"Like vampyres they steal from their tombs,
To suck out life's pith with their lying,"
as a poet sings, who has well marked the working of saints and saint-worship in that unhappy land.
Truth is immortal! as is often said. Yes! but men do not perhaps so often consider, that, as far as human ken may extend, falsehood unhappily is in its consequences equally immortal.
CHAPTER III.
THE FACTS OF THE CASE.
Little reliable information as to the real unmiraculous events of Catherine Benincasa's life is to be obtained, as has been seen, from the pages of her professed biographer. But there is another pietistic work, forming part of the same "Ecclesiastical Library," in which Father Raymond's book has been recently reprinted, that offers somewhat better gleanings to the inquirer into the facts of the case. This is a reprint in four volumes (Milan, 1843–4) of the Saint's Letters, with the annotations of the Jesuit, Father Frederick Burlamacchi. These letters had been already several times published, when the learned Lucchese Jesuit undertook to edit them in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The former editions were imperfect, incorrect, and uncommented. But the Jesuit, jesuitlike, has done his work well; and his notes, appended to the end of each letter, contain abundant information respecting the persons to whom they are addressed, the events and people alluded to in them, and, wherever attainable, the dates at which they were written. To the labours therefore of Father Burlamacchi is due most of the information thrown together in the following concise account of Catherine's career; in which it is intended, leaving aside saintship and miracles for a moment, to give the reader a statement of those facts only which a sceptical inquirer may admit to be historical.
ACCEPTANCE BY THE "MANTELLATE."