though it is here still more dangerous, being exercised over persons immured and dependent. There, it reigns unbridled, and is formidable with impunity. For who can know it? Who dares enter here?* No one. Strange! There are houses in France that are estranged to France. The street is still France; but pass yonder threshold, and you are in a foreign country which laughs at your laws.

What then are their laws? We are ignorant upon the subject. But we know for certain (for no pains are taken to disguise it) that the barbarous discipline of the middle ages is preserved in full force. Cruel contradiction! This system that speaks so much of the distinction of the soul and the body, and believes it, since it boldly exposes the confessor to carnal temptations! Well! this very same system teaches us that the body, distinct from the soul, modifies it by its suffering; that the soul improves and becomes more pure under the lash!† It preaches spiritualism to meet valiantly the seduction of the flesh, and materialism when required to annihilate the will!

What! when the law forbids to strike even our

* At Sens, a magistrate ventured to enter, and a neo-catholic newspaper regrets they did not throw him out of window.

† Did not this horrible art calculate well on the influence of the body? this art that does not awaken man's energy by pain, but enervates it by diet, and the misery of dungeons? (See Mabillon's Treatise on Monastic Prisons.) The reveations of the prisoners of Spielberg have enlightened us upon this head.

galley-slaves, who are thieves, murderers, the most ferocious of men-you men of grace, who speak only of charity, the good holy Virgin and the gentle Jesus -you strike women!-nay, girls, even children — who, after all, are only guilty of some trifling weak

ness!

How are these chastisements administered?

This

is a question, perhaps, still more serious. What sort of terms of composition may not be extorted by fear? At what price does authority sell its indulgence?

Who regulates the number of stripes? Is it you, My Lady Abbess? or you, Father Superior? What must be the capricious, partial decision of one woman against another, if the latter displeases her; an ugly woman against a handsome one, or an old one against a young girl! We shudder to think.

A strange struggle often happens between the superior nun and the director. The latter, however hardened he may be, is still a man; it is very difficult for him at last not to be affected for the poor girl, who tells him every thing, and obeys him implicitly. Female authority perceives it instantly, observes him, and follows him closely. He sees his penitent but little, very little, but it is always thought too much. The confession shall last only so many minutes: they wait for him, watch in hand. It would last too long, nay, for ever, without this precaution to the poor recluse, who received from

every one else only insult and ill-treatment, a compassionate confessor is still a welcome refuge.

We have known superiors demand and obtain several times from their bishops a change of confessors, without finding any sufficiently austere. There is ever a wide difference between the harshness of a man and the cruelty of a woman! What 18, in your opinion, the most faithful incarnation of the devil in this world? Some inquisitor? Some Jesuit or other? No, a female Jesuit, some great lady, who has been converted, and believes herself born to rule, who among this flock of trembling females acts the Bonaparte, and who, more absolute than the most absolute tyrant, uses the rage of her badly-cured passions to torment her unfortunate, defenceless sisters.

Far from being the adversary of the confessor in this case, he has my best wishes. Whether he be priest, monk, or Jesuit, I am now on his side. I entreat him to interfere, if he can. In this hell, where the law cannot penetrate, he is the only person who can say a word of humanity. I know very well that this interference will create the strongest and most dangerous attachment. The heart of the poor young creature is wholly given up beforehand to him who defends her.

This priest will be removed, driven away, and ruined, if it be necessary. Nothing is easier to an active, influential superior. He dares not venture

there, is afraid of disturbance, and retires timidly.* You will find neither priests nor prelates in these cases mindful of their power, as confessors and spiritual judges; nor will they refuse absolution to the tyrant of the nuns, as Las Cases did to those of the Indians.

There are, fortunately, other judges. The law sleeps, but it still lives. † Some courageous magistrates have been willing to do their duty. No doubt they will be thwarted. But the nights of the guilty have been troubled: they know that every violence which is committed there, every blow given in defiance of the law, is an accusation against them before heaven and earth. Exsurge, Domine, et judica

causam tuam!

* I find a confirmation of this in the notes of the nun already quoted. See the preface of this third edition.

The affairs at Avignon, Sens, and Poictiers, though the guilty parties have been but slightly punished, permit us to hope that the law will at length awake.

The inspection of convents ought to be shared between the judiciary and municipal magistracy, and the administrations of charity. The bar is too much occupied to be able to undertake it alone. If these houses are necessary as asylums for poor women, who dread a too solitary life, at least let them be free asylums like the béguinages of Flanders; but not under the same direction.

If we believe politicians, happiness consists in reigning. They sincerely think so, since they accept in exchange for happiness so much trouble and so many annoyances; a martyrdom often that perhaps the saints would have shrunk from.

But the reign must be real. Are we quite sure that it is really to reign, to make ordinances that are not executed, to enact with great effort, and as a supreme victory, one law more, which is doomed to sleep in the bulletin of laws at the side of thirty thousand of the same kin?

It is of no use to prescribe acts, if we are not first masters of the mind; in order to govern the bodily world, we must reign in the intellectual world. This is the opinion of the thinking man, the profound writer; and he believes he reigns. He is, indeed, a king; at least for the next age. If he is really original, he outsteps his century, and is postponed till another time. But he will reign tomorrow, and the day after, and so on for ages, and