Autobiography

4. My Pentecost

The Marcellines at that time had a small branch of the large School on Quadronno Street, if I am not mistaken, on September 20th Street. A charming, cheerful little house surrounded by a garden filled with sun and flowers and with a small church as bright as a May dawn. Quite the opposite of the Ursulines’ School.

Even the Sisters were different. More joyful, they seemed like grown-up girls eager to play. A holy mirth was the norm for the little School. Only the Mother Superior represented the—bugaboo. With a very serious nervous problem—she later died insane—she underwent strange changes of humor. One day she would spare us everything, and the next be frightfully intransigent. Tall, very thin, brunette, with two big, black, rather wild eyes, she caused us great fear. It was a good thing that she was often in bed. On those days the students—and, I believe, not only the students—were happy, as if freed from a nightmare.

I was in the first year and was first in the class in intelligence, a gift of God and because at home Mother, with her professorial methods, and Father, with his love, always instructed me, and I was thus more learned than usual at that age.

Every Saturday I would take home my full-honors report card. A card which attracted kisses and rewards from Father, the praise of family friends, and the admiration of the maid and the soldier. And since, like all the children of Adam, I also had my share of pride, I did not remain indifferent to either the praise and admiration or the kisses and rewards. It was only that I would have wanted Mother’s as well, but she would say that “with such behavior I was just doing my duty, and so....” That was her method, and it is useless to argue with her method. I believe she had to force herself not to say, “Well done!” But, faithful to her method, she did not abandon her severe conduct. Amen!

If I must tell the truth, I was and was not happy about changing schools. In the first place, it caused me sorrow to separate myself from the sisters I now loved. Secondly, I no longer passed by those two wonderful shops—selling exotic fruit and sweets—which were so tempting for me.

I was a little glutton, you know? Oh, on reading my life you will realize that all the capital vices were in me—well, not all. I have never known greed, which may involve money, but also so many other things more spiritual than money. I was never miserly with affections, for I have greatly loved God and my neighbor, though from the latter I have received more bites than kisses. I was never stingy with my intelligence and was quite pleased to help my dullest companions, even at the price of running short of topics for my compositions in Italian or being caught by my teachers while doing the work of others and punished. Here, too, I found ingratitude and not gratefulness. Ingratitude which even reached the point of accusing me of “stealing the essays of others.” It was, however, quite the contrary, for, if I was a real brute in mathematics and my maximum grade in the subject from elementary through secondary school never surpassed 6-, given out of compassion, amidst long periods of 2,3,4, and even some flat zeros, in Italian I had an inexhaustible vein of imagination and a naturally good style; for this reason to do the same theme up to eight times developed in eight different ways was a game for me. In the other subjects as well I was truly good, and it could not have been otherwise if one recalls what a tremendous governess was on my back at home when the time came for my lessons. If I did not know them perfectly, if I did not do a fabulous job on my homework, there were punishments, and very severe ones.

But I would have done my duty even without them, for a single reason: pride. You see? Another capital vice popping up. I did not want to apologize. It struck me as mortally injuring my—dignity as a schoolgirl and daughter. Later, as a woman, I apologized even for sins I had not committed.... But it was different then. I did so because I thought Jesus was asking me for the offering of my humiliation, and I gave it to Him, though feeling crushed under the persuasion of the injustice of others, recognizing that, from a human standpoint, I was an imbecile, but that supernaturally that humiliation moved me up a rung on the ladder leading to God.

I thus did my duty so as to not to have to apologize and also to give joy to my father and my grandmother. Love, too, was therefore one of the two reins guiding me. And if the pride was reprovable, the love was commendable, so that I think the good Jesus, “because I loved much,” must have forgiven me even for the pride and severed from my skein the threads of pride which entangled everything and destroyed them, storing up, to weave me the robe of eternal peace, only the sweet threads of love. Don’t you think so?

I was not niggardly about toys and candy either with those poorer than I. For I had a lot of candy and playthings. My mother, I have stated, was severe out of a mistaken concept of authority. She has done so much harm to those she has most loved on account of this wrong idea. But I repeat, “Amen.” I would be lying if I said she made me undergo hunger, cold, if I said that she did not care for me when sick, if I said she refused me what children like so much: candy and toys. It was only that I was never supposed to ask for anything at all. If I asked, I no longer had anything, even if a minute before Mother had been thinking of giving me just that thing.

I want to narrate a little episode for you.

In St. Ambrose Square in Milan, from the first to the fifteenth of December, there is a fair with toys, sweets, and antiques. To the latter stands, of course, go the adults, the lovers of old objects: lamps, coffers, paintings, wrought iron, and similar things. But the toy and candy stands are a magnet for children, who flock from all over Milan with fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles to the Fair of O Bei, O Bei (which should be read as “How lovely, how lovely,” referring to the candy and toys). How many dreams throughout the year and how many wishes in front of those stands, which anticipate by twenty days the holiday “of the Child,” that is, Christmas, the day on which the children of Milan receive gifts. I in fact got them on St. Lucy’s day, for in the Venetian region and much of Lombardy the holy martyr is the dispenser of gifts.

But let us get back to the Fair. What dreams, what desires, what prayers that the “Child” would understand that was the toy wished for, that the “Child” would forgive all the little whims, all the pranks committed during the year, for which one was truly sorry and really promised not to repeat them.... Don’t you think that throughout life we are eternal children promising and repenting at special times in order to begin again as before afterwards?

The fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles scrutinize, listen, study the sighs, exclamations, sudden stops in front of that particular toy hypnotizing the little wisher and avail themselves of this study so as to cause the dreamed-for treasure to be found at the feet of the “Child” or hanging from the Christmas tree. Then and there they buy something else with a view towards returning two hours later, when evening falls, at a wolf’s pace to purchase the desired object and take it home and hide it away, sheltered from the sixth sense of children giving them a capacity for smelling, seeing, hearing—which is dangerous for adults....

I had gone, then, to this Fair with Mother, Grandmother, and the maid. It was December 1902. I was five years and nine months old. We passed by the scores of stands, and at one I noticed a little brass doll cradle. Real cradles with their pedestals maintaining them in balance, undulating, to lull the dolly to sleep, with their supports for the veil included so the light would not awaken her, with a little mattress, bolster, sheets—a divine cradle which seemed to me to be of gold, for it was yellow and shining. I sank in my roots in front of that stand. I so desired a cradle for my favorite doll that by dint of—washings I had rendered her as white as a lily and called her “Rosina” after that dear creature who had been our maid in Faenza and had died of consumption, a good angel whom the earth did not deserve to have.

I feel that if I had been my mother and my mother had been me, I would immediately have grasped what she wished for, for at the stand there was nothing else but cradles and dolls, and I had so many dolls that I could not wish for more, while not possessing a single cradle. But my mother has no spirit of observation at all; rather, she has a defect in this spirit whereby the salient fact always escapes her or she gets everything backwards.

I was not supposed to ask for anything ever, for children must never ask, and much less when things of value are concerned. Now, that cradle was gold for me. So I did not ask and begged my angel to tell Mother I wanted it. But that day my angel must have flown to the empyrean to sing the Sanctus to the Lamb. A heavenly nostalgia— I cannot even reproach him for it. On numberless occasions in life I, too, would have taken a flight to heaven to forget the earth!

Mother stood still for a minute and then clasped my hand, drawing me away. We strolled and strolled and strolled—and she did not grasp that every time we returned to that stand I remained caught in the trap of desire. She offered me other toys, but I, with an increasingly heavy heart and tears in my throat, always replied, “No, thank you.” I could have told Grandmother, the servant.... But I knew from experience that even if Mother agreed to their request, she would later reproach them for “spoiling me,” and I had all the capital vices in me, but not hard-heartedness, and preferred to suffer rather than see suffering. I thus did not speak.

Mother finally decided to go back home.... In the face of my desire, which was shattering like a glass ball falling to the ground or dissolving like a soap bubble in the December air, I started to cry. Mother, who had by now thoroughly darkened in the face of what she termed “a whim,” said—and said in such a way as to cut even a hero short (just imagine me, a poor little rabbit): “Decide. Tell me what you want. If it’s possible, fine; if not, you’ll have to do without it.” How, how could I say I wanted the golden cradle, when I was thundered at from morning to night with maternal lectures on the need to economize and the duty not to have illicit desires? I wept even more and was finally dragged through a main entrance near what is now the Catholic University and was then the Military Hospital and received a solid dose of slaps inside. I am still waiting for the cradle....

In my human life it was always that way. Only God has responded to my desires. The others, either because they could not or because they were unwilling, always shattered my dream and then struck me, for I would weep over its ruins.

I have wandered far from the point. But I do not repent because in a painting, in addition to the subject, the background is needed, and these digressions are the background and surroundings of the painting in which my life stands out. I shall now return to the story.

I was saying, then, that I lacked nothing necessary materially and even had what was superfluous. But I confess to you that I would have preferred much less given with more manifest love.

Being a mother does not consist only of imposing one’s will on one’s children and representing power. Above all, it means being the first confidante, the first friend of one’s children, the person who, with both uprightness and compassion, observes, guides, consoles, and makes the tender creatures feel her love in such a way that her children’s hearts open to the kiss of that love, like flowers under the kiss of the sun.

My heart closed instead under maternal severity like a corolla benumbed by the frost, and every time, even now, I have tried and try to turn to her love and open this poor heart of mine, which has suffered so and loved so, I run up against the easily-injured, icy wall of her sternness, her authoritarianism. Amen. I have suffered desperately on this account.... I now suffer intensely, but I know, for Jesus tells me so, that it is not without a purpose....

I was not close-fisted, I was saying, and am not and never have been slothful. Idleness and I have always been enemies. Idleness and laxity. Raised a bit impetuously, in military fashion, it was never hard for me to get up early, eat when I could, drink if possible. The need for long trips, and in times when traveling was not a model of comfort, had accustomed me to withstanding the cold without whimpering, rising early in the morning, uncomfortable hotel beds, varying cuisines, not finding food or drink suited to my constitution and thus being left without liquid and nourishment, just as I was used to bearing with no agitation a pebble in my shoe, a hat weighing upon my head, and other small but exasperating nuisances like a cobweb in one’s face.

During vacations Father sounded reveille at dawn to take me along the seashore or up the Apennine slopes to let me marvel at the beauty of creation, the miracle of the light returning every daybreak to speak to us of God, who made it, to have me pray together with the waves roaring obediently on the earthly shores at the limits where the Eternal placed them. But the joy of going out with Father and the joy of the beauty I breathed in with all my human and superhuman senses were so grand they made me see those early morning risings as a holiday, love them as a reward, rendering them so familiar to me that they were no longer a burden. I have always slept only a few hours at night. But that sleep was full, restful, a true respite for the body. Only my soul was watchful therein.

But I shall speak about this later. Let us now return to the first topic.

I thus regretted changing schools for a thoroughly animal reason, gluttony, and an emotional one, abandoning the Sisters I loved. But it was also a great sorrow for me not to see that dead Jesus any longer. I seemed to be losing Him and causing Him pain. I in fact lost Him from sight a bit. At the Marcellines there was a lot of—what shall I say? I cannot find the exact term. The fact is I dissipated. But I realize I have failed to speak about Grandmother.

In December 1903 my grandmother died. In July 1902, in Montecatini, while staying with me at an uncle’s—I so liked that place replete with gurgling waters and sighing reeds, at high noon, where only the balm crickets contribute their tireless chirping—she was wounded by a wicked youth. A hairpin blow laid bare her maleolus. Having turned at the thud of the first stone, I saw the urchin fling the second one. I then observed Grandmother grow pale, take her shoes and socks off, and stick her foot in the fresh water, which reddened with her blood, and her kisses descended upon my tears. Poor Grandmother! She was never again well.

In November she wanted to go back to Mantova and visit the tombs of her husband and sister, who had died seven days apart in 1899. She returned sicker than before. My mother reproached her for what she called her useless imprudence. No, it wasn’t useless. A premonition told her that her life was at its end and she wanted to see for the last time the tomb of the consort whose perfect companion she had always been.

On December 10—it must have been Thursday, for I was not at school—she was struck with apoplexy. We had just eaten, and Mother, who trusts no one, had gone down to the cellar to supervise the soldier and the woman, busy decanting wine. Father was reading the newspaper while waiting to go back to the barracks. Grandmother, always good, had gone to the kitchen to do something so that the woman, on coming back up towards evening, would not still find all the disorder of the meal. I had gone with Grandmother and was chattering at her side. I saw her bend over to pick up a log and deposit it in the box with wood to be burned in the sitting-room fireplace. I saw her become livid, with her features blurred, and heard her mutter confused words. I got scared and cried out. Dad came running. In time to keep her from falling to the ground. I have never again been able to look at someone sleeping or wake up a sleeper without trembling, for the face in sleep often takes on altered features like those of my grandmother and always leaves me with the impression that the person must have died while sleeping....

She agonized for two and a half days and expired at dawn on December 13, exactly six years after her son. It was St. Lucy’s Day, and among the presents for me was a little gold watch hanging from a gold pin in the form of a knot.... Poor Grandmother! The last memento! And she had bought it for me, defying Mother’s sermons, to leave me an enduring keepsake.

I am not very attached to things, especially to jewels, and when the exigencies of illness have counseled Mother to convert our gold into ready money, I have said nothing. But to see Father’s cufflinks and chain and Grandmother’s watch being sold was torture for me. I would have preferred to have other objects sold. Never mind!

I exactly recall everything in those sad days and shall not describe it, for I would suffer excessively, which I must not do if I am to keep up stamina to write. I smothered my sorrow because Father urged me to so as not to upset my mother further. My heart was breaking from the tears falling within instead of pouring from my eyes.... It was the first time I mortified myself with inner weeping, the most bitter and least understood. And in fact it was not understood. Mother said I had not suffered and declared me to be superficial.... May God forgive her! I began to die on that cold afternoon of December 10, 1903.

Father accompanied the body to Mantova. Eight days of his absence and my desolation. Without Grandmother, without Father, alone with Mother, who accepted only her own pain....

How much, how much pain! And then Mother was seriously ill for months and months and more intractable and nervous than ever. What a sad spring!

On March 18, 1904 I made my first Confession, in the chapel where my Jesus was sleeping his sleep of death. I still have the keepsake image given me by Sister Blanche, the Superior.

St. Joseph, on the eve of his feast day—and it was a very sad feast day that year because Grandmother Josephine was no longer with us— had me plunge my soul for the first time into the Blood of Christ, that Most Precious Blood I so love and would like to breathe in from his wounds with all my strength, that Blood to which twenty-seven years later I offered myself, asking Him to fuse me with Himself in a single sacrifice wherein my blood, all my blood, would be shed together with his for the ends He knows.

And now that I have made amends for my oversight, let us go back to the Marcellines’ School.

In the spring of 1905 some of my companions and I were instructed to receive Confirmation. We were no longer at school from nine to four, but until six because of catechetical classes.

But I remember very little about this period. I was too sad and sickly with measles, scarlet fever, and chickenpox, following one upon the other, nearly without respite. I only recall, with no pleasure, soup time. It has always been a bad time for me, even in the family. Imagine, then, when I just had to smell the notorious rice and cabbage, which pursued me for thirteen consecutive years! I did not eat that overdone rice, but the smell alone filled me with repugnance. If I think of it, I can still smell it. It was my biggest act of mortification to receive the Holy Spirit. I would have preferred to go without eating rather than walk down to the dining-hall and face that smell.... But that was the arrangement, and I had to undergo it for two months.

As you see, I was in a phase of utter spiritual daze. I did everything listlessly, in a dull way. I mean everything relating to the spirit. Aside from this, I was still the same daughter and student as before. Or rather, I wasn’t. I told a lie—I, who have never managed to make my way through this world of falsehood on account of my excessively rough sincerity.

I said I had been very ill. I had noted that when I was sick, Mother would kiss me, remain close to me, utterly different in her behavior from the way she acted when I was well. She was then the Mother, just as I conceive her and my heart would like her to be. Then I thought of—getting sick. Taking advantage of a fortunate fall which had badly bruised and grazed my right elbow, to the point that it required medicines and bandages, even after it had healed, by night and by day I would scratch and scratch, irritating the wound so it would never heal and the joy of being caressed and dressed by Mother would thus last. But one fine day the trick was discovered by Sister Erminia, the half-mad Superior. Mother was notified, and I, punished.

I deserved it for having lied. But shouldn’t two educators like the Superior and especially my mother have grasped, after my lengthy, sorrowful confession, the good reason, though behind the scenes of my fib, my lie? I do not justify myself. I acknowledge I was then at fault. But why even then was there no wish to believe me, when I said I had erred out of thirst for Mother’s kisses?

I was not believed. I was not pitied. The door to my heart sank even lower between the world and me. When it is completely riveted down—that is, now that I am at the end of my life—then I shall understand that it was the goodness of God which permitted this to detach me from everything and unite me to Him alone.

But I greatly suffered and—there’s Theresa, the mad wet-nurse, welling up—I deeply hated the Superior, who had denounced me without having first examined the causes of my pretence. And the hatred tenaciously remained for some time thereafter, to such an extent that the following school year, when I learned that a new Superior had taken the place of Sister Erminia, admitted to a nursing home for nervous and mental illnesses, I was happy about it. You see what a fine character I was?

On May 30, 1905 I received Confirmation from the hands of Cardinal Archbishop Andrea Ferrari. They say he is a saint. I believe it, because the touch of his hands truly infused into me the Spirit of love, tightening the bond of love between the Paraclete and me, whose presence, assistance, and sweetest comfort I constantly feel.

That morning, at seven, we went to the large school of the Marcellines on Quadronno Street. As all of us, dressed in white and wearing veils, headed in procession towards the Chapel, a restless, disobedient companion of mine shifted her lit candle from one hand to the other, placing it on the inside of the file instead of the outside. The light veils and ribbons in the girls’ hair caught fire. A fright and a disaster. I alone, though right at the center of the circle of flames, received not even a reverberation of the blaze. That veil, intact, is still at my house.

Fire has always respected me. I have been in the midst of flames three times. I was six the first time. A small bucket filled with resin set imprudently beside the fire burst into flames. The maid received burns. I, though near her, suffered nothing. The second was the day of my Confirmation. The third, when I was eighteen, when an alcohol stove exploded. The flames reached the ceiling. I was in the middle, with my hands over my face, stock still. I felt the heat of the blaze slowly diminish, and when it was completely out, not a hair on my head, not a thread of my dress was seen to have been burned. It is clear that fire loves me. An unrequited love, for I am quite afraid of fire and cannot think of purgatory without trembling. I like only the fire of love. Oh! This one, indeed, and may it burn and melt me completely in its heat!

I received, then, the Holy Spirit. He descended into me and certainly left his seed. But for the time being I did not feel it. It was, instead, a very tedious day, badly begun, dragging on still worse, and ending horribly in a theater where—there was a wrestling match. I still ask myself why my aunt, Confirmation sponsor, took me there.... At times adults are more wildly inconsistent than children and fail to reflect that certain memories remain throughout life with a taste of ashes and in a murky light. Heaven knows!

Well, that’s how my Confirmation in Christ took place.