Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

So strengthened was Salicario in his championship of the girl that he bent all his efforts to proving her innocence; moreover, the Abbess, who was now recovering from her indisposition, was equally inclined to a generous view of the case. Her desire was to get rid of Eustochia from the convent, in the kindest manner possible, in order to spare it all further disorder and scandalous notoriety by reason of having the afflicted novice any longer beneath its roof. With this object, Donna Giustina persuaded her brother, Don Francesco Lazzara, to see Eustochia and to try to induce her to withdraw from the convent of San Prosdocimo; with which request Don Francesco, a man of rare integrity and uprightness, complied and sought out the possessed in her narrow cell.

Here, alone with Eustochia, he put the case ably and kindly to her, urging her to leave the convent—in which, as it appeared to him, it was not the will of Heaven that she should remain—and to return to the world outside it, where he promised he would undertake to provide for her and even to find her a good husband. Since she was not yet tied to the life of a religious by any vows, he concluded, she need have no hesitation in adopting a course which was not only permitted by the Church, but also, indeed, absolutely necessary.

Eustochia heard him out in silence. Then, having thanked him for his kindness to her, she replied:

“Do not believe that I am as unhappy as the world seems to think”—for in his argument Don Francesco had spoken of what must be her utter misery, both from the demon that had her frame in thrall and from the hostility towards her of the nuns themselves, for whom her presence was an affliction. “My sufferings are for me only the caresses of my Celestial Spouse, who permits the wicked spirit to chastise me, and I am so happy in them that I would not exchange them against all the delights of the world. Let them continue, or even increase, they do not disturb me. In calling me to the life of the cloister, God did not call me to an existence of tranquillity and ease. If I find my path strewn with thorns, it is a sign that that is the path by which He wishes to lead me to Him—for it is the same path that was trodden by Jesus Christ. My sisters here in the convent look upon me, I know, as an outcast; it hurts me, and I have no one but myself to blame for it, for I am full of faults. Still, I hope to correct myself in time of my faults, and so to merit a better opinion from my sisters. I know, too, that I am a burden on the convent, and that the demon who has possession of me is an object of horror to the whole community; but as I am becoming accustomed to his persecution of me, so will they get over their terror of him. For the rest, as my deliverance from him is not in my own hands, I can only entreat them to have compassion upon me.”

On hearing these words, Don Francesco was amazed by the courage and patience of Eustochia; completely won over by them to the side of the gentle speaker, he could find no words sufficient to praise her constancy or to express his enthusiastic approval of her resolution to cleave to her vocation. All he suggested was that she should change her convent for another; but this she declined to do.

This interview with Don Francesco resulted, ultimately, in some little amelioration of Eustochia’s existence; the Abbess now taking her part against the rest of the community, she was permitted to leave the cell (in which she had been confined some three months by order of the higher authorities) for the infirmary, where she was to help in tending the sick. She was forbidden, however, to appear either in choir or in church during the hours of service, or to show herself in the parlour, or to have any relations of any kind with the outside world—and, most especially, she was not to speak to any one, whosoever, of her sufferings from the demon. And when she met any of the sisters, they showed their detestation of Eustochia by lowering their eyes or turning their backs on her; nobody who could help it came near her, nobody spoke to her; for to one and all—the chaplain and the Abbess only excepted—she was an object of horror and of aversion.

Through all these trials nothing had been more painful to Eustochia than the knowledge that the sisters sometimes believed her to be only feigning possession in order to obtain their sympathy and commiseration. But, at this point, it seemed as though the evil spirit himself was determined to change their mind in respect to the reality of his presence among them by redoubling the fury of his onslaught upon Eustochia; thenceforth invisible hands daily inflicted upon her the most barbarous violence, maltreating her in a thousand ways, so as often to bring her within a short distance of expiring from the effects of it. At times it was as if he had scourged her with whips of metal; while, at others, it seemed as though her body had been slashed with knives. At times, again, Eustochia was dragged along the ground to the door of the convent as if her foe were bent upon casting her out from it into the street; and then she would be lifted up by an unseen power into the air, and let to fall, senseless and head downward, upon the stone floor with a crash—so that all wondered how it was that she escaped without a fractured skull. Again and again a deep puncture was made by the same unseen agency in the side of her neck, causing an extensive flow of blood; and once she was carried up on to the tiles of the convent roof by the invisible power and held suspended in the abyss over the street below, in the sight of the whole community, that cried aloud upon Heaven to protect her. And not until the chaplain came, to command the evil spirit that it should bring Eustochia down immediately without hurting her, was she restored in safety to her sisters, who by this time were completely cured of their former disbelief.

But of all these manifestations of unearthly violence towards Eustochia, perhaps the most remarkable was one that occurred in the presence of her confessor, that same Father Salicario, who afterwards bore testimony of it. One day, as he was conversing with her, a large kitchen knife, lying on a table nearby, rose up suddenly of itself and struck Eustochia upon her breast, transfixing her habit over which the blood ran out in streams, the while a voice cried:

“If you do not give yourself to me, I will enlarge the wound until your heart is visible!”

“So much the better,” gasped Eustochia, as she staggered to the table and leaned upon it for support. “For, if you do, you will first have to write the holy name of Jesus upon my breast....”