The five days of the festival Anna lived thus within the church from
early morning until the hour at which the doors were closed—most
faithfully she breathed in that warm air which implanted in her senses
a blissful torpor, in her soul a joy, full of humility. The orations,
the genuflections, the salutations, all of those formulas, all of those
ritualistic gestures incessantly repeated, dulled her senses. The fumes
of the incense hid the earth from her.
Rosaria, the daughter of Sblendore, meanwhile profited by moving
her to pity with lying complaints and by the miserable spectacle
of the paralytic old man. She was an unprincipled woman, expert in
fraud and dedicated to debauchery; her entire face was covered with
blisters, red and serpentine, her hair grey, her stomach obese. Bound
to the paralytic by vices common to both and by marriage, she and
he had squandered in a short time their substance in guzzling and
merry-making. Both in their misery, venomous from privation, burning
with thirst for wine and liquor, harassed by the infirmities of
decrepitude, were now expiating their prolonged sinning.
Anna, with a spontaneous impulse for charity, gave to Rosaria all her
money kept for alms-giving and her superfluous clothes as well as her
earrings, two gold rings and her coral necklace and she promised still
further support. At length she retraced the road to Pescara, in company
with Fra Mansueto, and bearing the turtle in her basket.
During their walk, as the houses of Ortona withdrew into the distance,
a great sadness descended upon the soul of the woman. Crowds of singing
pilgrims were passing in other directions, and their songs, monotonous
and slow, remained a long while in the air. Anna listened to them;
an overwhelming desire drew her to join them, to follow them, to live
thus, making pilgrimages from sanctuary to sanctuary, from country to
country, in order to exalt the miracles of every saint, the virtues of
every relic, the bounty of every Mary.
“They go to Cucullo,” Fra Mansueto said, pointing with his arm to
some distant country. And both began to talk of Saint Domenico,
who protected the men from the bite of serpents and the seed from
caterpillars; then they spoke of the patron saints. At Bugnara, on
the bridge of Rivo, more than a hundred cart-houses, among horses and
mules, laden with fruit, were going in a procession to the Madonna of
the Snow. The devotees rode on their chargers, with sprigs of spikenard
on their heads, with strings of dough on their shoulders, and they
laid at the feet of the image their cereal gifts. At Bisenti, many
youths, with baskets of grain on their heads, were conducting along
the roads an ass that carried on its back a larger basket, and they
entered the Church of the Madonna of the Angels, to offer them up,
while singing. At Torricella Peligna, men and children, crowned with
roses and garlands of roses, went up on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of
the Roses, situated upon a cliff where was the foot-prints of Samson.
At Loreto Apentino a white ox, fattened during the year with abundance
of pasturage, moved in pomp behind the statue of Saint Zopito. A red
drapery covered him and a child rode upon him. As the sacred ox entered
the church, he gave forth the excrescence of his food and the devotees
from this smoking material presaged future agriculture.
Of such religious usages Anna and Fra Mansueto were speaking, when
they reached the mouth of the Alento. The Channel carried the water
of spring between the green foliage not yet flowered. And the Capuchin
spoke of the Madonna of the Incoronati, where for the festival of Saint
John the devotees wreath their heads with vines, and during the night
go with great rejoicing to the River Gizio to bathe.
Anna removed her shoes in order to ford the river. She felt now in
her soul an immense and loving veneration for everything, for the
trees, the grass, the animals, for all that those Catholic customs had
sanctified. Thus from the depths of her ignorance and simplicity arose
the instinct of idolatry.
Several months after her return, an epidemic of cholera broke out in
the country, and the mortality was great. Anna lent her services to the
poor sick ones. Fra Mansueto died. Anna felt much grief at this. In
the year 1866, at the recurrence of the festival, she wished to take
leave and return to her native place forever, because she saw in her
sleep every night Saint Thomas who commanded her to depart. So she took
the turtle, her clothes and her savings, weeping she kissed the hand
of Donna Cristina, and departed upon a cart, together with two begging
nuns.
At Ortona she dwelt in the house of her paralytic uncle. She slept upon
a straw pallet and ate nothing but bread and vegetables. She dedicated
every hour of the day to the practices of the Church, with a marvellous
fervour, and her mind gradually lost all ability to do anything save
contemplate Christian mysteries, adore symbols and imagine Paradise.
She was completely absorbed with divine charity, completely encompassed
with that divine passion which the sacerdotals manifest always with
the same signs and the same words. She comprehended but that one single
language; had but that one single refuge, sweet and solemn, where her
whole heart dilated in a pious security of peace and where her eyes
moistened with an ineffable sweetness of tears.
She suffered, for the love of Jesus, domestic miseries, was gentle
and submissive and never proffered a lament, a reproof, or a threat.
Rosaria extracted from her little by little all of her savings, and
commenced then to let her go hungry, to overtax her, to call her
vicious names and to persecute the turtle with fierce insistency.
The old paralytic gave forth continuously a species of hoarse howls,
opening his mouth where the tongue trembled and from which dripped
continually quantities of saliva. One day, because his greedy wife
swallowed before him some liquor and denied him a drink, escaping with
the glass, he arose from his chair with an effort and began to walk
toward her, his legs wavering, his feet striking the ground with an
involuntary rhythmic stroke. Suddenly he moved faster, his trunk bent
forward, while hopping with short pursuing steps, as if pushed by an
irresistible impulse, until at length he fell face downward upon the
edge of the stairs.