In order to differentiate more clearly between Valtorta's own narrative descriptions and the words of Jesus within the Vision, a bolder type-face has been used for the words of Jesus. -- Translator
Valtorta: "I see a rocky cavern in which there is a bed made of leaves piled upon a crude frame-work of branches intertwined and tied with reeds. It must be fitting as an instrument of torture. The cave has also a large rock which serves as a table and a smaller one which serves as a seat. Further back against the side, there is another: a large fragment protruding from the rock which has been treated by cleaning it -- I do not know if by nature or by patient and toilsome human labor -- and thus it presents a fairly smooth surface. Upon this protrusion, which seems to serve as a crude altar, there is placed a cross made from two branches held together by twigs. In a fissure of the clay ground, the inhabitant of the cave has also planted an ivy plant, and led its branches up to frame and embrace the cross, while in two crude vases which seem to have been molded in clay by an inexperienced hand, stand two wild flowers gathered in the vicinity. And just at the foot of the cross, in a giant conch, is a little wild cyclamen plant with its clean little leaves and two buds close to blooming. At the foot of this altar is a bundle of thorny branches and a scourge of knotted cords. In the cave there is also a crude little jar of water. Nothing else. From the narrow and low opening can be seen a background of mountains, and by the moving luminosity that can be glimpsed far off, you could say that from this point the sea is visible. But I cannot be sure. Some hanging branches of ivy, honeysuckle and wild roses, all the usual display of alpine places, hang over the opening and make a sort of moving veil that separates the interior from the outside. A woman, thin, clothed in a crude dark garment over which is placed a goatskin as a mantle, enters the cave, moving the hanging branches aside. She seems exhausted. Her age is indefinable. To judge by her withered face, one would have to give her many years: more than sixty. But if she must be judged by her hair, still beautiful, thick, golden: she is no more than forty. She wears her hair in two tresses along her bent and gaunt (delgados)shoulders, and it is the one thing that shines in that squalor (miseria). The woman would certainly have been beautiful, because her forehead is still high and smooth, her nose well made and her oval face, however much thinned by exhaustion, is regular. But her eyes have no more sparkle. They are deeply sunken in their sockets, and both are marked by bluish, dark-brown shadows. Two eyes which tell of many tears shed. Two wrinkles, almost two scars, are cut from the corner of her eyes along the nose and lose themselves in that other wrinkle characteristic of someone who has suffered much, and which descends from the nostril to the corner of the mouth. Her temples also are sunken in and their blue veins are outlined in her great pallor. Her mouth bends in a weary curve and is of a very pale rose color. It must once have been a splendid mouth. Now it is faded. The curve of her lips is like that of two wings that hang broken. A sorrowful mouth.