A Fair Penitent | Page 6

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 on them,
in the first fervour of my newly-awakened zeal, that I fairly flogged
myself down on the ground, flat on my nose, before I had repeated
more of the Miserere than the first two or three lines.
I burst out crying, shedding tears of spite against myself when I ought
to have been shedding tears of devotional gratitude for the kindness of
Father Deveaux. All through the night I never closed my eyes, and in
the morning I found my poor shoulders