scientious brutality. But he questions her in vain. She knows nothing, and says nothing. He scolds her, and she weeps. Her tears will be soon dried, but it will be long before she ceases to reflect.

A volume might be composed on the first start of the young priest, and his imprudent steps, all fatal either to himself or others. The penitent is occasionally more circumspect than the confessor. She is amused at his proceedings, and looks at him coldly when he becomes animated and goes too far.* Sometimes, forgetting himself in his impassioned dream, he is suddenly and roughly awakened by a lesson from an intelligent and satirical woman kneeling before him.

The

This cruel lesson has given him an icy chill. Confessors do not suffer such a repulse, without remaining a long time bitter, sometimes spiteful for ever. young priest knew well that he was the victim, the disinherited of this world, but it had not been forced home Gall drowns his heart. He prays him. upon to God (if he can still pray), that the world may perish!

* And how would not this animation be caused by such contiguity? It is sufficient that persons of different sexes pray together in the same room for madness to seize them and turn their heads. This is what happens in the meetings of the exalted Protestants in the United States and elsewhere. Read Swift's sensible and judicious little work, "Fragment on the mechanical Operations of the Spirit." (See especially towards the end.)

Then returning to his senses, and seeing himself irremediably limed in that black winding sheet, that death-robe that he will wear to the grave, he shrouds himself within it as he curses it, and muses how he may make the best of his torment.

The only thing he can do, is to strengthen his position as a priest. He has two ways of succeeding, either by an understanding with the Jesuits, or by paying a servile court to Monseigneur the bishop. I recommend him especially to be violent against the philosophers, and to bark at pantheism. Let him also blacken his fellow-priests, and he will appear so much the purer himself. Let him prove himself a thorough hater, and they will forgive him his love.

The brotherhood will henceforth protect, defend, and cover him. What would have ruined the solitary priest, becomes sanctity itself when he becomes one of a party. Before, he would have been suspended, and sent perhaps for six months to La Trappe-now he is made Vicar-general.

Only let him be prudent in the delicate business which the fraternity wishes to conceal; let him learn the arts of priests—to feign, to wait, to know when and how to be satisfied; to advance but slowly, openly, and above ground sometimes, but more often secretly, underneath.

CHAPTER III.

CONFESSION.
THEY DETACH THE WIFE.

TORS
LICY.

ASSOCIATED TOGETHER.

THE CONFESSOR AND THE HUSBAND. -HOW
DIREC-
THE DIRECTOR.
ECCLESIASTICAL PO-

WHEN I reflect on all that is contained in the words confession and direction, those simple words, that immense power, the most complete in the world, and endeavour to analyse their whole meaning, I tremble with fear. I seem to be descending endless spiral stairs into the depths of a dark mine. Just now I felt contempt for the priest; now I fear him.

But we must not be afraid; we must look him in the face. Let us candidly put down in set terms the language of the confessor.

"God hears you, hears you through me; through me God will answer you." Such is the first word; such is the literal copy. The authority is accepted as infinite and absolute, without any bargaining as to

measure.

"But you tremble, you dare not tell this terrible God your weakness and childishness; well! tell them to your father; a father has a right to know the secrets of his child; he is an indulgent father, who wants to know them only to absolve them. He is

sinner like yourself; has he then a right to be severe? Come, then, my child, come and tell me what you have not dared to whisper in your mother's ear; tell it me; who will ever know?"

Then is it, amid sobs and sighs, from the choking heaving breast that the fatal word rises to the lips: it escapes, and she hides her head. Oh! he who heard that has gained an immense advantage, and will keep it. Would to God that he did not abuse it! It was heard, remember, not by the wood and the dark oak of the confessional, but by ears of flesh and blood.

And this man now knows of this woman, what the husband has not known in all the long effusion of his heart by day and night, what even her own mother does not know, who thinks she knows her entirely, having had her so many times a naked infant upon her knees.

This man knows, and will know-don't be afraid of his forgetting it. If the confession is in good hands, so much the better, for it is for ever. And she, she knows full well she has a master of her intimate thoughts. Never will she pass by that man without casting down her eyes.

The day when this mystery was imparted, he was very near her, she felt it. On a higher seat, he seemed to have an irresistible ascendency over her. A magnetic influence has vanquished her, for she wished not to speak, and she spoke in spite of herself.

She felt herself fascinated, like the bird by the serpent.

So far, however, there is no art on the side of the priest. The force of circumstances has done every thing, that of religious institution, and that of nature. As a priest, he received her at his knees, and listened to her. Then, master of her secret, of her thoughts, the thoughts of a woman, he became man again, without, perhaps, either wishing or knowing it, and laid upon her, weakened and disarmed, the heavy hand of man.

And her family now? her husband? Who will dare to assert that his position is the same as before?

Every reflecting mind knows full well, that thought is the most personal part of the person. The master of a person's thoughts is he to whom the person belongs. The priest has the soul fast, as soon as he has received the dangerous pledge of the first secrets, and he will hold it faster and faster. The two husbands now take shares, for now there are two one has the soul, the other the body.

Take notice that in this sharing, one of the two really has the whole; the other, if he gets any thing, gets it by favour. Thought by its nature is prevailing and absorbing; the master of her thought, in the natural progress of his sway, will ever go on reducing the part that seemed to remain in the possession of the other. The husband may think himself well off, if, a widower with respect to the