Note 209 — Chapter V · CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510—SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER, DOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT

Ibid. p. 158b. I have here omitted, after “miseries,” the clause “through which she had passed.” For during her middle period she seems indeed not to have seen her faults till after she herself had got beyond them: yet that particular dispensation was then vouchsafed her because of the excessive pain which the sight of still present imperfections would have caused her; and it is that peculiarity which explains the extreme rarity or absence of Confession during that time. But now we have both the pain and the Confession: and I cannot find any instances, as in this case, of (evidently keen) annoyance, or of Confession, with respect to past and overcome imperfections.—I have also omitted a sentence after “departed from her”: “not that they were matters of any importance, but every slightest defect was intolerable to her.” For this is to judge the Saint by another standard than that of her own conscience, and to make her sanctity consist of scrupulosity.—And I have dropped a further notice for the same day,—a “vista” vouchsafed to her of “a pure and perfect mind, into which only the memory of divine things can still enter,” with her corresponding laugh and exclamation: “O, to find oneself in this degree (of perfection) at the time of death!” For, beautiful as it is, this clause but reproduces, in the softened form of a general and joyous aspiration, what the previous anecdote had given as a particular and depressing consciousness. And the previous anecdote was evidently offensive to both Redactors.