Autobiography

15. 1919

A few days after the end of the war St. Mark’s Hospital closed, and I moved on to another hospital alongside my wounded men, whom I did not wish to abandon.

It was in the building of the G. Giusti Gymnasium-Lycée on Carducci Street, or perhaps the other way around. I know I passed in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation, under the arch connecting Holy Innocents’ Hospital to other buildings, and then I walked a good distance along that street, passing in front of the Etruscan-Egyptian Museum, and so on.

One half of the hospital was attractive, in the new building, but the other was ugly and gloomy—formerly a cloistered house. High, narrow little windows almost prison-like, dreary cloisters and courtyards, admonitions sculpted on the arches of the doors, water clocks, owls, skulls—and stairs, ramps, steps, constant differences in level which put my poor, breathless heart sorely to the test.

At the beginning of January, after a second bout with Spanish influenza, I couldn’t take it any more. I had myself examined, first by a certain doctor and then by the Chief Physician at my hospital. With the former I told a fib. I said I was an orphan and wanted to know my condition in all frankness so as to be able to give an answer to a young man who wanted to marry me. I needed to know the exact situation. And he told me. With the latter I could not tell this fib because he knew I had Father and Mother. But that fine man, also a father, and not happy in his family, had intuited many things and was very paternal with me. After having examined me carefully, he told me what he thought, which corresponded to all the other had said. The “miracle” had taken place of two doctors who, without mutual knowledge, said the same thing!

Afterwards the Chief Physician wanted to speak to my mother. Note that I had gone to the examinations alone because I could no longer carry on that way, and Mother did not see my condition and would not admit it if I told her. I do not know what he told her. What I do know is that she came back home in very low spirits and for some time was quite tender.

But the treatment did not improve my health. My heart was getting wearier and wearier. Insomnia also tormented me. Perhaps it proceeded from my heart’s constant, marked palpitation, which, when I lay down at night, increased. But I had no fear of death. Rather....

I would have wanted only to see my Sisters and my companions again. I felt that if I could visit the school for a time, as did my classmates, the final agitations would die out in a supernatural peace. I had always understood this, even in the most disturbed moments, and had continually wished to take refuge in that nest of peace to rediscover peace. But I had never even tried to say so to Mother, who already opposed my correspondence with Sisters. Now that I felt myself dying, I wished for it even more. Among other things, I told myself that once there, if they were to keep me as a teacher, I might even end up becoming a nun.

I now looked to God a great deal again and would have wished to take shelter from everything forever in a convent and in a nun’s habit.

I still did not see the will of God clearly. I already perceived that He was constantly attracting me, drawing me to Himself. But I was mistaken in thinking He wanted me in a convent. This was an addition arising from my own desire. The convent, like death, would have freed me from all the family struggles. Exhausted by all I had suffered, I desired this alone. To leave the world, in one way or another, so as to suffer no longer. But, on the contrary, I had to remain in the world and suffer immensely more.

I was forced to abandon my hospital work because I simply could not bear it any more. I detached myself from my lads, all condemned to fatal illnesses, with great sorrow.

In May my cousin Clotilde came to Florence, with her eight-year-old son. They arrived from Reggio Calabria. She had recently lost a very young son tragically, and the other, who was now an only child, was afflicted with a mastoiditis—at least, so it seemed. They had referred him to Florence to get the opinion of department heads at the Mayer Children’s Hospital.

I knew the Chief Physician very well and set to work. Fortunately, the supposed mastoiditis was nothing but an inflamed sublingual gland. A little three-centimeter incision, twenty days in the hospital, no scar, and it was all over. But I spent those twenty days there alongside the little surgery patient and his mother, who loved me very much and understood me even better because, as a relative, she knew my mother’s character, and so—even if I did not speak, she understood so many things just the same. She also wanted to speak to the physician who was treating me, and since he told her that the best thing to assist the treatment was “to get me out of the family environment, the prime cause of my ailments and a constant source of disturbances capable of aggravating my condition,” she took action in this regard. My cousin Clotilde spoke boldly to Mother.

My cousin Clotilde is outspoken and not afraid of anyone. She is a Piedmontese of integrity. Some say she is not good. Perhaps. She has suffered much, and this has altered her nervous system, but she was always good and maternal to me. And I did live with her for two years!

So my cousin told Mother to entrust me to her. We would first go to Turin, her native city, and then she would take me to Monza, to my Sisters. Mother yielded. Reluctantly, of course, and telling my cousin where to get off. But she yielded. She wrote to the Superior, and on receiving word that I was expected, we left for Turin.

Those were wonderful days. In addition to the city, Clotilde took me to Racconigi, Stupinigi, Moncalieri, Superga, and so on. Being with her and her child, amidst so much care, made me improve immediately. An improvement which was more moral than physical, but which contributed to giving me a less wasted appearance.

After a while we left for Monza. In Turin I had received a very affectionate letter from my Superior—written with effort, for she had very serious heart trouble, but overflowing with love. She said the Sisters and she were awaiting me with longing....

I was happy! Happy after so many years! I would see my school, my Sisters again, and experience once more, for a month or two, perhaps forever, that calm, ordered, devout life; I would see my companions again, some already married and with children, some single like me! I had advised all of them....

But could I ever be happy? It is not for nothing that my name is “Maria.” A name involving predestination, but also pain. According to the etymology of my name, I, too, had to be “Myrrh of the sea and bitter sea.” I thus had to find pain, even where, in view of the fact that a thing or a place was ever so licit and holy, I would presumably find a bit of joy....

Arriving in Monza on the evening of June 10, I immediately went to the school. What a thrill of joy and emotion when I rang at that large main door! What a wave of memories when I crossed that threshold and found myself in the courtyard of honor, and penetrated into the reception room! What emotion when I heard the steps of a sister approaching, marked by the slight tinkling of her long rosary! Even now, when the window is open and sisters pass by or you come, I at once perceive the sound of the rosary hanging at the waist and think of my Sisters....

First of all, the Assistant Superior came. She greeted me, a bit cold, to tell the truth. But she had never been outgoing, and I paid no attention. Then my poor Superior came, panting and swollen from her heart trouble. She was most affectionate, as always.

The Assistant Superior advised me that there were no beds at the school and that I would have to go to sleep at the residence of the Sisters devoted to serving the Cathedral. Monza has a mitred Archpriest and a Chapter, as if it were the seat of a Curia.

As my cousin observed, it would really have been better for me to have stayed at the school, where I was known. A letter had been written for this express purpose many days before, to learn if it was possible to put me up, paying my way, of course. But, provided I could be near the Sisters, I accepted all the conditions. I took leave of Clotilde and Memmino and remained at the school.

I saw no other Sister. After about half an hour someone was instructed to take me to the little convent where I would sleep. The Sisters there welcomed me with much kindness, apologizing for having to give me a room which was not modern. And what did I care? I was in fact taken to a vast room whose furniture must have harked back to Radetzky and the Five Days of 1848.... There was a bed so high that to retire I had to take a chair and turn it into a kind of ladder in order to climb up there, asking my angel not to let me fall while asleep....

But the fact is I was at Monza with the Sisters. Everything else meant nothing alongside this joy.

I did not have dinner, for beginning at that time I ate very little. I just sipped a cup of coffee, which my doctor had ordered to sustain my heart. And I retired and slept as well until the bells of the Cathedral, very close by, awakened me to the Ave Maria.

I came down from my—catafalque, got dressed very quickly, and went to hear Mass. I did not receive Communion because I did not find a confessor. But I promised myself I would do so the following morning at school. I would organize my life better during the day.... I sipped another coffee for breakfast and headed for the school. I was quite familiar with Monza and thus had no need to be accompanied.

I rang, entered, and was shown into the hall. I waited and waited and waited.... No one ever came. Nine, nine-thirty.... The Assistant Superior finally appeared. Serious, I would say almost gruff, she asked me if I had slept well and had had breakfast. Then she immediately began a long discourse centering on: “You well know, the rules; we should not create precedents,” and so forth. The conclusion was: “We don’t want you here.”

I observed that we had written in advance, that the rules themselves welcomed former students wishing to spend some time in residence at the school while paying their own way, that I was therefore not creating a precedent, but following the traditional customs of over half a century, that I did not have a contagious disease (I had brought the diagnoses and medical prescriptions with me), that I had not caused talk and was thus not a cause for scandal, and that, finally, I was now there and my cousin had left for Bologna, and it would be necessary to let me stay until she returned. At least until then.

There was nothing to be done. The sister was inexorable. She replied that I was not a child, but twenty-two years old and could travel alone. I begged her to let me stay at least until I could greet my companions, who were to come during the week. Not a word. I again begged that I be permitted at least to telephone those who were in Monza, who would gladly accomodate me for a few days. They had invited me so often! Not a word. I had to leave.

In the face of such unexplainable relentlessness, such harshness rejecting me, I bowed my head. I wept. Another dream cherished for so many years which dissolved when I thought it would come true....

The Assistant Superior asked me if I wanted to visit the church.... What a question! I would say what a stupid question if I did not still respect the one who asked it.

She took me to our beautiful chapel. The figure of the Sacred Heart extended its arms to me from the main altar. There was only the figure and the sister who was the organist, sitting at her organ in the choir and reviewing a sung Mass....

I took refuge near the altar and wept and wept and wept—until the Assistant Superior returned to tell me that my cousin had come back. Clotilde, a woman expert in observing human faces—she has a large hotel, and at hotels people become real masters in the art of recognizing character—had not trusted the Assistant’s honeyed words the evening before and had stayed in Monza another day.

As soon as she saw me, she said forcefully, as is her custom, “My dear, you must resign yourself. The sisters don’t want you. I’m sorry for your sake, but what can you do?”

“Do you think so, Madam? We would like to have her, but you well understand—”

“I understand that you don’t want her. It would have been more correct, though, to have written at once or at least to have said so openly last night. If I had left, trusting that everything was in order, you would have put her on the train alone, in a time of strikes and with heart trouble.” And she said to me, “Come on, let’s go. You shouldn’t stay where you’re not wanted.”

The Assistant grasped that she had acted badly and insisted on my remaining, as an extraordinary concession, until the evening to have me see the Sisters. Note that I had not yet seen them. In the meantime, she said, she would take care of advising my companions in Monza. She said so, but did not do so, fearing that they might detain me.

Clotilde yielded. I thus stayed until 5 p.m. But I think a dangerous delinquent or some plague-stricken person would not have been kept differently from the way I was. At the end of the garden all day, except when it was time for lunch, which was served to me in a remote little room....

Eat—I did not. I could not. Sadness formed a knot. I took a roll as a souvenir and kept it until a few years ago. It had gotten worm-eaten, and I threw it away. Father Christopher, in The Betrothed, keeps the bread of forgiveness in his monk’s basket. For over twenty years I have borne the bread of rejection with me.

My Sisters did not eat that day to keep me company. They did not approve of the way of acting of the very powerful Assistant Superior, who had been doing and undoing at her pleasure since the Superior had become virtually dazed by her illness. But they could do nothing.

The Superior came, blowing like a pair of bellows, to apologize. She wept.... The poor woman! She was now broken...! I never felt rancor towards her, but I would be lying if I said I did not have a very bitter feeling towards the Assistant Superior. She is now dead, and death puts an end to everything. I hope that God has also forgiven her for this harshness with me, but it certainly cannot be said that she showed me charity. You will agree as well.

How the course of my movement towards God would have been facilitated if I had been able to pause there! But it does not matter. I can joyfully state that I owe what I have become to myself alone, with no contribution from the environment and common life of the brides of Christ. Jesus has worked my soul Himself alone, and I have responded and requested his working in me.

I bless Mario and my wounds for having given me the initial push, but afterwards I must give all the praise to God alone and a bit of approval to my own soul, which, after once starting out, kept going faster and faster.

“However great the anxiety of my heart:,
your consolations soothe me.” (Ps 94::19)

I went back home so sad and discouraged that I ended up getting sick.

I could really say, “Even the sparrow has found a home, the swallow, a nest to place its young,” but I find no dwelling to suffer my torment in peace. And then, disheartened about everything and everyone, after having said, “...in my dismay: every man is deceitful,” I turned my wounded flight towards God.

I must acknowledge that more than one flight was a flutter, proceeding by hops, but the fact is that it was already movement towards Jesus. If I had risen from the thick slime two years before, if I had let myself be dragged before the altar a year before because I was ashamed to go there frequently on my own—there is no moment worse than when conscience reawakens. Whether it’s the devil or whatever else, we are led to exaggerate our guilt, to deem it unforgivable, to draw away from God out of shame, instead of throwing ourselves at his feet and humbly saying, “Lord, save me, for I have sinned! Lord, cleanse me, for I am leprous! Lord, remember me in your Kingdom!” If before I had acted only in that way—so little and so badly—under the new painful blow, I found the strength to move on my own, like a weary horse under the whip lashing him.

“Let the wicked man abandon his way, and the evil one, his thoughts. Let him turn back to Yahweh, who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness.”

“I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the injured, and make the sick strong. I shall watch over the fat and healthy. I shall be a true shepherd to them.”

Don’t these words seem to have been written for me and for all the poor souls that are sick as mine was?

Limping along, I dragged myself towards the Lord, and, rich in his mercy, He bound my fractured members, refreshed me in my weakness, and set me upon his lap for me to sleep in softness and warmth, for I was utterly wounded, and there was no one else to love me, and I had to get better to serve Him and follow Him and imitate Him and love Him in the immense, full, complete, free, and intense light of an absolute love with no more dissipation, coldness, or returning to the human.

Mother and anyone else could now push me around. I would still suffer. That’s natural. But every suffering, instead of drawing me away from God by almost making Him to blame for that pain, would pull me closer and closer to God, for I now knew that He alone loved me, that He alone sought my good, that only goodness came to me from Him, and that evil was given exclusively by creatures.

Every pain has been a hammer blow which has further pounded in the nails joining me to the Cross of Christ. And if it is a cross, I would not on that account accept any royal bed in place of it. For it is the bed for the soul’s marriage to Christ, just as suffering, according to Ruysbroeck, is Christ’s wedding garment.

As you will have noted, many of the bridges uniting me to creatures had been broken, and many of my branches reaching out to embrace other trees had been cut off. God was working to isolate me to have me entirely for Himself. Only one bridge remained—my friendship for Mario. It was very dear to my heart.

The young man kept insisting on his intentions, and I, on mine. But the more I persisted in telling him that I was no longer capable of loving in the sense this word has for most people, the more he persisted in replying that he did not care if I did not love him as a husband—it was enough for me to let myself be loved by him. Afterwards my love would gradually come.

Did I remember Roberto? That was just fine! He also remembered him. We would name the first child after him. Was I sad? No problem. He would take care of making me so happy that I would necessarily become glad. Was I ill? That was of no import. His love would heal me by dint of tenderness, for in the end I was sick because I was too abandoned. And here he was right.

In October I had to undergo a real siege. I kept saying no, though such affection began to shake and penetrate me. The colonel joined forces with his son to make me capitulate. One day he told me that Mario needed to leave at ease in order to take calmly the last exams, which were now close, and that the time had come to put an end to my mother’s absurd vetoes. It was not right for me to sacrifice myself to her imaginary fears. He also reproached me, though very gently, saying that I was exaggerating about my mother’s intransigence. I was startled by her like a horse.

I went on saying, “Wait. Hold on.” I was afraid. I remembered the scene of January 5, 1914 and did not want it to be repeated. But Mario took no heed of me. With the haste of those in love, one morning, on November 3, 1919, to be exact, taking advantage of being alone with Mother, he spoke out. An outright proposal.

Heavens above! Mario was not torn to pieces because—he was much bigger than Mother, but he came close. As I had foreseen, he was invited never to set foot in our house again.

In the afternoon the colonel caught up with me in the street while I was walking my dog. I was very sad because I had had to suffer one reproach after another and because I thought this friendship had also been destroyed. The colonel was quite disgusted and spoke his mind forthrightly. I was sorry to see him so upset. But he was thus convinced as to whether or not I was exaggerating.

He told me that in any event he regarded me as his son’s fiancée. Unless I absolutely refused. In that case he would have to say that I, too, was deceitful, like my mother, for I had always led Mario to believe that in time I would finally be his, whereas I instead wanted to make a fool of him as my mother did in the most deliberate fashion.

This was not true. I had always explained my views to Mario and his father. But affliction sometimes makes people say what is not so. And the colonel was deeply grieved.

He begged me not to insist on my refusal, telling me that I would one day thank him for such persistence on his part, for with Mario I would be happy. He said my very faithful friendship was the best preparation for a faithful love and, if I was not to have the giddiness of passionate love, I would surely have the great gift of constancy over time which would be ever the same in intensity and tenderness.

“Loves based on friendship are the ones destined to last the longest, my dear. Habit does not ruin them, nor does old age extinguish them. They are loves which withstand all trials and all events. Neither age nor the fading of physical graces and the appearance in their place of moral defects proper to ripe age and beyond touches them. Friendship, when true, is not susceptible of any diminishment, and Mario’s is true, for not only has it lasted for years and years, but has always asserted itself more and more and has offered the finest evidence of being a source of goodness.”

If his son had become so worthy, it was because he had made me the goal of all his work, study, and effort to improve himself. What other greater proof than this did I want? Where would I ever find another capable of loving me that way for my soul, which had become tied to his from early youth in such a pure and constant bond as that of faithful friendship?

And I, too, a poor goose who thought I did not love him, Mario, loved him with the truest love, to the point that the thought of losing him caused me such deep affliction. I was just hesitant, blinded by fear of Mother, with a hundred scruples going from the idea of offending the memory of the deceased Roberto to that of being too sick to make a man happy. I should put myself at rest about Robert. All we needed was for every woman who lost her sweetheart to condemn herself to perpetual sacrifice! With respect to my health, before giving his full assent to his son, he had asked the physician looking after me and had received the most complete assurance that my illness was due to nervous exhaustion more than anything else, the result of all I had suffered and continued to suffer. Once happy in my own home, alongside a husband who really loved me, I would be thoroughly cured.

The colonel was eloquent—and he always spoke so little! In the end he told me to get advice from other people as well whom I trusted before totally refusing.

I did so. At bottom I also felt that the former friendship had changed into a deeper affection. The sun manages to warm up even glaciers when it is continuous—and Mario had for years now been warming my numbed heart with all the most delicate industry of true love.

But before yielding I turned to three persons: a Jesuit priest who knew Mario and me very well; a woman who was friendly with the two of us, possessed of a profound, true, and perfect religiosity, and aware of all my mother’s ideas and their detrimental consequences for me; and a senator, an emeritus jurist, first President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, a husband, father, grandfather, and exemplary citizen—an upright conscience, a balanced mind, and a heart open to love like no other I had found. He was fond of me and often preferred to go out with me rather than with his grandchildren, whom he said were too modern—that is, too thoughtless. This senator also knew Mario, since he had encountered him with us.

Well then, all three—the priest, the elderly, devout lady, and the good senator-jurist—exhorted me to accept this love without fear of mother’s “excommunications.” And they all adduced arguments to whose correctness there could be no objection.

I still remained uncertain for a few days, praying and meditating a great deal on what to do, and then I decided. I accepted.

The colonel called me “daughter” and promised me he would take care of putting Mother in her place with her selfish ideas. “I have won so many battles in my long career as a soldier who has taken part in three wars. You’ll see how I win this one, too. Love each other more and more. Write to each other now as an engaged couple. The mail will come here to me or to Paola, if you prefer, since you’re next-door neighbors. In the spring Mario will be an officer, and then we’ll undertake the openfield battle and win.”

Mario was happy. I was practically shaking in my shoes, but I would be lying if I said I was not content. I thought I would soon have a house of my own where I could live and thrive again in peace, without always being oppressed by my mother’s despotism. And then I would have children...! Oh, the children! The appeal which moved me, the strongest of all, was the children. The idea of having my own babies, to whom I could give all the affection I had not had, to make them ever so happy...!

We wrote each other every week. Mario’s letters overflowed with love. Mine were cooler. The habit of treating him as a friend survived in me. But I felt that my thirsty heart was gradually warming up day by day.

Mother, convinced she had put down that fellow, had not persisted in prohibiting that he write and I answer. But this measured, official correspondence, the only one which appeared, was nothing but the accompaniment of low notes for the blaring hymn of love Mario was singing in his letters, which I shall call unofficial, private, and which now nourished my heart with life-giving solace.

I prayed a lot that everything would go well in the end, that the good Lord would touch my mother’s heart.... Yes, I prayed a lot. I prayed as nearly all mortals do, asking God to do our will by giving us what we asked for. In truth, we were not asking for dishonest things. But sometimes the good Lord judges it fitting not to give us even honest things. Happy are those who in this case manage to say, “Thy will be done!” And most happy are those who, even before asking God for something, always say, “Lord, You act. I ask for nothing. May Thy will alone reign and work!” I had not yet gone so far. I still had to soak myself in weeping, much weeping, before coming to annul my human personality in God to the point of asking only for his love and that He use me as He thought best. When I arrived at that, I would find perfect tranquillity, for, as St. Catherine of Siena says, “Whoever conforms himself to God’s will finds peace.”

The winter passed that way. I was improving a bit because I now strove diligently to improve to make Mario, who loved me so much, happy.

On January 24, 1920 Mario came on leave. He made only a few visits, reserved beyond measure, so as not to incite further maternal wrath. But he found a way, on neutral ground—in the house of the woman friend of us both—to speak to me not as a friend, but as a fiancé. A single conversation and a single kiss. An honest, dear conversation and a chaste, most chaste kiss. They were our viaticum for the battles now close at hand.

Mario went back to his studies, I might say to his final exams at that point. I—approached, unaware, a misfortune which was the source of other misfortunes. I was beginning to be really well. I still had much palpitation of the heart, but had gained weight and recovered energy. The physician was content.

On March 17 I went out with Mother to go and thank a very elderly woman friend of ours, a granny who was fond of me and had given me a present for my twenty-third birthday on March 14. On the way back, near my house, as I walked, giving my arm to Mother, who, on account of her notably altered vision, trips over every little projection and falls, I was struck in the back by a small delinquent, the son of a Communist and our milliner. With an iron bar taken from a bed, he came up from behind and, while shouting, “Down with the rich and the military!” gave me a blow with all his might.

The noise was such that Mother thought he had thrown a stone and that it had ricocheted, striking against the pavement. Instead, it was the sound of the iron on my vertebras. Note that because of my heart trouble I did not wear a corset and thus lacked even that protection. I felt such an intense pain that I knelt on the ground. My legs could not hold me up. With effort I then managed to get to my feet and drag myself home.

When I was undressed, a marked contusion was visible in the area of my kidneys. From the spine to the liver I had a red, nearly excoriated mark. They prepared compresses, which relieved the pain. I perhaps—or, rather, certainly—erred in not wanting a doctor immediately. But I did not think I had been so dangerously struck. I have never been a coward about misfortune. Like my father, I have instead been even too stoical in physical maladies.

Friday and Saturday went by. Besides the suffering from the area affected by the blow, which hurt if I touched it or rested on my back while in bed, I also had strange distress: dizziness, a glittering in front of my eyes, intense nausea, and a deep, deep weariness. I was on my feet, though, just the same from nine until the evening.

On Sunday morning I went to church and received Communion. With great effort, for it was most painful for me to kneel. Mother tried to get the foods I liked best, as I did not manage to nourish myself. Everything repelled me. At noon I ate a quarter of a roast pigeon and nothing else.

In the afternoon the woman friend who had advised me about Mario, another woman, Mother, and I were to go out to see an exposition. I tried to remain at home, and Mother, it is true, did not force me to go out. Rather, she wanted to stay at home with me. But the other two insisted: it was not far to go, and it would do me good.... So we left. I dragged myself along with difficulty and stopped at all the benches I found.

I had nothing for dinner. I retired immediately, wearier than ever, and slept.

At 3 a.m. I was awakened by such an atrocious pain that I have never again experienced its equal. And I have certainly been having so many tremendous pains for so long! I had the sensation that a kidney, or something, else, was breaking away from its ligaments and tumbling towards the groin. But what a pain, what a pain! I became a ball. Entirely bathed in cold sweat, contracted, and retching. I could not speak, move, or cry out. I was dying.

My little dog, who was sleeping on his bed in a corner of the room, became aware of it and started to howl. He saved me, for Mother rushed in, Father rushed in, and they called the woman friend and a doctor. He was the owner of the building and lived on the ground floor. With timely assistance I came out of the agony. But a very high fever set in.

I think it was produced by an abscess in the kidney which on breaking poisoned my blood, for I had attacks of septicaemia. At the hospital I had had occasion to become familiar with the phases of septic fever, which goes from a minimum temperature, amidst irrepressible shivers, to a maximum several times a day. I say, “I think so,” because none of the doctors or consultants understood anything about it. Some said one thing, and others, another. Internal and external examinations did not arrive at the hoped-for result of a diagnosis.

Three months in bed, with fevers reaching forty degrees, intense sufferings, three times nearly killed by mistaken treatments attacking my still-weak heart and bringing me close to cardiac arrest. But no one understood anything. No one suspected that the real patient was the spinal canal. They realized fourteen years later....

And Mario? Mario, advised by his father, was completely in a dither. With great difficulty, in my endless nights I wrote to tell him that I wasn’t really so ill.... Seeing my letters was what most convinced him that I was not seriously sick. I thus wrote to him and gave the letters to the colonel for him to mail or to our woman friend. At night I was alone, for I never wanted to be looked after, and could therefore write my reassuring notes.

I was so ill, however, that I, more than anyone else, and then all the others, including the doctors, really thought that I would necessarily die.

Was I sorry about it? Not at all. It must have been my great weakness, or the idea that death resolved everything, even the now approaching struggle to obtain the freedom to love, or a special grace of God, or the will of God, or whatever it was—the fact is that I was resigned. Even more than resigned, content to feel my end approaching.

I seemed to be floating on a placid river carrying me gently along. At its mouth was eternity. I cannot say I thought as I do now, with an intensity which is nearly vision: “There is God, who is waiting for me.” No, but I thought that eternal day which was approaching would give me peace, for I had already reached the point of hoping deeply in the mercy of God. When a soul deeply hopes in the Lord, it is already far advanced on the way of salvation.

The idea of God’s mercy brings with it confidence, gratitude, tranquillity, love, and humility. One acknowledges having been at fault, and this keeps one in holy humility, a virtue necessary for God to work in a soul. We are tranquil, for, if it is true that we recall our faults, we are comforted, however, by the idea that God is He who wants mercy and not sacrifice and that in his merciful love He forgives and absolves us if we cry out to Him our hope of absolution. We are grateful, for how could we fail to be with such a benign Father, who is ready to forgive us even before we think of asking for his forgiveness? Just like a good father who is grieved at the sins of a son, but in his love forgives them and looks forward to the joy of the hour in which his son will say to him, “Father, I am not worthy to be called your son!” for then the good father will be able to give him the kiss of peace which is burning to be given. We are trustful, for when we know we must present ourselves to one who is good, we are always confident, and here we know we are presenting ourselves to the Good One par excellence.

All of these things generate love because love attracts and generates love, and what love could we find greater than God’s? In short, love predisposes our souls to ever greater humility, tranquillity, gratitude, and trust. These are virtues which complete each other and set in motion our soul’s ascent as the different wheels in a clock set its hands in motion.

Even now, after twenty-three years, I remember that time as a great period of great resignation. Now my conscious love for the Cross and for the God of the Cross is much greater. But precisely because my love has now reached the summit beyond which one can rise no higher—without being burned by the blaze of charity—the summit upon which we taste Pain as the greatest joy and see the Truth in all its fullness and, as a “host with the Host and a host for the Host,” place ourselves voluntarily on the cross, crying out with Jacopone of Todi:

“O Cross, I hang myself and cling to you

That I may taste life by dying!

For you I want to agonize, Love, that I may be with you.

Love, please make me die of love!”

Precisely because of all of this I no longer need resignation. It has been absorbed by love.

I do not, therefore, resign myself to suffering and dying, but must ask God for the grace to resign myself to living and not suffering, because to me death is life, pain is joy, and I fear nothing except being unnailed from my cross. I have asked for it and have received it. On it I want to remain and on it die; and with it, as my coat of arms, I want to enter Heaven.

Maria Valtorta has been dead for years. Now Maria of the Cross exists. It is my domain, my crown of nobility, my wealth, and all the royal palaces on earth, all the domains, wealth, and crowns are nothing to me—such a nothing that I don’t even look at it—alongside this holy wood, this wealth of wounds, this blood purple, this domain composed of a scaffold, this crown made of thorns, this agony made of song and reparation, this All, such an All that I always keep my gaze fixed upon it with jealous care and clasp it tightly to myself with even more jealous concern so that my treasure will not be taken from me.

Jesus tells me, as we suffer together on the wood, “Don’t be frightened of what you must still suffer. Be faithful until death, and I shall give you the crown of life. Keep what you have so that no one will take your crown.” And, looking into his loving eyes, kissing Him on his divine lips, drinking his tears, feeding on his blood, keeping my heartbeats in time with his, heart against Heart, I reply, “Yes, Lord, my God, my Redeemer, my King and Master—yes, my Love! With your grace I will be faithful until death. Thank You for the joy of suffering.”

I was so ill that the colonel thought it proper to give his son the final joy of seeing me once more.

That fine man must have thought, “If Maria dies, my son will have had the last satisfaction of being able to say goodbye. If she survives, this is the time to wring consent out of her mother. She is so prostrate that she won’t react!” Poor thing! He deluded himself—and to such an extent!

The good man spoke to Mother in the sitting room and then came to me glorious and triumphant, sure that he had resolved everything. He caressed me with real fatherly affection and whispered, “Be happy and get well. Everything’s settled!”

Ah, indeed...! When he had left, Mother came. She did not assail me with reproaches, and that was a great deal with her character. But she broke up everything.

She told me that she was not opposed in all respects, but that after an illness like this one she wanted to see if I really got better before giving her consent. Was I convinced she was acting correctly? I replied that I was. Exhausted as I was, it sufficed for her not to torture me with one of her usual scenes. And, after all, her proposal was proper. So I replied that I was.

Then she said she would write Mario and also arrange everything with the colonel, and so on and so forth. Was that alright? Yes, fine. I was touched by such unexpected sweetness and with my limited strength thanked the Lord interiorly for it. Tears were streaming down my face. Tears of weakness, joy, and gratitude.

Mother said, “Now, though, you must tell me frankly what point you two are at, how you have managed to write each other, when you came to an agreement, and who exhorted you to continue. I reproach no one, but I want sincerity.”

It was too legitimate, don’t you think so? With the Psalmist, I, too, say, “I had faith and thus spoke, but have been humiliated beyond measure,” for, even more than in the case of my Assistant Superior, who had had harsh words, I then had to say that all were deceitful with me.

But I opened myself to Mother, and with what fruit? I don’t know exactly what she said to the colonel, who came the next day. But from what I was able to glean afterwards, she used my name to say that I wanted to be left in peace and authorized her to act in my place to communicate with Mario, judging that it was fitting to do so, now more than ever, given my condition, which might leave aftereffects. And Mario was liquidated.

The colonel wanted to speak to me, but Mother prevented him in the fiercest way. You observe that I still have the permanent—honor of maternal surveillance when someone is with me. I feel like a prison inmate in the parlatory being watched by the jailers.... But now I’m on the ground floor and sometimes manage to speak to people privately. Then I was on the third floor, in an apartment whose door was always locked and bolted. Mother never left me alone and never left the house. So I could not see the colonel any more. He, too, was liquidated.

The third one to be liquidated was the woman friend in whom Mario and I had confided. A ferocious scene, and everything ended by throwing that woman out forever.

Fourth was that woman’s friend, out of fear that she would act as an intermediary. And so on. Except for the doctor, I no longer saw anyone, for Mother advised everyone that I no longer received people. That caused a lot of gossip in the neighborhood, not the least of which was the statement that I was expecting a child....

When I got up after three months—because I wanted to get up, though I still had high fevers and pains—after only eight days Mother took me to Montecatini. We had sold the house in Viareggio in 1918, and, in addition, Viareggio was excessively frequented by common friends of Mario’s and ours.... To Montecatini, then, with the excuse of giving me a change of air while she took the waters. But the truth was that she certainly could not keep me enclosed forever in the apartment, and in July Mario, now an officer, was coming to Florence on leave....

In Montecatini she also wanted me to undergo heaven knows what sort of witchcraft to remove Mario from my heart. There are certain things Mother does believe in.... But I rebelled. I am desperately afraid of such arts....

We stayed at Montecatini fifty days. The time needed to be sure that Mario had now embarked and his father had gone to the Salsomaggiore mud baths or some other spa. I had to stay shut in at home for the remaining days until September 20, the day we left for Reggio Calabria. Farther than that...!

Mother had never accepted her relatives’ invitation to go there. But now it proved convenient, and she had us leave. Florence was not propitious for her game. Father might encounter Mario or the colonel, and my father obeyed his wife as long as she was present; later, even without wanting to, he would forget her exhortations and say what she had required him not to say. I could not remain a recluse forever. So—away with all of us. Something which gave further credit to the talk that I was to have a child.

Humanly speaking, I tell you that it would have been better. I would have had my baby, and then Mother, in the face of this reality, would have put down her despotism forever. Wouldn’t it have seemed proper to her for me to marry Mario in that case?

So we left without leaving anyone our address. Only the owner of the house—the doctor—had it because of taxes. But Mother felt this old man could be trusted.

From March 17 on, I had thus stuck my nose out the door only to leave at dawn for Montecatini and to leave for Reggio Calabria at 11 p.m. When we returned from Montecatini, it was 10 p.m. I can thus say that from March 17 on I no longer saw the streets and people of Florence.