Some Romish legends speak of birds which were of no species known on
earth and who by the place and manner of their appearances were
concluded to have come from Paradise, or to have been celestial
spirits in that form. Holy Colette of portentous sanctity, the
Reformeress of the Poor Clares, and from whom a short-lived variety of
the Franciscans were called Colettines, was favoured, according to her
biographers, with frequent visits by a four-footed pet, which was no
mortal creature. It was small, resembling a squirrel in agility, and
an ermine in the snowy whiteness of its skin, but not in other
respects like either; and it had this advantage over all earthly pets,
that it was sweetly and singularly fragrant. It would play about the
saint, and invite her attention by its gambols. Colette felt a
peculiar and mysterious kind of pleasure when it showed itself; and
for awhile not supposing that there was anything supernatural in its
appearance, endeavoured to catch it, for she delighted in having lambs
and innocent birds to fondle: but though the Nuns closed the door, and
used every art and effort to entice or catch it, the little
nondescript always either eluded them, or vanished; and it never
tasted of any food which they set before it. This miracle being unique
in its kind is related with becoming admiration by the chroniclers of
the Seraphic Order; as it well may, for, for a monastic writer to
invent a new miracle of any kind evinces no ordinary power of
invention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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