Chapter XXIV: runs: “How she comported herself towards her husband, who

was very contrary to her temperament; and concerning her indefatigable patience in bearing with him, and even with the beatings which he gave her”;[368]--where the end marked off by me is no doubt the Observant’s own addition,--possibly, as we shall see, on the authority of Argentina del Sale.--Or these additions are introduced to minimize or ward off scandal. So when, after expanding the parallel between the conversions of St. Paul and Catherine, he adds: ‘“For He spoke, and they were (re-)made’ (Ps. xxxii, 9). But we must not curiously seek for the reason of this action”; and then proves his point by three further Biblical texts. So too when, after giving an abbreviated account of the contrast between Thommasina’s and Catherine’s rate of spiritual advancement, he again adds some Bible text and some moralizing of his own. And so again where, after reproducing the passage as to her being linked to God with a thread of gold, he expatiates, once more in Scriptural words, on the presence of filial fear and the absence of all servile fear within her. And so where, after following his Prototype (as still preserved in the Printed _Life_), and declaring his belief that it is reasonable and licit to believe her soul to have entered Heaven immediately after death, he continues: “Hence he who does believe this, does not lose in merit” (_non demerita_; an obvious litotes for “merits”), “and he who believes it not, does not offend.” In all these cases the Biblical texts appear in the Vulgate Latin.[369]

There can be no doubt that it is this slight recasting of the language, and this insertion of trite and timid moralizing of his own, which, together with the careful engrossing of his copy throughout, and its occasional pretty decoration and illumination, permitted the Observant to talk (although, even thus, in a manner most misleading for our present habits of language) of having “written this Book.”

(iii) _Two genuine dates and accounts._

Yet, even amongst the passages which appear in his MS. as additional to the later texts, are two evidently genuine and suggestive dates and accounts. There is a description of Catherine’s great attack of “fire at her heart,” more full and primitive, and more definitely dated than any one of its many variants and echoes to be found in the Printed _Life_: the slip in the date (he writes November 11, 1506, when his own age-indications, and the position of the anecdote, clearly require 1509) will have had something to do with the strangely uncertain position of this episode in the Printed _Life_.[370]--And further back, in opening out the beautiful story of Marco and Argentina, he writes: “There being in the quarter of the Quay (_contrada del Molo_) one Marco del Sale, suffering from a cancer in the nose, who, fourteen months before his infirmity, had taken to wife a virtuous young woman named Argentina, spiritual daughter of Madonna Catherinetta, as is said above.”[371] This very precise distance of time, between that humble wedding and the poor navvy’s illness, will have been derived by the Observant from Argentina herself, probably still living at the time of his writing, even now hardly sixty years old.--Hence his long-winded addition, as to the mediation of the “spiritual daughter” (certainly Argentina), in the matter of our knowledge of Catherine’s prayer for the dying Giuliano,[372] may also have been derived from that gossipy little woman.

(iv) _Divisions and transpositions._

As to the divisions and transpositions, the chief of these consist in the first six chapters of the Printed _Vita_ appearing here broken up into (the first) ten chapters; in the MS. Chapters XI to XVI being gradually caught up by the Printed series,--indeed the MS. Chapter XVI corresponds to Chapters XVI to XVIII of the published book; in the Chapters XVII to XIX of the MS. corresponding to Chapters XX and XXI of the Print; and Chapters XX, XXI, and XXII of the MS., corresponding respectively to Chapters XXIV, XXV, and XXVII of the Print. Then for three Chapters follows considerable variation: the MS. Chapters XXIII, XXIV, and XXV hold the positions respectively of the Printed Chapters XXXVII, XLV and XLVI there. And then again there is likeness for three Chapters--MS. Chapters XXVI to XXVIII corresponding to Printed Chapters XXVIII and XXIX there. And once more three MS. Chapters (XXIX to XXXI), quite different in sequence to anything there, are followed by two Chapters (XXXII and XXXIII) corresponding to the Printed Chapters XXIX and XXX. Four more MS. Chapters (XXXIV to XXXVII), without any match, as to order, in the Printed book, are followed by two Chapters (XXXVIII and XXXIX), corresponding, respectively, to the beginning and end of Chapter XXXI there; and by Chapter XL, identical with the opening of Chapter XL and with Chapter XLI there. And, above all,