"Woman, fear not, thou wilt bring forth, without danger, a light which
will illuminate a vast space." This was the reason she gave the name
of Clare to the daughter to whom she gave birth, in the hopes of seeing
the accomplishment of what it might signify.

Indeed, from her earliest years, her virtue shone as an aurora, the
prognostication of a fine day. She received with docility the
instructions of her mother, and her whole conduct was the fruit thereof;
the exercise of prayer became familiar to her; she every day recited
the Lord's Prayer a number of times, which she marked with small stones,
in order to be exact in the daily number she had assigned for herself.
In that she resembled the solitary of the Desert of Seethe, who kept
an account of the number of his prayers, offering them to God three
hundred times each day. Naturally tender and compassionate to the poor,
she aided them voluntarily, and the opulence of her family enabled her
to assist them abundantly. But, in order to render her charities more
agreeable to God, she sent to the poor, by confidential persons, the
nicest eatables which were served to herself. The love of God, with
which these holy practices inflamed her heart, inspired her with a
hatred of her own body, and showed her the vanity of all the things
of this world. Under her own costly dresses, which her situation in
society obliged her to wear, she constantly had a hair-shirt; and she
cleverly refused a proposal of marriage which her parents wished her
to accept, recommending to God her virginity, which she intended to
preserve in entire purity. Although she was at that time confined in
the bosom of her family, and solely intent on sanctifying herself in
secret before the eyes of God, her virtue became the subject of
admiration, without her being conscious of it, and drew down upon her
the esteem and praise of the whole town.