Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/211

Some Crazy Saints acquaintances. After that she ascended to Heaven, where she was offered her choice, whether she would remain there eternally, or return to earth and there perform the meritorious work of liberating, by her prayers and self-tortures, the souls of those still undergoing purification in Purgatory. With the utmost heroism and self-denial she chose the latter alternative, probably not to the satisfaction of her sisters, who seem to have regarded her as a self-willed, troublesome piece of goods, and would have preferred to have her at a distance, as an intercessor in heaven, than on earth an object of much solicitude and annoyance.

She speedily gave them cause enough to regret the choice she had made, for she took it into her head to race about the country, leaping hedges, climbing walls, as she pretended, to get away from the scent of men, which specially distressed her. She did not specify whether this odour was spiritual or carnal, but left it to be inferred that moral turpitude was the most odoriferous. She was repeatedly found on the tops of trees, or on the summit of church towers, balancing herself beside the weathercocks, gasping for wholesome air.

Naturally enough her relatives held her to be deranged; and they proceeded to have her bound, as mad folk were chained and held in bondage till comparatively recently. But one night she broke away from her prison, tore off her fetters, declaring that the "odour of men" was suffocating her, and ran 199