and then I drew as near as I could to the light with one of the books,
and was delighted to find that I could see to read. I looked at the
title, and read, "The Mystical City of Sister Mary of Jesus, of Agrada."
I had never heard of it. The other book was by a Jesuit named Caravita.
This fellow, a hypocrite like the rest of them, had invented a new cult
of the "Adoration of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ." This,
according to the author, was the part of our Divine Redeemer, which above
all others should be adored a curious idea of a besotted ignoramus, with
which I got disgusted at the first page, for to my thinking the heart is
no more worthy a part than the lungs, stomach; or any other of the
inwards. The "Mystical City" rather interested me.

I read in it the wild conceptions of a Spanish nun, devout to
superstition, melancholy, shut in by convent walls, and swayed by the
ignorance and bigotry of her confessors. All these grotesque, monstrous,
and fantastic visions of hers were dignified with the name of
revelations. The lover and bosom-friend of the Holy Virgin, she had
received instructions from God Himself to write the life of His divine
mother; the necessary information was furnished her by the Holy Ghost.

This life of Mary began, not with the day of her birth, but with her
immaculate conception in the womb of Anne, her mother. This Sister Mary
of Agrada was the head of a Franciscan convent founded by herself in her
own house. After telling in detail all the deeds of her divine heroine
whilst in her mother's womb, she informs us that at the age of three she
swept and cleansed the house with the assistance of nine hundred
servants, all of whom were angels whom God had placed at her disposal,
under the command of Michael, who came and went between God and herself
to conduct their mutual correspondence.