to St. Peter's on an intensely hot day in July, in the year 1399.
Absorbed in prayer, they had hardly noticed the lapse of time, and
twelve o'clock had struck when they set out on their way home. In order
to avoid observation, and the marks of veneration which the people
lavished upon them as soon as they set eyes on the two saints (as they
always called them), they chose the most unfrequented streets they could
find. The heat grew intolerable. The sultry air seemed on fire, and not
a breath stirred it. Exhausted with fatigue, their mouths parched with
thirst, they reached the church of St. Leonardo; and holding each
other's hands, approached the brink of the river, in order to cool their
burning lips and throbbing heads with a little water. As they bent over
the stream for that purpose, a violent blow from an invisible arm was
aimed at Francesca, and hurled her into the Tiber. Vannozza fell with
her; and, clasped in each other's arms, they were rapidly carried away
by the current, and saw no means of escape. "They were lovely in their
lives, and in their deaths they were not divided," might well have been
said of them, had the watery grave, which seemed inevitable, swallowed
up on that day the two brides of the Ponziani. But it was not the will
of God that they should perish. Human aid was not at hand; the stream
was rapid, the current deep, and the eddies curled around them; but they
called upon God with one voice, and in an instant the waters, as if
instinct with life, and obedient to a heavenly command, bore them gently
to the shore, and deposited them unhurt on the green margin of the
river.

About this time also a supernatural favour of the most extraordinary
nature was vouchsafed to Francesca. Her guardian angel, who was one day
to accompany her, not by an invisible presence only, as in the case of
all Christians, but, by a rare privilege of grace, in a visible form,
ever manifest to her spiritual sight, now began to reveal himself to her