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Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice under mine: "Mater castissima Ora pro nobis." Then I thought the Ora ended, and in the silence that followed it I heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below.
Hic est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus: Cum gladio et lancea, Normania et quoque Francia Verbera dura dabat: per Turcos multum equitabat: Guilbertum occidit: atque Hierosolyma vidit. Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa, Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani. And this is the translation which the doggerel knave Wamba made of the Latin lines: "REQUIESCAT.
And hence the qualities ascribed to her, of Virgo Fidelis, Mater Castissima, Consolatrix Afflictorum, were those to which all lofty women were exhorted to aspire. The elevation of woman kept pace with the extension of Christianity. Veneration for her did not arise until she showed the virtues of a Monica and a Nonna, but these virtues were the fruit of Christian ideas alone.
How could she thus triumph over all the inequalities of feudalism unless divinely commissioned? How could she work what seemed to be almost miracles if she had not a supernatural power to assist her? Like the regina angelorum, she was virgo castissima. And if she was unlike common mortals, perhaps an inspired woman, what she promised would be fulfilled.
At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity: "Mater purissima Ora pro nobis. Mater castissima Ora pro nobis." When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gently she said: "Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow." "So soon?"
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