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By Root 514 0

of liberty and worldly happiness; but she encouraged me to bear with patience my temporary distress, and advised me to draw comfort from religion. My situation evidently affected her more than she ventured to express; but she believed that to extenuate my fault would make me less anxious to repent it. Often while her lips painted the enormity of my guilt in glaring colours, her eyes betrayed how sensible she was to my sufferings. In fact, I am certain that none of my tormentors (for the three other nuns entered my prison occasionally) were so much actuated by the spirit of oppressive cruelty, as by the idea that to afflict my body was the only way to preserve my soul. Nay, even this persuasion might not have had such weight with them, and they might have thought my punishment too severe, had not their good dispositions been repressed by blind obedience to their superior. Her resentment existed in full force. My project of elopement having been discovered by the abbot of the Capuchins, she supposed herself lowered in his opinion by my disgrace, and in consequence her hate was inveterate. She told the nuns, to whose custody I was committed, that my fault was of the most heinous nature, that no sufferings could equal the offence, and that nothing could save me from eternal perdition but punishing my guilt with the utmost severity. The superior’s word is an oracle to but too many of a convent’s inhabitants. The nuns believed whatever the prioress chose to assert: though contradicted by reason and charity, they hesitated not to admit the truth of her arguments. They followed her injunctions to the very letter, and were fully persuaded, that to treat me with lenity, or to shew the least pity for my woes, would be a direct means to destroy my chance for salvation.

Camilla being most employed about me, was particularly charged by the prioress to treat me with harshness. In compliance with these orders, she frequently strove to convince me how just was my punishment, and how enormous was my crime. She bade me think myself too happy in saving my soul by mortifying my body, and even threatened me sometimes with eternal perdition. Yet, as I before observed, she always concluded by words of encouragement and comfort; and though uttered by Camilla’s lips, I easily recognised the domina’s expressions. Once, and once only, the prioress visited me in my dungeon. She then treated me with the most unrelenting cruelty. She loaded me with reproaches, taunted me with my frailty; and, when I implored her mercy, told me to ask it of Heaven, since I deserved none on earth. She even gazed upon my lifeless infant without emotion; and when she left me, I heard her charge Camilla to increase the hardships of my captivity. Unfeeling woman! But let me check my resentment. She has expiated her errors by her sad and unexpected death. Peace be with her! and may her crimes be forgiven in heaven, as I forgive her my sufferings on earth!

Thus did I drag on a miserable existence. Far from growing familiar with my prison, I beheld it every moment with new horror. The cold seemed more piercing and bitter, the air more thick and pestilential. My frame became weak, feverish, and emaciated. I was unable to rise from the bed of straw, and exercise my limbs in the narrow limits to which the length of my chain permitted me to move. Though exhausted, faint, and weary, I trembled to profit by the approach of sleep. My slumbers were constantly interrupted by some obnoxious insect crawling over me. Sometimes I felt the bloated toad, hideous and pampered with the poisonous vapours of the dungeon, dragging his loathsome length along my bosom. Sometimes the quick cold lizard roused me, leaving his slimy track upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild and matted hair. Often have I at waking found my fingers ringed with the long worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my infant. At such times I shrieked with terror and disgust; and, while I shook off the reptile, trembled with all a woman’s weakness.

Such was my situation when Camilla was