Dominic, appears to me to be entitled to the highest rank among the disciples of Catherine, not by her seniority, but b J the perfection of her virtues. After losing in her youth, a husband equally noted for his nobility and learning the despised all worldly pleasures, and became so wedded to our Saint, that in the end she had not courage to leave her: she renounced her wealth and according to our Redeemer's counsel distributed it to the poor. In the full imitation of her whom she had chosen for Mistress, she afflicted her body by fasts, vigils, and every variety of mortification: prayer and contemplation occupied her continually; she persevered with so much constancy and perfection that Catherine, in the latter portion of her life, made her, I think, depositary of all her secrets, and wished, that after her own death, Alessia should become the superior and model of her companions. I found her also at Rome, when I returned there and she gave me many pieces of information; but a short time after she went to rejoin in heaven her whom she had so tenderly cherished in our Lord. She, is my first witness of what happened during my absence.
My second witness is Francoise of Sienna. Her soul was always tenderly united to God, and to the Blessed Catherine. As soon as she became a widow, she clothed herself with the holy habit of the Sisters of Penance: she consecrated her three remaining sons to God in the Order of Preaching Friars; and before dying, she had the consolation of seeing them depart for the home of the just — for they piously terminated their career at the period of the Plague, and God assisted them in a special manner, by the intercessory prayers of Catherine. Francoise survived Alessia a short tine; but she also recounted to me
