whom she could hardly have honoured, and whose claims she saw defended by
extremely doubtful means--is a figure as pathetic as heroic. Few sorrows
are keener than to work with all one's energies to attain a visible end
for the sake of a spiritual result, and, attaining that end, to find the
result as far as ever. This sorrow was Catherine's. The external successes
which she won--considerable enough to secure her a place in history--
availed nothing to forward the greater aim for which she worked. Gregory
XI., under her magnetic inspiration, gathered strength, indeed, to make a
personal sacrifice and to return to Rome, but he was of no calibre to
attempt radical reform, and his residence in Italy did nothing to right
the crying abuses that were breaking Christian hearts. His successor, on
the other hand, did really initiate the reform of the clergy, but so
drastic and unwise were his methods that the result was terrible and
disconcerting--the development of a situation of which only the Catholic
idealist could discern the full irony; no less than Schism, the rending of
the Seamless Robe of Christ.

With failing hopes and increasing experience of the complexity of human
struggle, Catherine clung to her aim until the end. There was no touch of
pusillanimity in her heroic spirit. As with deep respect we follow the
Letters of the last two years, and note their unflagging alertness and
vigour, their steady tone of devotion and self-control, we realise that to
tragedy her spirit was dedicate. Her energy of mind was constantly on the
increase. Still, it is true, she wrote to disciples near and far long,
tender letters of spiritual counsel--analyses of the religious life
tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political
correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a
vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart.
Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when she
went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions only, the