"Let us hear what you have to say." Then my lord began to speak; and before he was half-done I wished myself anywhere else in the world.

For, as great men alone are capable, he could be as lavish of praise as of blame.

He said that I was all that of which His Holiness had spoken; that I had been obedient and exact as a novice; and he said other things too of which even under obedience I could not speak.

Then too he added what he had never said to me before, that he was not sure that I had no vocation; but that since God spoke through exterior circumstances as well as through interior drawings, His Holy Will seemed to point, at least at present, to a life in the world for me; that he was sure I would be as obedient there as here; that I had learned not only to use my tongue but, what is much harder, to hold it.

And he ended by begging the Holy Father to take me into his service and to use me in the ways in which perhaps I might be useful.