4. Of the beginning of her weak ness, and the occasion of her long illness

When therefore she was in her fifteenth year, lest she might begin to wander after the flocks of her worldly com panions,1 the physician of souls, Christ, lovingly visited her for the salvation of her soul and fettered her with a certain bodily weakness, from which afterwards she partially recovered. It happened then at the end of the fifteenth year of her age about the feast of the Purifica tion of the blessed Virgin Mary,2 that she was invited by her girl companions to go with them upon the ice shod with skates ; when one of her comrades going along over the ice at a rapid pace, and unable to stop herself, caught Lydia by the hand ; and before long she suddenly fell upon some fragments of ice, and, seriously hurt, broke a small rib in her right side. From which fracture many pains befell her, and increased. For first a hard abscess grew round the place of the broken rib; and although her 1 A reference to Canticles i 6. 2 Feb. 2nd.

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM parents expended much to heal it, nevertheless they were not able to ob tain the wished for cure. And when no one could heal her, and she had been frequently moved from place to place, from bed to bed, as the violence of her disease demanded; at length in the sixteenth year of her age, on the vigil of St. John Baptist,1 when her father had come to her to console her, she, starting up from the place where she lay, in her weakness fell doubled up upon the knees of her father. And in this brusque movement the abscess was broken, and the matter flowed in abundance through her mouth with vomiting; and thereupon she became so feeble that she was thought to be almost dead. From that time forward she now began to be afflicted with con stant infirmities, in which, before she had the taste of things spiritual, she accepted human and bodily remedies, as need required ; although they pro fited but little, and did not relieve her pain. And so for the first three years of her sickness at Eastertide she was taken or carried to the church for Holy Communion ; and as she could not stand or walk upon her feet she used a stick ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM or a crutch, creeping along inside or out of doors. Often also she drank copiously of the cold water of the ditch, although it was muddy ; or, coming to the fire, she would take it hot or warm from the saucepans, which nevertheless she im mediately threw up from her weakened stomach. For want then of human counsel, and with an increase of care less management, her body wasted away; but the soul in its vessel of clay was preserved by a hidden grace for great merit hereafter, that in her might be accomplished what is read of blessed Job. " Behold, Satan, he is in thy hand : but yet save his life '*