Incapable of distinguishing between credulity and faith, unaware that superstition may degenerate into idolatry, that all extremes are unacceptable to God, he little suspected that it was not the Mary of Scripture—the mother of the Redeemer—to whom he dedicated his prayers; but a divinity of his own—the tutelary genius of the place. Before the miraculous image, he passed his nights and days, in prayers and tears, praying for a higher spiritualization, and weeping over imaginary faults. His heart was that of a child—his mind that of a fanatic. In vain did the vicar, his worthy relative, labour to repress this unnatural fervour, and bring him back to reason. In vain, to distract his thoughts from one fixed and dangerous idea, did he suggest a pilgrimage to other spots of peculiar sanctity, dedicated to the worship of the Virgin. Giacomo would not hear of our Lady of Loretto, or the Saint Mary of Bologna or of Milan. He was infatuated by the pretended virtue of a material image, a piece of black and worm-eaten wood; and renounced all homage to its celestial prototype. The sentiments of the enthusiast, if they eventually lost in depth, gained only in extent. The Virgin of Oroppa was surrounded by a whole court of saints and saintesses—and to each of these, the infatuated Giacomo assigned some peculiar duty of intercession. From one, he implored the dispersion of the clouds charged with hail-showers, which from the heights of Monte Mucrone, sometimes rattled down upon his beloved valley. To another, he assigned the task of comforting his mother for his absence, and sustaining the spiritual weakness of his young wife. A third, he implored to watch over him in sleep—a fourth, to defend him against the temptations of Satan. His devotion, by this means, degenerated into an impure polytheism, and Mount Oroppa into a new Olympus, where every divinity but the one Almighty GOD was honoured with a shrine. Subjecting himself to the severest discipline, the most painful privations, he continued to macerate himself, to fast, to remain whole days without nourishment; and the exhaustion that ensued was qualified with the name of divine ecstasy! He saw visions, he heard revelations. After the delusions of the Quietists, he fancied that by subjugating his physical nature, he could develop and render visible his soul. But, while resigning himself to this chimera, and holding imaginary discourse with his immaterial nature, Girardi’s health gave way, and his reason became disordered. One day, a voice seemed to address him from on high, commanding him to go and convert the heretic Waldenses, remnants of which persecuted sect still exist in the Valais. He accordingly set off, traversed the country adjoining the river Sesia, attained the summit of the Alps, near Monte Rosa, and there, suddenly arrested in his course by the snow of an early winter, found himself under the necessity of passing several months in a châlet. [Illustration]