The trials were severe enough which our heroine had to undergo from the society of an irascible husband, whose virtue was none of the most steadfast, but they were redoubled by the evil inclinations she saw appear in her children, and their hatred of all good instruction. The citizens of the heavenly kingdom, whilst they live in this world amongst the sinful and the wicked, must, as St. Augustine teaches, be tossed about by temptations, in order that they may keep themselves in the practice of virtue, and be proved as gold is proved in the crucible. Tried by such afflictions, Rita seemed to have come to such a pass that she could do nothing else than, with the prophet, raise her pure hands to heaven night and day, to seek in God alone some relief in her troubles and some defence against the evils of her house.[1] If ever she deemed it necessary to have recourse to prayer, now assuredly was a time that called for redoubled prayer and the greatest fervour. She therefore prayed without ceasing. Her continued meditations on the sufferings of our Lord was a relief in her distress; frequent communion brought comfort to her troubled state, and her particular devotion to our Blessed Lady, consoler of the afflicted, to St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine, and St. Nicholas of Tolentine, often brought forgetfulness of her woes. Women of the world enduring the like suffering and trouble would deem themselves dispensed from the practice of any other mortification, and in their love of ease, which readily flatters them, would find a thousand pretexts to exempt themselves even from the fasts that are commanded. But Rita, who was in the world but not of it, far from suspending the acts of penitence she was used to practise before her marriage, took refuge in works of greater austerity, in abstinence and fastings and in chastising her body. In spite of these acts of mortification, she still had sufficient strength and vigour to attend to all the needs of her house and assist the wants of her neighbours; she relieved the necessities of the poverty stricken, and with her own hands prepared food for them; by the bedsides of the sick she was unwearying, and, in a word, made herself all things to all men. When she had to appear abroad, either in the performance of her works of charity or to be present at the Divine mysteries in the church, her angelic modesty and the goodness and interior peace which shone in her countenance served to edify all who saw her. These were her adornments, not the trappings of worldly show, which from childhood she abhorred, and which were more detestable in her eyes now that she had advanced so far on the way of perfection. She carefully avoided all unbecoming neglect in dress, and appeared in a garb free from everything savouring of vanity, not to say indecency--such a dress as would escape the eyes of the curious, and which, instead of luxuriousness, showed a contempt of the present life,