Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/210

198 198 ST. ROSE •be thed ietn when sLe looked on the TMt monntains of her country and thought of the thouMUids of nnconTerted inhabi- tants whose sonli mnat be lost. She was mtjtst anziona to sofTer martyrdom for Christ, her spiritual Husband, and once she thought she was about to haTe this ambition satisfied when the Dutch fleet approached Lima, in 1015. She placed her8C;lf in front of the altar, hoping to be put to death in defence of the holy sacrament, by these heretic Protestants who, howerer, much to her disappoint- ment, did not cTen land at Lima. When Bose was about thirty, her family, who had never been rich, were reduced to poTerty and wished that she would marry, that they might see her prorided for. They were rery angry at her refusal. She said she would go out as a servant, and that would do as well. Their neighbours Don Gonzalez de la Msssa and his wife, begged her parents to let her live with them ; they esteemed it a privilege to have her in their house. She spent the last three years of her life with them. She worked with great as- siduity for them, both with the spade and with her needle. She had a crown mode of metal with three rows of sharp teeth, and with two strings, by pulling which she could make the teeth run further into her head and cause acute pain aud effusion of blood ; she found it an effectual cure for the wicked thoughts with which the devil tried to tempt her, sometimes in the form of a man and sometimes of a horrible monster. This crown was afterwards exchanged for a plate of silver about two inches broad, concealed in her hair and furnished with sharp teeth. Her confessor advised her to leave it off, but she persuaded him that her wickedness required this check. She suffered severe pain in her hands and feet from gout, and was subject to asthma and inflam- mation of the throat. For some years she was paralysed, and from poverty of blood Blie had other ailments; but the suffering of all these bodily complaints and their treatment was not to compare with another affliction she had to endure. She said it was a spiritual blindness and an indescribable torment that oppressed her for one hour every day for fifteen years. She could give no more intel-^ ligible account <^ it than thmft it resem- bled the pains of helL She used to have visions of the Saviour, and in one of these, while she was suffering from the inflamed throat to which she was sobject, He came and played a game with her. She won, and asked, as the meed of victory, to be delivered from this daily torment. She was cured. Soon after- wards they played again. She lost the game and had to forfeit her immnnity, and the same suffering returned upon her. Bose had a pet chicken which grow to be a splendid cock as to plumage, but it was a large, useless creature, and would not crow, and at last her mother con- demned it to be killed and roasted. Rose was very sorry and said to her pet, ^Crow, and save your life." Lnmediately, he crowed loudly and seemed to awake to a sense of his importance. Although so willing to endure pain herself^ she was sympathetic and com- passionate to other suffering women, and used to collect them from aU ranke. whether Spaniards, Indians, or negressep, free or slaves, who were tormented with loathsome diseases. She nursed them with the greatest kindness in her mother's house, and when she had no patients there she would go to the hospital and bestow her tender care on those whose cases might cause the usual attendants to turn away in disgust. She had a room built there for her as small as the one she had at home. Being espoused to Christ in a vision in presence of the Virgin Mary and angels, she had a ring made in memory of the vision and had it placed in the pix where the sacrament was kept ; this was on Maundy Thurs- day, and on Easter Sunday the ring re- turned to her finger without having been taken out of the tabernacle by mortal hands. She used to perform some of her devotions in an arbour or grotto in her master's garden. No one else could have spent hours there, on account of the mosquitoes ; but Rose obtained complete immunity from their bites, and procured the same privilege for her mother, hc^