Whilst I was in the office of Sub-Prioress, as I was making the Meditation of Hell in the Spiritual Exercise, I was deeply recollected and seemed to see myself transported into that sad region and placed near some of that horrid crew, where I was to be racked and tormented by them. I seemed laid upon a huge plank in the middle of a place of fire under ground. Above me was all dark and black, below me fire, not like what we see here, but violently intense and unquenchable. The devils came round me to torment me in all parts with red-hot irons, giving me to understand at the same time with a kind of envious spite and malice that the faults which I had committed during the two months I was absent from my father's house, as I have elsewhere mentioned, were those for which I had deserved these torments. I hope God has pardoned them. The very thought of them gives me no small confusion. I remained about half an hour in this transport into another world. What I saw in spirit made great impression upon me. It remained a great while fixed in my mind, and I have still new lights upon it. It was given me to understand in prayer that this place was purgatory, and that I was to have remained there for many years if I had died of the smallpox, which I had about two years before my great sickness.