26. Of her happy death and suffer ings at the last

Therefore, when the Tuesday within the octave of Easter dawned, the virgin, mild and patient, wishing to recollect herself more fully, asked Master John her confessor, who came to her early, that neither he nor any of those who loved her should enter to visit her that day except the child Baldwine, who carefully waited on her unto death. Which also was done, that according to the desire of her heart she might die in solitude and forsaken of men. For the aforesaid her confessor related to a certain religious that, four or five years before her death, he had heard her asking the Lord, that she might die with none save Himself as witness and not without her own knowledge. And she had likewise begged that He would multiply her pains and infirmities, lessen I433> answering the same question, she had joyously exclaimed : " Behold, all the roses are opened ; it will not now be long- before I die." The Saint is sometimes represented holding a bouquet of roses.

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM her days, hasten the hour of death, and render the agony brief ; which also came to pass as will shortly appear. All the members of her household then having been dismissed, and in the absence of Master John, who was then saying the Office of the dead for a certain departed mother of the Sisters, the virgin ap proaching her end in the presence of only the aforesaid child, who held a bowl for her and carried out her vomit, she was so distressed in throwing up this vomit that to the child her attendant pitying her she said: "My most dear child, would that my Master John knew how much I am afflicted now." Nor is it strange if she confessed herself afflicted in these sufferings, when pain coming upon pain increased in her. For from the seventh hour of the same day in the morning, until nearly the fourth hour after midday before she died, she threw up about twenty times a very green matter, which she thought came from the bitterness of the gall. And when the aforesaid child, seeing and hearing these things, asked her whether she wished him to call Master John; at length with the coming of the last vomit, she suffered such difficulty in it that ST. LYDWINE or SCHIEDAM not being able to cast out the matter gathered in her throat, she commenced to choke with it. Seeing which the innocent child, thinking that she would die at once, weeping ran out and told this to Master John and the others of the household assembled there. And when likewise weeping they hastened thither, they found her in her agony. Then Master John, taking her hand, asked her for a sign whether she lived or whether she wished to be anointed. And when she made no reply, lighting a candle and setting it in a lantern, the priest placed the light behind her head, for he thought that she was still living, and therefore could not bear the light. He found that she was dead, and that she had escaped the wretchedness of the present life. But from the time when she last spoke until her expiry, scarcely the space of three Misereres intervened ; and thus her end was seen to be short, as she had long before asked of the Lord. But the most patient virgin, pleasing to God and the angels, died on the twelfth of the Kalends of May, on the feast of SS. Tiburtius and Valerianus;1 in the year of the Lord's incarnation 1433, on the Tuesday within 1 April I4th.

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM the Octave of Easter about the fourth hour after vespers, in the fifty-third year of her age, which according to the cycle of festivals had been completed on the Palm Sunday before her death. And very befittingly, God arranging the order of seasons, she passed out of this world in Easter week ; that she who had long been a sharer of the sufferings of Christ in meditation and compassion, might also with Him on the holy paschal feast of His most joyous resurrection pass to the bliss of eternal life. And the chosen virgin of Christ stricken by divers scourges of afflictions passed away, after accomplishing from the beginning of her maladies thirty-eight years, in the commencement of the thirty-ninth, being worthy to be associated with the choirs of angels, who from the years of child hood strove to imitate the life of the angels in chastity.