was unable to walk, and the pain in her hands prevented her from
working as usual in the garden. On the 3rd December 1811, the convent
was suppressed, and the church closed. (Under the Government of Jerome
Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.) The nuns dispersed in all directions,
but Anne Catherine remained, poor and ill. A kindhearted servant
belonging to the monastery attended upon her out of charity, and an
aged emigrant priest, who said Mass in the convent, remained also with
her. These three individuals, being the poorest of the Community, did
not leave the convent until the spring of 1812. She was still very
unwell, and could not be moved without great difficulty. The priest
lodged with a poor widow who lived in the neighbourhood, and Anne
Catherine had in the same house a wretched little room on the
ground-floor, which looked on the street. There she lived, in poverty
and sickness, until the autumn of 1813. Her ecstasies in prayer, and
her spiritual intercourse with the invisible world, became more and
more frequent. She was about to be called to a state with which she was
herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did
nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God. Our Lord
was pleased about this time to imprint upon her virginal body the
stigmas of his cross and of his crucifixion, which were to the Jews a
stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles folly, and to many persons who
call themselves Christians, both the one and the other. From her very
earliest childhood she had besought our Lord to impress the marks of
his cross deeply upon her heart, that so she might never forget his
infinite love for men; but she had never thought of receiving any
outward marks. Rejected by the world, she prayed more fervently than
ever for this end. On the 28th of August, the feast of St. Augustine,
the patron of her order, as she was making this prayer in bed, ravished
in ecstasy and her arms stretched forth, she beheld a young man
approach her surrounded with light. It was under this form that her