Part 15

The oratory was ready for the day of the first prayer. The ceremony began after the Vespers. A sister mounted to the organ. Presently from the keys the cry of the Passion penetrated everywhere, all foreheads bowed, the censers gave out the fumes of jasmine and the flames of the tapers palpitated among crowns of flowers. Then arose the canticles, the litanies full of symbolic appellations and supplicating tenderness. As the voices mounted with increasing strength, Anna, impelled by the immense force of her fervour, screamed. Struck with wonder, she fell supine, agitating her arms and trying to arise. The litanies stopped. The sisters, several almost terrified, had remained an instant immobile while others gave assistance to the sick woman. The miracle seemed to them most unexpected, brilliant and supreme.

Then, little by little, stupor, uncertain murmurs and vacillation were succeeded by a rejoicing without limit, a chorus of clamorous exaltations and a mingled drowsiness as of inebriety. Anna, on her knees, still absorbed in the rapture of the miracle, was not conscious of what was happening around her. But when the canticles with greater vehemence were begun again, she sang too. Her notes from the descending waves of the chorus, at intervals emerged, since the devotees diminished the force of their voices in order to hear that one which by divine grace had been restored. And the Virgin became from time to time the censer of gold from which they exhaled sweet balsam, she was the lamp that by day and night lighted the sanctuary, the urn that enclosed the manna from heaven, the flame that burned without consuming, the stem of Jesse that bore the most beautiful of all flowers.

Afterwards the fame of the miracle spread from the monastery throughout the entire country of Ortona and from the country to all adjoining lands, growing as it travelled. And the monastery rose to great respect. Donna Blandina Onofrii, the magnificent, presented to the Madonna of the Oratorio a vest of brocaded silver and a rare necklace of turquoise came from the island of Smyrna. The other Ortosian ladies gave other minor gifts. The Archbishop of Orsagna made with pomp a congratulatory visit, in which he exchanged words of eloquence with Anna, who “from the purity of her life had been rendered worthy of celestial gifts.”

In August of the year 1876 new prodigies arrived. The infirm woman, when she approached vespers, fell in a state of cataleptic ecstasy; from which she arose later almost with violence. On her feet, while preserving always the same position, she began to talk, at first slowly and then gradually accelerating, as if beneath the urgency of a mystic inspiration. Her eloquence was but a tumultuous medley of words, of phrases, of entire selections learned before, which now in her unconsciousness reproduced themselves, growing fragmentary or combining without sequence.

She repeated native dialectic expressions mingled with courtly forms, and with the hyperboles of Biblical language as well as extraordinary conjunctions of syllables and scarcely audible harmonies of songs. But the profound trembling of her voice, the sudden changes of inflection, the alternate ascending and descending of the tone, the spirituality of the ecstatic figure, the mystery of the hour, all helped to make a profound impression upon the onlookers.

These effects repeated themselves daily, with a periodic regularity. At vespers in the oratorio they lit the lamps; the nuns made a kneeling circle, and the sacred representation began. As the infirm woman entered into the cataleptic ecstasies, vague preludes on the organ lifted the souls of the worshippers to a higher sphere. The light of the lamps was diffused on high, giving forth an uncertain flicker, and a fading sweetness to the appearance of things. At a certain point the organ was silent. The respiration of the infirm woman became deeper, her arms were stretched so that in the emaciated wrists the tendons vibrated like the strings of an instrument. Then suddenly, the sick woman bounded to her feet, crossed her arms on her breast, while resting in the position of the Caryatides of a Baptistery. Her voice resounded in the silence, now sweetly, now lugubriously, now placid, almost always incomprehensible.

At the beginning of the year 1877 these paroxysms diminished in frequency, they occurred two or three times a week and then totally disappeared, leaving the body of the woman in a miserable state of weakness. Then several years passed, in which the poor idiot lived in atrocious suffering, with her limbs rendered inert from muscular spasms. She was no longer able to keep herself clean, she ate only soft bread and a few herbs and wore around her neck and on her breast a large quantity of little crosses, relics and other images. She spoke stutteringly through lack of teeth and her hair fell out, her eyes were already glazed like those of an old beast of burden about to die.

One time, in May, while she was suffering, deposited under the portal, and the sisters were gathering the roses for Maria, there passed before her the turtle which still dragged its pacific and innocent life through the cloisteral garden. The old woman saw it move and little by little recede. It awakened no recollection in her mind. The turtle lost itself among the bunches of thyme.

But the sisters regarded her imbecility and the infirmity of the woman as one of those supreme proofs of martyrdom to which the Lord calls the elect in order to sanctify and glorify them later in Paradise and they surrounded her with veneration and care.

In the summer of the year 1881, there appeared signs of approaching death. Consumed and maimed, that miserable body no longer resembled a human being. Slow deformations had corrupted the joints of the arms; tumours, large as apples, protruded from her sides, on her shoulder and on the back of her head.

The morning of the 10th day of September, about the eighth hour, a trembling of the earth shook Ortona to its foundations. Many buildings fell, the roofs and walls of others were injured, and still others were bent and twisted. All of the good people of Ortona, with weeping, with cries, with invocations, with great invoking of saints and madonnas, came out of their doors and assembled on the plain of San Rocco, fearing greater perils. The nuns, seized with panic, broke from the cloister and ran into the streets, struggling and seeking safety. Four of them bore Anna upon a table. And all drew toward the plain, in the direction of the uninjured people.

As they arrived in sight of the people, spontaneous shouts arose, since the presence of these religious souls seemed propitious. On all sides lay the sick, the aged and infirm, children in swaddling clothes, women stupid from fear. A beautiful morning sun shed lustre upon the tumultuous waves of the sea and upon the vineyards; and along the lower coast the sailors ran, seeking their wives, calling their children by name, out of breath, and hoarse from climbing; and from Caldara there began to arrive herds of sheep and oxen with their keepers, flocks of turkey-cocks with their feminine guardians, and cart-houses, since all feared solitude and men and beasts in the turmoil became comrades.

Anna, resting upon the ground, beneath an olive tree, perceiving death to be near, was mourning with a weak murmur, because she did not wish to die without the Sacrament, and the nuns around her administered comfort to her, and the bystanders looked at her piously. Now, suddenly among the people spread the news that from the Porta Caldara had issued the image of the Apostle. Hope revived and hymns of thanksgiving mounted to the sky. As from afar vibrated an unexpected flash, the women knelt and tearfully with their hair dishevelled, began to walk upon their knees, towards the flash, while intoning psalms.

Anna became agonised. Sustained by two sisters, she heard the prayers, heard the announcement, and perhaps under her last illusions, she saw the Apostle approaching, for over her hollow face there passed a smile of joy. Several bubbles of saliva appeared upon her lips, a violent undulation of her body occurred, extended visibly to the extremities of her body, while upon her eyes the eyelids fell, reddish as from thin blood, and her head shrank into her shoulders. Thus the virgin Anna finally expired.

When the flash appeared more closely to the adoring women, there shone in the sun the form of a beast of burden carrying balanced upon its back, according to the custom, an ornament of metal.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Transcriber's Notes

Original spelling and punctuation have been preserved as much as possible. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of My Native Town, by Gabriele D'Annunzio