No one can tell us better than her companions in religion how she lived during the year of her noviceship, and they were astonished and confused at what they observed in her, and from the first regarded her as a model of the purest and most tried virtue. Poverty, chastity, and obedience had nothing to alarm her, for she was long accustomed to live in poverty in Rocca Porena; her body she had crucified with Christ in God; and she had lived subject not only to her prudent parents, but to a cruel husband. So also had the other virtues which she practised in her noviceship become familiar to her in the world, if we except alone some prescribed corporal penances and the more abundant prayers which she was enabled to offer. Nothing else regarding her can be established from the scanty memorials of those obscure times, and we only know that as the time of noviceship went on she persevered in those holy practices of extraordinary piety and austere penance, and prepared to bind herself to her God with stronger ties on the day of her new regeneration. The learned Cardinal Seripando and others call the day of the formal profession of monastic vows the day of new regeneration, for through the sacrifice then made of one's will, of bodily pleasures, and of property, the total remission of all punishment due to sin may be merited. That day at length arrived, and the holy novice, having first made a rigorous examination of her whole life and marked all the stains on her pure conscience, which she removed by the fire of her sorrow and the blood of Jesus Christ, presented herself before the altar to vow perpetual observance of the evangelical counsels. She had no hesitation in placing her hand on the holy Rule of the great Augustine, for her heroic trust in the assistance of grace gave her courage, and for the rest, although the Rule may seem severe to the minds of worldlings, the saints regard it but as a law of love, and a cord to unite souls to God. Therefore Rita preferred this sweet servitude to all the kingdoms of earth, and considered herself the happiest of women since she had at last reached the goal towards which from her earliest years she had felt herself drawn by heaven's gentle violence.