Under the Leads | Page 9

her
immaculate conception in the womb of Anne, her mother. This Sister
Mary of Agrada was the head of a Franciscan convent founded by
herself in her own house. After telling in detail all the deeds of her
divine heroine whilst in her mother's womb, she informs us that at the
age of three she swept and cleansed the house with the assistance of
nine hundred servants, all of whom were angels whom God had placed
at her disposal, under the command of Michael, who came and went
between God and herself to conduct their mutual correspondence.
What strikes the judicious reader of the book is the evident belief of the

more than fanatical writer that nothing is due to her invention;
everything is told in good faith and with full belief. The work contains
the dreams of a visionary, who, without vanity but inebriated with the
idea of God, thinks to reveal only the inspirations of the Divine Spirit.
The book was published with the permission of the very holy and very
horrible Inquisition. I could not recover from my astonishment! Far
from its stirring up in my breast a holy and simple zeal of religion, it
inclined me to treat all the mystical dogmas of the Faith as fabulous.
Such works may have dangerous results; for example, a more
susceptible reader than myself, or one more inclined to believe in the
marvellous, runs the risk of becoming as great a visionary as the poor
nun herself.
The need of doing something made me spend a week over this
masterpiece of madness, the product of a hyper-exalted brain. I took
care to say nothing to the gaoler about this fine work, but I began to
feel the effects of reading it. As soon as I went off to sleep I
experienced the disease which Sister Mary of Agrada had
communicated to my mind weakened by melancholy, want of proper
nourishment and exercise, bad air, and the horrible uncertainty of my
fate. The wildness of my dreams made me laugh when I recalled them
in my waking moments. If I had possessed the necessary materials I
would have written my visions down, and I might possibly have
produced in my cell a still madder work than the one chosen with such
insight by Cavalli.
This set me thinking how mistaken is the opinion which makes human
intellect an absolute force; it is merely relative, and he who studies
himself carefully will find only weakness. I perceived that though men
rarely become mad, still such an event is well within the bounds of
possibility, for our reasoning faculties are like powder, which, though it
catches fire easily, will never catch fire at all without a spark. The book
of the Spanish nun has all the properties necessary to make a man
crack-brained; but for the poison to take effect he must be isolated, put
under the Leads, and deprived of all other employments.

In November, 1767, as I was going from Pampeluna to Madrid, my
coachman, Andrea Capello, stopped for us to dine in a town of Old
Castille. So dismal and dreary a place did I find it that I asked its name.
How I laughed when I was told that it was Agrada!
"Here, then," I said to myself, "did that saintly lunatic produce that
masterpiece which but for M. Cavalli I should never have known."
An old priest, who had the highest possible opinion of me the moment I
began to ask him about this truthful historian of the mother of Christ,
shewed me the very place where she had written it, and assured me that
the father, mother, sister, and in short all the kindred of the blessed
biographer, had been great saints in their generation. He told me, and
spoke truly, that the Spaniards had solicited her canonization at Rome,
with that of the venerable Palafox. This "Mystical City," perhaps, gave
Father Malagrida the idea of writing the life of St. Anne, written, also,
at the dictation of the Holy Ghost, but the poor devil of a Jesuit had to
suffer martyrdom for it--an additional reason for his canonization, if the
horrible society ever comes to life again, and attains the universal
power which is its secret aim.
At the end of eight or nine days I found myself moneyless. Lawrence
asked me for some, but I had not got it.
"Where can I get some?"
"Nowhere."
What displeased this ignorant and gossiping fellow about me was my
silence and my laconic manner of talking.
Next day he told me that the Tribunal had assigned me fifty sous per
diem of which he would have to take charge, but that he would give me
an account of his expenditure every month, and that he would spend the
surplus