suppress in her mind every sentiment of
filial affection. He poisoned her mind
against poor George, and persuaded her
that her parents had sacrificed her real
interests to their own caprice. By degrees,
he brought her to be disgusted with every thing.
From this disgust to the wish to
enter a cloister, there is only one step. It
was very soon made. Mademoiselle
Dufougeray did her best to back up the pastor's
intrigues. Mademoiselle Soubeyran had no
idea what a convent was like. The two
worthy servants of God contrived the means
of enabling her to visit one without her
parents' knowledge.

She saw the convent and had been
expected. The nuns played their part to
perfection. Nothing but happiness met
the eye; nothing struck the ear but
angelical benedictions; every countenance
beamed with a smile. Thanks to this visit
and the eloquence of a famous preacher
then in the neighbourhood, the young lady's
imagination became excited, and she
determined to break every link which chained
her to the world. Nevertheless, she feared
her father's violence and her mother's cold
but firm resistance. At first they would
not believe her to be serious, but when she
insisted, and talked of sending back to
George her engagement ring, the father,
who had other causes of complaint against
the cure, could not contain his anger.

The Abbé Desherbiers was no longer
received at the captain's house, La Tour, but
his female confederate, by feigning to share
the parents' displeasure, contrived to maintain
her footing in the house, and favoured
an active correspondence between him and
his pupil. This correspondence, combined
with the parental resistance, confirmed the
mischief. Secular parents little know how
much they help the confessor to play his
game by stern opposition to their daughters'
religious fancies, which only confirms their
high-flown notions; whereas, when the rein
is wisely slackened, vocations sprung from
excitement rarely last. In this case, the
abbé convinced the girl that she was
"oppressed," "the victim of tyranny," and so
forth, and advised her to discontinue every
kind of contest, and patiently to await the
day of her majority.

On the 11th of September, 185—, the
limit which the law prescribes to parental
authority was passed. Half crazed by
excitement and perfidious counsels, Mademoiselle
Soubeyran longed for an opportunity
to throw off the yoke. In the pretended
impossibility of obtaining her parents'
consent, the Abbé Desherbiers urged her to
leave them secretly, suggesting that she
could afterwards ask their pardon. He
learned that, on the second of November,
the father would leave home to collect
government dues; and he arranged that
one of his confidantes, a Madame R., should
wait for the girl at nightfall, with a carriage,
half a mile outside the town.

"How that terrible day passed," Sister
X. says, "it is out of my power to tell.
Agitated by contradictory thoughts, I
instinctively shrunk from taking a step of
which hereafter I might repent, and I
almost wished that some accident,
independent of my own will, would happen, to
prevent the fault I was about to commit.
My remembrance of other events is
confused and dim. I know that I scribbled a
few lines to my mother, that I went out
by the garden gate, and that I ran down
the little path which leads to the Loire.
At the first turn, I met the person who
undertook to be the accomplice of my
disobedience. I followed her to the carriage
without either of us speaking a word. But
as soon as we were seated side by side,
Madame R. embraced me with great
protestations of love and admiration: I was a
new Sainte Chautal, trampling flesh and
blood underfoot; a Sainte Elizabeth of
Hungary. God would bless me, for having
preferred Him to earthly affections, and
above all for having refused to marry a
Protestant, &c., &c. She poured forth a
torrent of high-sounding phrases. I had
neither the inclination nor the strength to
reply. Nature resumed her rights: I burst
into tears."

Madame R. presented the runaway at
the house of the Sisters of—, which she
had already visited. The mother superior,
Madame Blandine, and two other nuns,
awaited her arrival. They embraced her,
and conducted her first to the chapel, and
then to the lodging prepared. The Abbé
Desherbiers, who knew the warmth of her
father's temper, had expressly forbidden
her to take away anything, to avoid all
possibility of being accused of abstracting
property. She, therefore, had no clothes
besides those on her back. All these
circumstances had been foreseen. Lying on
the bed were all necessary articles.

At the first sound of the bell Mademoiselle
Soubeyran was up and dressed. A
lay sister came to help her inexperience.
She showed her how to make her bed, and
spoke a few words in a subdued tone of voice.
It was the time of deep silence before mass.