herself to be examined and to have judgment passed upon her by a vast
number of curious persons. Suffering, as she was, the most excruciating
pains, she was not even allowed to be her own mistress, but was
regarded as something which everyone fancied he had a right to look at
and to pass judgment upon,--often with no good results to anyone, but
greatly to the prejudice of her soul and body, because she was thus
deprived of so much rest and recollection of spirit. There seemed to be
no bounds to what was expected of her, and one fat man, who had some
difficulty in ascending her narrow winding staircase, was heard to
complain that a person like Anne Catherine, who ought to be exposed on
the public road, where everyone could see her, should remained in a
lodging so difficult to reach. In former ages, persons in her state
underwent in private the examination of the spiritual authorities, and
carried out their painful vocation beneath the protecting shadow of
hallowed walls; but our suffering heroine had been cast forth from the
cloister into the world at a time when pride, coldness of heart, and
incredulity were all the vogue; marked with the stigmas of the Passion
of Christ, she was forced to wear her bloody robe in public, under the
eyes of men who scarce believed in the Wounds of Christ, far less in
those which were but their images.

Thus this holy woman, who in her youth had been in the habit of
praying for long hours before pictures of all the stages of Christ's
painful Passion, or before wayside crosses, was herself made like unto
a cross on the public road, insulted by one passer by, bathed in warm
tears of repentance by a second, regarded as a mere physical curiosity
by a third, and venerated by a fourth, whose innocent hands would bring
flowers to lay at her feet.

In 1817 her aged mother came from the country to die by her side.