And I shall now obey you by referring to the hasty departure of the spiritists who in June wanted a room at my house and, when I refused, took up... lodging for their activities in the house next door. He and his friend both said they were chirographers and fortune tellers. And though I am also bothered by these two occupations, I let them stay until July 18, when, on account of the sufferings I experienced at night, just like others I had undergone every time I was close to places or people engaged in spiritistic practices, I understood that they were holding seances in the house next door.
I said, and I also told you, Father, “Now I’ll take care of this, and we’ll see who gets the worst of it.” And in the evening I set about performing an exorcism with Leon XIII’s formula, which I had gotten from the Redemptorists in Naples. I have always found it to be powerful against storms, bombs, characters... of an infernal variety, and every spiritistic episode.
So there I was, barely able to remain in a kneeling position to do so, with my little cross in my hand, with my whole soul escaping from my body to convey the formula beyond the two walls separating me from the mediums’ lair. And then I fell down exhausted, as usual when I do this, as if all strength had left me, and I remained in a swoon.... It was like that for three nights - the 18th, the 19th, and the 20th. But on the 20th I had to remain seated because I was more dead than alive.
Yesterday the owner of these two gentlemen’s house said to me that one of the two - and precisely the one who was the medium, whereas the other was his second - packed up and left “because they earned only one thousand or fifteen hundred a day. What are a thousand or fifteen hundred lire?” Well, I really think that amounts to something.... And the owner added - for I observed that five hundred or seven hundred and fifty lire per capita a day are no small sum – “He also said that he is not staying on because he is too ruffled. Not by noise or by us at home, since we don’t even say a word while the professor [?!] is at work, but by other things which he did not want to explain. And afterwards he wanted to know who you are and what you do. A lot of things. And when we told him, ‘She’s a sick woman who reads, writes, and does embroidery...,’ he replied, ‘No, I know: she’s a saint’ ” (forgive me if I have to write this word in order to be precise). Those good people did not understand what connection I had with the work of the professor (?!) or how he could know about me, to the point that they asked, “But do you know him?” “No, by God’s grace,” I replied. But I understood all the connections.
Well! It’s the repetition of 1930.67 The fact is that the medium took to his heels, and I trust the other will soon follow him... and the air will be cleansed of the smell of sulfur, which my spiritual lungs cannot bear. And now let us see what annoyance Satan will cause me to take revenge.... I certainly won’t get off lightly. In 1930, through the mouth of the medium I had driven away, as you know, he said, “You are throwing me out. But you’re making a mistake because whoever drives me out meets up with pains and troubles....” In fact, I was no longer well. But they had to go elsewhere....68
67 See the episode relating to spiritism in the section on the Summer of 1930 in the Fourth Part of the Autobiography.
68 We pass over almost twenty-four handwritten pages dated July 29, 1945 containing two episodes from The Second Year of the Public Life.