towards her on the part of the other nuns; for, as the priest was giving her the Communion, the Sacred Host slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, an accident which they chose to regard as a mark of the Divine displeasure towards her. From the day of her thus taking the veil, the real martyrdom of Eustochia began. Until then, since her entry into the convent, her sufferings at the hands of the Adversary had been comparatively light and she had been able to conceal his attacks upon her. But now his possession of her became more malignantly active, manifesting itself by controlling her movements so as to make her commit some slight exterior fault of deportment against the Rule, so that her companions, witnesses of Eustochia’s small breach of discipline, were more than ever confirmed in the opinion that she was a hypocrite. By degrees this feeling increased among them until it arrived at the point of her being shunned by them as a moral leper. And all the while Eustochia, in exquisite, faithful humbleness, gave thanks to Heaven for Its just judgment upon her, as she deemed it, accusing herself before God and the Abbess of having brought these punishments upon herself by her sins—so that, while she lost the good opinion of those about her, she gained incessant merit in the eyes of her Creator. And now the hour of Eustochia’s long darkness sounded, during which she was destined to drink to the dregs the cup of trial. A month before the feast of Saint Jerome—that is, towards the end of August—that same year of 1461, Eustochia felt herself much perturbed and ill at ease in her heart; and her countenance, to the disquiet of the whole house, took on an expression at once sombre and menacing and quite unaccountable to the beholders, with the exception of Father Peter Salicario, the chaplain of the convent, who alone grasped the terrible meaning of it. Father Salicario at once proceeded to prepare Eustochia for the coming assault of her foe by counselling and exhorting her; moreover, the good man straightway warned the Abbess and her nuns of the approaching storm. What effect this had upon Donna Giustina’s relations with Eustochia, I do not know precisely, but the nuns themselves were, as may easily be imagined, greatly agitated by it; also, they were only the more inclined to resent the presence in their midst of one in whom the evil spirit had apparently taken up his abode. The horror of Eustochia’s proximity seemed to them unbearable, and they joined in protesting to Donna Giustina against any further continuance of it. She, however, was of a more courageous nature than they, and had perfect faith in the protection of the convent by Heaven. The feast of Saint Jerome passed uneventfully enough (as though in unwilling tribute to his splendour and the power of his patronage), but on the next day the tempest broke loose.