By poverty and obedience she had overcome the two passions of self-interest and worldly glory; there remained the third passion, that for sensual pleasures, against which our saint had to wage a more bitter war, because, like the Apostle, she felt in herself that law that was contrary to the law of the spirit, and because, as St. Augustine writes, this is precisely the hardest fight that has to be fought by Christians and the perfect. It is true that this most virtuous woman was accustomed from her earliest years to watch over all her thoughts and to keep a careful guard on her senses, and that from her youth she had determined to preserve the candour of her virginity intact; that she constantly preserved the most exemplary modesty; that she avoided to the utmost of her power, even when in the world, all evil discourse and companions and other incentives to impurity; that she had lived most chastely and immaculately even as a wife. Yet with all this she was not free from temptations, and to conquer them she had recourse to an extreme rigour of life. The demon used all his power in attacking Rita's purity; at one time he tempted her by impure phantasms, at another by seductive apparitions. But she put him to flight by her lively faith and her austere penances. In the fiercest assaults of temptation she went so far as to burn her hand or foot, thus putting out one fire by the pain of another, in order to keep herself entirely pure in the sight of her most pure heavenly Spouse. Through love of this virtue she avoided all opportunities of seeing or being seen, and she adopted this safeguard even with her own relatives. When she had sometimes to appear abroad she showed such recollection, modesty, and gravity as to excite the wonder of others and attract universal veneration. So remarkable was her modesty on such occasions that when she came back to the convent (in those days the obligations of enclosure were not so strict as they now are) she was sometimes able to declare that she had not seen a single person. This circumspection which our saint employed in the custody of her eyes may seem excessive to worldly-minded people, but 'everyone hath his proper gift from God';[2] and besides, the means of attaining to extraordinary virtue like Rita's are not always ordinary; nor were her penances, which were a means to this end, ordinary penances. If such was the violence of her spiritual struggles, there is no doubt but that the victories she gained were remarkable and productive of many good results, and that the reward which God reserved for her in a happy eternity was passing great. [1] 1 Kings xv. 22. [2] 1 Cor. vii. 7. CHAPTER VI RITA'S PENANCES