It was on this journey that the incident occurred which was mentioned when speaking of her spirit of poverty, that when she was crossing over a river she threw into it the little sum of money that was given to her probably to supply their wants on the pilgrimage. Her companions blamed her for what she had done; but not God, who had secretly urged her to that act of generosity, and who afterwards provided herself and her companions with all they needed until their return to the convent. When she arrived at her journey's end she lost no time in gazing on those monuments of profane antiquity of which Rome is so proud, but directed all the feelings and sentiments of her body and soul towards those things that were the objects of her piety--the memories of the holy martyrs, the confessions of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, devout visits to the churches, and the gaining of the holy indulgences. It would seem, indeed, that having led such a stainless life, and after so great and so severe penances, that she had no need to have recourse to those extraordinary means of atonement for sin; but holiness is always deeply humble, and the same humility which led St. Briget and St. Catherine to the second jubilee brought St. Rita a century later to the sixth. Enriched with new treasures of grace, and impatient to be free from the din of the streets and the perpetual crush of people, she with her companions, ever in the arms of Divine Providence, began the journey back to Cascia, and after walking four or five days arrived again at the convent and her beloved cell. She had hardly reached home when, wonderful to tell, the sore on her forehead, which had healed up by the power of God a little before she set out from Cascia, suddenly broke out again, and thereby made it more evident that the preceding cure had been miraculous. Never more, until the day of her death, was Rita to be deprived of a privilege so dear to her. CHAPTER X RITA'S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH Rita survived seven years after her return from Rome. The first three of these, like the eight preceding years, are hidden under the veil of God's deep designs, for it is not granted to us to discover anything of her exterior life during that period. Of her interior life, too, there is nothing left, if we except certain general knowledge of her spirit of penance, her continued love of prayer, and her union with God ever becoming closer.