Anne Catherine showed her all the love she could by comforting and
praying for her, and closing her eyes with her own hands--those hands
marked with the stigmas on the 13th of March of the same year. The
inheritance left to Anne Catherine by her mother was more than
sufficient for one so imbued with the spirit of mortification and
sufferings; and in her turn she left it unimpaired to her friends. It
consisted of these three sayings:- 'Lord, thy will, not mine, be done; '
'Lord, give me patience, and then strike hard;' 'Those things which are not
good to put in the pot are at least good to put beneath it.' The meaning
of this last proverb was: If things are not fit to be eaten, they may
at least be burned, in order that food may be cooked; this suffering
does not nourish my heart, but by bearing it patiently, I may at least
increase the fire of divine love, by which alone life can profit us
anything. She often repeated these proverbs, and then thought of her
mother with gratitude. Her father had died some little time before.

The writer of these pages became acquainted with her state first
through reading a copy of that letter of Stolberg, to which we have
already alluded, and afterwards through conversation with a friend who
had passed several weeks with her. In September 1818 he was invited by
Bishop Sailer to meet him at the Count de Stolberg's, in Westphalia; and
he went in the first place to Sondermuhlen to see the count, who
introduced him to Overberg, from whom he received a letter addressed to
Anne Catherine's doctor. He paid her his first visit on the 17th of
September 1818; and she allowed him to pass several hours by her side
each day, until the arrival of Sailer. From the very beginning, she
gave him her confidence to a remarkable extent, and this in the most
touching and ingenuous manner. No doubt she was conscious that by
relating without reserve the history of all the trials, joys, and
sorrows of her whole life, she was bestowing a most precious spiritual