If Rita's body, oppressed by fastings, imprisoned in hair shirts and galling bonds, made livid by scourgings, was forced to groan and sigh, it was far otherwise with her spirit. The more the body was crushed under the weight of penances, the more were the spaces of the soul enlarged, the greater its liberty, the more readily might it raise itself above all earthly things, to be plunged into the sublime depths of heavenly things and taste of their ineffable sweetness. And if her spirit sighed, it was a far different sigh from that of the body; it was the sigh of the dove--a sigh of peace and love such as was foretold by the Holy Spirit the Consoler by the mouth of the Psalmist to all souls that devote themselves to penance and prayer--'Rise ye after ye have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow.'[1] The same wonderful effects of grace were experienced by St. Augustine, who in his exposition of that verse of the Psalms could not refrain from exclaiming, 'How sweet are the sighs and the tears of prayer! No pleasure of the theatres or of the world can equal the joy of such tears.'[2] We must not, however, come to the conclusion that this interior joy was the chief motive that made our saint love prayer, for she loved the God of consolations much more than she loved the consolations of God; but it was an innocent attraction to her God-loving heart, and on that account she never could interrupt exercises so dear to her without feeling pain. We have already related that from her childhood she had received the gift of prayer, and which she developed in a striking way even in the years of her early youth; and we have told how she gave herself entirely to prayer during the year of her marvellous retirement in her father's house, and how she continued to make progress in devotional practices, especially when she was freed from the ties and cares of matrimony. Yet when we compare all these things with her advancement after she has embraced a conventual life, they seem but the very beginning of piety. As a nun, Rita's prayers were offered in the darkness of the night, in the early morning, throughout the day--prayer, in a word, was her life, for not even for a moment could she withdraw herself from the presence of her uncreated Love. The hours between midnight and the break of day were the fullest of delight for her, and the most favourable in which to treat all alone with God the most important affairs of eternity and to pour out the fulness of her love at the feet of the Crucified One. In the winter time, however prolonged her vigils were, that time was always short to her, and daylight came unlooked for. It seemed to her, as once to St. Anthony the abbot, that the sun was doing her wrong by appearing too soon, for she feared that he was coming to scatter with his rays the beautiful light of her heavenly exaltations and seraphic thoughts. She never wanted matter whereon to meditate, for the attributes of God and His