Sometimes, of course, she had to speak, through necessity or politeness, or for convenience' sake, and in such cases her words were in accord with the feelings of her heart, and hence, since she was all spirit, her discourses were on things of the spirit; she was all charity, and her speech therefore tended to the greater glory of God and the salvation of her neighbours. She was not wanting in that easy fluency which springs from the heart and can reach hearts, which is proper to the saints and inspires sanctity, which feeds on love and draws souls to God. Whether Rita possessed this honied eloquence from the time the wonderful bees appeared over her cradle, or acquired it by the practice of the greatest charity towards her neighbour, only God, who gave it to her, knows. We only know that she made use of the opportunities which this gift afforded her to give advice to doubting souls, to comfort the pusillanimous, to console the afflicted, to bring back the erring to the way of salvation, to practise these and other works of mercy with that happy success which the Giver of every good gift was wont to grant her. Amongst her wonderful deeds of charity we find it recorded that having heard of two persons of the town who had been long living in a state of sin, and were thereby the cause of great public scandal, she wept for their sins, and then determined on the difficult task of making them separate and leading them to repent. Rita had had too many proofs of the Divine goodness not to be confident of success in her present undertaking. She first had recourse to prayer and to penance, which she offered in union with the sufferings of Jesus Christ for the conversion of the sinners, and then had each of the scandal-givers brought to her in turn, and, alone with them, by her gentle insinuating manner she brought them to see their deplorable condition, and she had the happiness of seeing them shed tears of compunction and afterwards perform constant penance for their past transgressions. In very truth, such evils as those under which these two sinners laboured were what excited Rita's greatest compassion, but she was by no means wanting in compassion for those suffering from bodily ills, nor was her fervent charity slow in coming to their assistance. Never was anyone ill in the convent whom Rita did not nurse, often for whole days and nights. She saw in the sick Jesus Christ Himself, and therefore delighted to be by their bedsides. She pitied them, and sought to soothe their pains by the sweet considerations which religion, and especially the Passion of Christ, inspired her. With her own hands she gladly rendered them every service, even the meanest and most nauseating, and for this blessed work of charity she did not hesitate to forsake her usual devotional practices, and feared not to leave God for God's work. In a word, she was all things to all, for, as St. Paul, too, had