And now, Your Excellency, you know more or less how Jacinta spent her first seven years of her life, right up to that 13th day of May, 1917, which dawned bright and fair like so many others before it. That day, by chance—if in the designs of Providence there can be such a thing as chance—we chose to pasture our flock on some land belonging to my parents, called Cova da Iria. We chose the pasture as we usually did, at the Barreiro I have already mentioned. This meant we had to cross a barren stretch of moorland to get there, which made the journey doubly long. We had to go slowly to give the sheep a chance of grazing along the way, so it was almost noon when we arrived.
I will not delay here to tell you what happened that day, because Your Excellency knows it well already, and therefore it would be a waste of time. Except for the sake of obedience, my writing this seems a waste of time to me as well. For I cannot see the good Your Excellency can draw from it all, unless it could be that you will become better acquainted with Jacinta’s innocence of life.
Before beginning to tell Your Excellency what I remember of this new period in Jacinta’s life, I must first admit that there were certain aspects of Our Lady’s apparitions which we had agreed not to make known to anybody. Now however, I may have to speak about them in order to explain whence Jacinta imbibed such great love for Jesus, for suffering and for sinners, for whose salvation she sacrificed herself so generously.
Your Excellency is not aware that she was the one who, unable to contain herself with joy, broke the agreement to keep the matter to ourselves. That very afternoon, while we remained thoughtful and rapt in wonder, Jacinta kept breaking into enthusiastic exclamations: “Oh, what a beautiful Lady!”
“I can see what’s going to happen,” I said, “you’ll end saying that to somebody else.”
“No, I won’t,” she answered, “don’t worry.”
Next day, when Francisco came running to tell me how she had told them everything at home the night before, Jacinta listened to the accusation without a word.
“You see, that’s just what I thought was going to happen.” I said to her.
“There was something within me that wouldn’t let me keep it quiet,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“Well, don’t cry now, and don’t tell anything else to anybody about what Our Lady said to us.”
“But I’ve already told them.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that the Lady promised to take us to heaven.”
“To think you’ve told them that!”
“Forgive me, I won’t tell anything ever again!”