"Then he came, like a meek lamb; and, when he saw me, he began to smile; and he would have me make the sign of the Cross over him. When he had received the sign, I said: 'Up to the nuptials, sweet brother mine! for soon shalt thou be in the eternal life.' He placed himself down with great meekness; and I stretched out his neck and bent down over him, and reminded him of the Blood of the Lamb. His mouth said nought, save _Jesus_ and _Catherine_. And, as he spoke so, I received his head into my hands, fixing my eyes upon the Divine Goodness and saying, 'I am willing.'" As she knelt with the severed head in her hands, her white robe all crimsoned over with his blood, Catherine had one of those mystical visions which she can only tell in terms of blood and fire. She saw the soul received by its Maker, and saw it, in the first tasting of the divine sweetness, turn back to thank her. "Then did my soul repose in peace and in quiet, in so great an odour of blood, that I could not bear to free myself from the blood that had come upon me from him. Alas! wretched miserable woman that I am, I will say no more. I remained upon the earth with very great envy."[21] Gradually we find Catherine becoming a power in her own city, a factor in the turbulent politics of Italy, a counsellor in what a sixteenth century Pope was to call the Game of the World. She dictates epistles, full of wise counsels, to the rulers of the Republic--to her "dearest brothers and temporal lords," the Fifteen, Lords Defenders of the city of Siena, to her "most reverend and most dear father and son" the Podestà, or to her "dearest brother in Christ sweet Jesus," the Senator. At Rocca d'Orcia--the chief fortress of the Salimbeni--she reconciles the rival branches of that great clan with each other, makes peace between the head of the House, her friend Agnolino (the son of the great Giovanni di Agnolino Salimbeni) and his factious kinsman Cione. While staying at the Rocca, she appears to have learnt to write--it is said by a miracle.[22] Be that as it may, the greater part at least of her extant letters (and, so far as the knowledge of the present writer extends, all those of which the original autographs have been preserved), were dictated to her secretaries. We possess nearly four hundred of them, these epistles "al nome di Gesù Cristo crocifisso e di Maria dolce," written--to use her own phrase--"in the precious blood of Christ" to persons of both sexes, and of every condition of life from the King of France and the Roman Pontiff to a humble Florentine tailor, from the Queens of Naples and Hungary to a courtesan in Perugia. Her philosophy is simple, but profound: strip yourself of self-love, enter into the Cell of Self-Knowledge--that is the key to it. And all alike, in appearance at least, pause to listen to her inspired voice, bow before her virginal will.