Christina had been in a cataleptic fit, or had been shamming death. All at once she scattered the funeral party and the worshippers by a leap off her bier, in winding-sheet, with a shrill cry, and then by a scramble up one of the pillars of the sacred edifice, which she managed to surmount. She then got upon one of the tie-beams of the roof, and there seated herself, as her biographer tells us, “like a bird.” The congregation, frightened out of their wits, ran helter-skelter in all directions. One of her sisters alone had courage to remain, or possibly knew enough of Christina’s eccentricities not to be alarmed. The priest at the altar faltered, stopped, turned and looked about him, and went forward headlong with the service to the end. When he had retired to the sacristy, probably, Christina’s sister came to him and explained matters. Anyhow we learn that he reappeared in the church showing no signs of fear, and very peremptorily ordered the young woman down from her perch, and demanded the reason of this extraordinary freak. Christina meekly descended, and on being again asked the reason of her proceedings, condescended to inform the priest that she had scrambled aloft to escape the strong odour emitted by the peasants, which to her refined perceptions was especially repugnant. It must be admitted that it continues the same to the present day, and that to the noses of those who are not saints. Christina was now conducted home by her sisters, and was given something to eat. When she had fed, she told them a long and marvellous story of her having visited the regions of the dead; she said that she had been in Hell, where she recognised the familiar features of a good many acquaintances, no doubt of all such as had slighted and offended her in the past and were dead. Then she had visited Purgatory, where also she found herself among acquaintances. After that she ascended to Heaven, where she was offered her choice, whether she would remain there eternally, or return to earth and there perform the meritorious work of liberating, by her prayers and self-tortures, the souls of those still undergoing purification in Purgatory. With the utmost heroism and self-denial she chose the latter alternative, probably not to the satisfaction of her sisters, who seem to have regarded her as a self-willed, troublesome piece of goods, and would have preferred to have her at a distance, as an intercessor in heaven, than on earth an object of much solicitude and annoyance.