myself, but to ask her pardon. If she granted
it, she would send me away happy. If she
declined to be reconciled, Providence would
probably be satisfied with my submission,
but certainly not with her refusal. She felt
the force of this argument; and we made it
up on the spot.

I left Versailles immediately afterwards,
without taking anything to eat; the act of
humility which I had just performed being
as good as a meal to me.

Towards evening, I entered the house of
the Community of Saint Perpetua at Paris.
I had ordered a little room to be furnished
there for me, until the inventory of my
worldly effects was completed, and until I
could conclude my arrangements for entering
a convent. On first installing myself, I
began to feel hungry at last, and begged the
Superior of the Community to give me for
supper anything that remained from the
dinner of the house. They had nothing but
a little stewed carp, of which I eat with an
excellent appetite. Marvellous to relate,
although I had been able to keep nothing on
my stomach for the past three months,
although I had been dreadfully sick after a
little rice soup on the evening before, the
stewed carp of the sisterhood of Saint
Perpetua, with some nuts afterwards for dessert,
agreed with me charmingly, and I slept all
through the night afterwards as peacefully
as a child!

When the news of my retirement became
public, it occasioned great talk in Paris.
Various people assigned various reasons for
the strange course that I had taken.
Nobody, however, believed that I had quitted
the world in the prime of my life (I was then
thirty-one years old), never to return to it
again. Meanwhile, my inventory was finished
and my goods were sold. One of my friends
sent a letter, entreating me to reconsider my
determination. My mind was made up, and
I wrote to say so. When my goods had been
all sold, I left Paris to go and live incognito
as a parlour-boarder in the Convent of the
Ursuline nuns of Pondevaux. Here I
wished to try the mode of life for a little
while before I assumed the serious
responsibility of taking the veil. I knew my own
character—I remembered my early horror of
total seclusion, and my inveterate dislike to
the company of women only; and, moved
by these considerations, I resolved, now that
I had taken the first important step, to
proceed in the future with caution.

The nuns of Pondevaux received me among
them with great kindness. They gave me a
large room, which I partitioned off into three
small ones. I assisted at all the pious
exercises of the place. Deceived by my
fashionable appearance and my plump figure,
the good nuns treated me as if I was a person
of high distinction. This afflicted me, and I
undeceived them. When they knew who I
really was, they only behaved towards me
with still greater kindness. I passed my
time in reading and praying, and led the
quietest, sweetest life it is possible to
conceive.

After ten months' sojourn at Pondevaux,
I went to Lyons, and entered (still as parlour-
boarder only) the House of Anticaille, occupied
by the nuns of the Order of Saint Mary.
Here, I enjoyed the advantage of having for
director of my conscience that holy man,
Father Deveaux. He belonged to the Order
of the Jesuits; and he was good enough,
when I first asked him for advice, to suggest
that I should get up at eleven o'clock at
night to say my prayers, and should remain
absorbed in devotion until midnight. In
obedience to the directions of this saintly
person, I kept myself awake as well as I
could till eleven o'clock. I then got on my
knees with great fervour, and I blush to
confess it, immediately fell as fast asleep as a
dormouse. This went on for several nights,
when Father Deveaux finding that my
midnight devotions were rather too much for
me, was so obliging as to prescribe another
species of pious exercise, in a letter which
he wrote to me with his own hand. The holy
father, after deeply regretting my inability to
keep awake, informed me that he had a new
act of penitence to suggest to me by the
performance of which I might still hope to
expiate my sins. He then, in the plainest
terms, advised me to have recourse to the
discipline of flagellation, every Friday, using
the cat-o'-nine-tails on my bare shoulders
for the length of time that it would take to
repeat a Miserere. In conclusion, he informed
me that the nuns of Anticaille would probably
lend me the necessary instrument of flagellation;
but, if they made any difficulty about
it, he was benevolently ready to furnish me
with a new and special cat-o'-nine-tails of his
own making.

Never was woman more amazed or more
angry than I, when I first read this letter.
"What!" cried I to myself, "does this man
seriously recommend me to lash my own
shoulders? Just Heaven, what impertinence!
And yet, is it not my duty to put up
with it? Does not this apparent insolence
proceed from the pen of a holy man? If he
tells me to flog my wickedness out of me, is
it not my bounden duty to lay on the scourge
with all my might immediately? Sinner
that I am! I am thinking remorsefully of
my plump shoulders and the dimples on my
back, when I ought to be thinking of nothing
but the cat-o'-nine-tails and obedience to
Father Deveaux?"

These reflections soon gave me the
resolution which I had wanted at first. I was
ashamed to ask the nuns for an instrument
of flagellation; so I made one for myself of
stout cord, pitilessly knotted at very short
intervals. This done, I shut myself up while
the nuns were at prayer, uncovered my
shoulders, and rained such a shower of lashes