The priest lodged with a poor widow who lived in the neighbourhood, and Anne Catherine had in the same house a wretched little room on the ground-floor, which looked on the street.

There she lived, in poverty and sickness, until the autumn of 1813.

Her ecstasies in prayer, and her spiritual intercourse with the invisible world, became more and more frequent.

She was about to be called to a state with which she was herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God.

Our Lord was pleased about this time to imprint upon her virginal body the stigmas of his cross and of his crucifixion, which were to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles folly, and to many persons who call themselves Christians, both the one and the other.