One festival day, when my place of business was closed, I was occupying myself in reading a book which you had lent me, and which was on "The Souls in Purgatory." I was absorbed in my subject when a messenger came and told me that my youngest child, aged four years, showed the first symptoms of a very grave disease. The child rapidly grew worse, and the physicians at length declared that there was no hope. The thought then occurred to me that perhaps I could save my child by making a vow to assist the Suffering Souls in Purgatory. I accordingly repaired at once to a chapel, and, with all fervor, supplicated God to have pity on me; and I vowed I would distribute gratuitously a hundred copies of the book that had moved me in behalf of the suffering souls, and give them to ecclesiastics and to religious to increase devotion to the Holy Souls. I had, I acknowledge, hardly any hope. As soon as I returned to the house I found the child much better. He asked for food, although for several days he had not been able to swallow anything but liquids. The next day he was perfectly well, got up, went out for a walk, and ate as if he had never had anything the matter with him. Filled with gratitude, I was only anxious to fulfill my promise. I went to the College of the Jesuit Fathers and begged them to accept as many copies of the work as they pleased, and to distribute them amongst themselves and other communities and ecclesiastics as they thought fit, so that the suffering souls, my benefactors, should be assisted by further prayers.