Besides his great loss of strength and the weakening of his organs, he also suffered from serious disorders of the stomach, pains in the abdominal region, frequent vomitings and hæmorrhoids. He, moreover, experienced frequent sudden attacks of dizziness, which were so serious as to make him fall to the ground unless he speedily retired to bed, and stupefied him for hours, during which time his sight was altogether obscured. At night he often suffered from muscular contractions, and if he spoke for long or listened to others for any length of time he was seized with shakings in all his members. His ways of curing himself made his already sufficiently deplorable state of health still worse. For, instead of consulting a doctor, following his own caprices he took frequent purgatives, and bled himself so often and to such an extent that he developed chronic anæmia, which showed its presence in his pallid, emaciated countenance. He was thus often forced to keep his bed, and his bodily weakness and mental agony made life a burden.
Such for many years was Pelligrini's miserable condition. About the year 1877, on the 22nd of May, the feast of St. Rita, to whom he had great devotion, when he was entering his house after hearing Mass at the saint's altar in the church of the nuns of St. Cosmo, he fell to the ground, deprived almost entirely of sense. He was put to bed, and the doctor immediately sent for. On his arrival the doctor instantly saw the very grave state of the man, prescribed some remedies, of which, however, almost no use could be made, and ordered the last Sacraments to be administered. After being anointed, Pelligrini became so ill that he lost all strength and the use of his senses, and was hardly able to breathe; his face became corpse-like in its pallor as he lay motionless in bed. In this state he passed two days, and on the third day the doctor was of opinion that he would not live till evening.
Meanwhile a lay sister of the convent, who was sister of the sick man's wife, sent to ask how he was, and in sending an answer his wife requested the nuns to light the lamp at the saint's altar and offer prayers for her husband, who was in his last agony. The request was immediately attended to by all the community. Little over an hour passed when Pelligrini, as if waking from a profound lethargy, opened his eyes, began to move his arms, and, calling his wife, said to her, 'I am cured. Blessed Rita has made me well.' He then began to tell how the saint had appeared to him, had touched him on the forehead, shoulder, and breast, and assured him that he would be cured, and that after only a day or two of weakness he would be entirely well. He also gave the same account of the vision to others who came to see him, and the fact proved that the saint had miraculously saved him from imminent death.
The next day he left his bed completely cured, as Rita had told him he would be. He was able to eat and digest his food as well as any person of strong robust health, and all those chronic ills that afflicted him for so many years were instantaneously and entirely eradicated, and his deafness and lack of vision also were entirely gone. He could see as well as if he had never been shortsighted, and could detect the least noise, and although he was seventy years of age he had regained full vigour and strength.
Many people went to see Pelligrini, who seemed as one raised from the dead to a new life, and who was filled with a new strength. All who saw him gave glory to God and to Rita for so wonderful and surprising a fact. After ten years, when he was eighty years old, he was examined by doctors, and found perfectly healthy and full of vigour.
CONCLUSION
We have now come, oh, reader, to the end of our journey, and however short it has been, you, the faithful follower of our steps, cannot fail to look back, as travellers do after a difficult passage, and consider with us the difficulty and roughness of the way that Rita traversed in order to reach her sublime goal. We are convinced that it is not simply curiosity that has moved you to follow our plain narration of facts, but the proposal to follow on the path that Rita has travelled by, and walk in her footsteps, for the lives of the saints are written and read for no other object than with the Divine assistance to cause their virtues to be imitated. And you must have remarked that Rita's virtues have this peculiar characteristic—that persons of both sexes, of all ages and conditions, may put themselves in the way of practising them and turning them to account. The young, married persons, parents, widows, persons in religious life, the troubled and afflicted of both sexes, have each in the life of this saint a bright and shining mirror wherein to behold their stains, their weakness, their imperfection, and see also how to remove these blots under Rita's care and protection.
The incident of the wondrous bees flitting about her cradle, described in the first part, seems to us to symbolize the great multitude of Christian souls, each of which in its proper place may extract, like industrious bees, the honey and fragrance of virtue from this mystic, odoriferous, and precious garden. She is indeed the jewel of the Umbrian province, as the inspired Pontiff, Leo XIII., styled her in most happy phrase on April 8, 1900, whose beauty can never fade, about which thousands of souls may gather and be excited to thoughts of ineffable sweetness that will produce good fruits in time and in eternity.
You young people, you parents, you religious, you troubled and afflicted, never lose sight of your model! Have recourse to her in all your trials, and even when your troubles seem irreparable, do not lose courage, for she who is commonly called the Saint of the Impossible and of desperate cases will then especially guard you and bring you consolation.