The large, dark eyes of Agnes were fixed abstractedly on the old woman
as she spoke, slowly dilating, with a sad, mysterious expression, which
sometimes came over them.

"Ah! how can the saints themselves be happy?" she said. "One might be
willing to wear sackcloth and sleep on the ground, one might suffer ever
so many years and years, if only one might save some of them."

"Well, it does seem hard," said Jocunda; "but what's the use of thinking
of it? Old Father Anselmo told us in one of his sermons that the Lord
wills that his saints should come to rejoice in the punishment of all
heathens and heretics; and he told us about a great saint once, who took
it into his head to be distressed because one of the old heathen whose
books he was fond of reading had gone to hell,--and he fasted and
prayed, and wouldn't take no for an answer, till he got him out."

"He did, then?" said Agnes, clasping her hands in an ecstasy.

"Yes; but the good Lord told him never to try it again,--and He struck
him dumb, as a kind of hint, you know. Why, Father Anselmo said that
even getting souls out of purgatory was no easy matter. He told us of
one holy nun who spent nine years fasting and praying for the soul of
her prince, who was killed in a duel, and then she saw in a vision
that he was only raised the least little bit out of the fire,--and she
offered up her life as a sacrifice to the Lord to deliver him, but,
after all, when she died he wasn't quite delivered. Such things made me
think that a poor old sinner like me would never get out at all, if I
didn't set about it in earnest,--though it a'n't all nuns that save
their souls either. I remember in Pisa I saw a great picture of the