rome." Not having been able to bring the negotiation for peace to a conclusion, she returned to Florence in the autumn of 1376, and remained there living in a house provided for her by Niccolò Soderini[17] and others connected with the government, while she continued to use her influence in every possible way for the conclusion of a treaty. Becoming thus well known to the Florentines, she was, says Ammirato, "considered by some to be a bad woman, as in more recent times, similar opinions have been held respecting Jerome Savonarola." [Sidenote: SHE RESTORES THE POPE TO ROME.]