I’ve completed my noviciate. I was granted a dispensation because of my health, which is still very poor. I often have a fever, I cough, and I’ve grown so weak that the least effort exhausts me. Yet my heart is at peace, and that is the greatest blessing God could have granted me. Sometimes frailty rebels, and temptation assails me again. Then I prostrate myself at the foot of the altar, I spend all night kneeling on the cold paving of the chancel, I mortify my body with fasting and penance, and when the flesh is subdued and passions quelled, temptation is overcome and peace returns.
This year of trial has been very difficult, but God has enabled me to triumph. I saw my family depart at the sudden outbreak of cholera last summer, and I felt abandoned even by my loved ones … I went out on the terrace and fixed my gaze on that wonderful place where I was with them for a while … Ah, what good times they were! I thought of many things … yes, admittedly, I cried, and sometimes I felt weak, but in the end I triumphed.
Everything here serves to close the mind in on itself, to circumscribe it, to render it mute, blind and deaf to all that is not God. Yet even at the foot of the cruficix, when those temptations assailed me, and I remembered our little house, those fields, the cottage, the fire on which the steward’s wife used to cook her soup, I’d think about that poor peasant-woman, cuddling her babies on her lap, without any of my temptations, doubts and regrets, and I wondered whether she might not be closer to God than I who mortify my rebellious spirit with many penances.
How often have I not envisaged those mountains, woods and bright sky! And how often have I not said, ‘At this time of day, they’re sitting together beneath the chestnut tree. Now, they’re strolling down the paths through the vineyard, and now Vigilante is barking, and the birds are twittering under the eaves!’ And when I’ve awakened as if from a dream, I’ve found my face all wet with tears.
And then there’s another thought … another ghost … there … always there, fixed before my eyes … at the foot of the Cross, in the midst of the crowd attending mass, at my bedside, behind that green twill curtain – the temptation that grabs me by the hair, and drags me from my prayer, that makes me cry and sends me into a frenzy …
There have been times when I thought I was going mad – and I thanked God for it, because the mad are blameless. I think I see him down among all those people in the church, on Sundays. I cross myself, and appalled, in tears, I rush to the foot of my confessor. The good old man tries to comfort me, and he prescribes the penances supposed to remove this stain from my heart but that prove ineffectual because I’m a great sinner …
Yet he might have come to church at least once … to hear mass … without even looking up at the choir … but only to show himself … He must know that I’m here, and he hasn’t tried to see me!
O God! Forgive me, Marianna … you see how much at fault and how wretched I am! It’s the devil assailing me when I least expect it … How often, when praying to the Lord to take this cross away from me, have I not looked down into the church to see if he were there, searching for him among the crowd! And my prayer has died on my lips! And my thoughts have lingered on him … lost in reverie, dreaming of running through the fields, of listening for his footstep and that knock on the window, gazing up at those stars, touching that hand as it stroked that fine gun-dog’s head, and hearing in my ears the name ‘Maria’, that might have come from heaven …
O God! I’m weak and very frail … but I fight and struggle with myself … My God, I’m not to blame! It’s stronger than me, stronger than my will, my remorse and my faith.
You write that you are happy, and glad to be outside the convent. My dear Marianna, thank the good Lord for sparing your mother, and for sparing you from being born poor, for not having driven this thorn into your heart, or having made you weak, hysterical, excitable and sickly.
Only when this flesh is dissolved will I cease to suffer. That’s why I would like to detach myself from the world that clings to me stubbornly, and I look up to heaven and raise my arms in entreaty …
Now that I’ve been reunited with my dear Filomena, who takes pity on my sorrows and allows me the comfort of writing to you and receiving your letters, I’ll write to you a few more times before taking my solemn vows. You will come to the ceremony, won’t you?
I want to say goodbye, through the grille, amid the clouds of incense and the sound of the organ, to all those who are dear to me. I want all those friendly faces to sustain me in this difficult step, because my poor heart is frail. I need to be able to gaze into your eyes, and those of my papa, my sister, Gigi, and Annetta, when I hear the rasp of the scissors in my hair …
I’m scared, Marianna, I’m scared! I’m scared of those scissors … of that moment … I’m scared of him … if he were to come to the church that day … My God! No, no, I’m weak … for pity’s sake … You’ll come with my father, Giuditta, my brother, mama, Annetta and the Valentini … My God! Thy will be done!