Not many days after our Lord called St. Peter to Him again, and told him to open the gate a little, very little way, and to make no preparations for rejoicing, for He had promised admission to a soul who, though of his family, yet had only escaped being excluded by a hair’s breadth.
St. Peter went away perplexed, for he knew there was no one of his family who could be coming to heaven just at that time except the younger of the two cousins, and how could the Lord’s words apply to her?
He durst do no more than open the gate a very little way, but stationed himself opposite that small cleft to obtain the earliest information as to who the new comer really was.
Presently a solitary angel came soaring—the only escort of a trembling soul—and, as he approached, without chorus or melody, he begged admission for one whom, by the name, St. Peter discerned was actually the Sorellotta[76] he had deemed so meritorious! With great difficulty, and by the help of the angel who conducted her, and of St. Peter himself, she succeeded in passing the sacred portal; and after she had been led to the footstool of the Heavenly Throne in silence, He who sat on it pointed to a very little, low, distant seat, as the one assigned to her.
When St. Peter afterwards came to discourse with the Lord about His dealings with the two souls, he learnt that she who performed her duty with great exactness and perfection in the world was more pleasing in His sight than she who, while straining after the fulfilment of a higher rule, yet fell short of correspondence with so great a grace.
LUXEHALE’S WIVES.
The Devil goes wandering over the earth in many disguises, and that not only to hunt souls; sometimes it is to choose for himself a wife, but when he goes on these expeditions he calls himself “Luxehale.”
There was once a very beautiful princess, very proud of her beauty, who had vowed she would never marry any but the handsomest prince. Numbers of princes, who heard the fame of her beauty, came to ask her hand, but directly she saw them she declared they were not handsome enough for her, and drove them out of the city. Her parents were in despair, for there was scarcely any young prince left in the world whom she had not thus rejected.
One day the trumpeters sounded the call by which they were wont to announce the arrival of a visitor.