'Your tears are my best comfort.'
The executioner stood with his sword drawn, but she bade him with a movement stand on one side, for she would speak a few words with the doomed man.
'Before you came,' she said, 'I laid my head down on the block to try if I could bear it; and then I felt that I was still afraid of death, that I do not love Jesus enough to be willing to die in this hour; and I do not wish you to die either, and my prayers have no power.'
When he heard this he thought: 'Had I lived I should have won her'; and he was glad he should die before he had succeeded in drawing the radiant heavenly bride down to earth. But when he had laid his head in her hands, a great consolation came to them both.
'Nicola Tungo,' she said, 'I see heaven open. The angels descend to receive your soul.'
A wondering smile passed over his face. Could what he had done for her sake make him worthy of heaven? He lifted his eyes to see what she saw; the same moment the sword fell.
But Caterina saw the angels descend lower and lower, saw them lift his soul, saw them carry it to heaven.
All at once it seemed so natural that Caterina Benincasa has lived all these five hundred years. How could one forget that gentle little maiden, that great loving heart? Again and again they must sing in her praise, as they are now singing in the small chapels:
'Pia Mater et humilis,
Naturæ memor fragilis,
In hujus vitæ fluctibus
Nos rege tuis precibus.
Quem vidi, quem amavi,
In quem credidi, quem dilexi,
Ora pro nobis.
Ut digni efficiamur promessionibus Christi!
Santa Caterina, ora pro nobis!'[B]