The Priest, The Woman and The Confessional | Page 6

confessor on those matters, and that
he would ask me more of his strange questions.
"In fact, when I had told him everything, without a blush, he began to
interrogate me, and God knows what corrupting things fell from his lips
into my poor criminal heart! Every one of his questions was thrilling
my nerves, and filling me with the most shameful sensations. After an

hour of this criminal tête-á-tête with my old confessor (for it was
nothing else but a criminal tête-á-tête), I perceived that he was as
depraved as I was myself. With some half-covered words, he made me
a criminal proposition, which I accepted with covered words also; and
during more than a year, we have lived together in the most sinful
intimacy. Though he was much older than I, I loved him in the most
foolish way. When the course of my convent instruction was finished,
my parents called me back to their home. I was really glad of that
change of residence, for I was beginning to be tired of my criminal life.
My hope was that, under the direction of a better confessor, I should
reconcile myself to God and begin a Christian life.
"Unfortunately for me, my new confessor, who was very young, began
also his interrogations. He soon fell in love with me, and I loved him in
a most criminal way. I have done with him things which I hope you
will never request me to reveal to you, for they are too monstrous to be
repeated, even in the confessional, by a woman to a man.
"I do not say these things to take away the responsibility of my
iniquities with this young confessor from my shoulders, for I think I
have been more criminal than he was. It is my firm conviction that he
was a good and holy priest before he knew me; but the questions he put
to me, and the answers I had to give him, melted his heart--I know
it--just as boiling lead would melt the ice on which it flows.
"I know this is not such a detailed confession as our holy Church
requires me to make, but I have thought it necessary for me to give you
this short history of the life of the greatest and the most miserable
sinner who ever asked you to help her to come out from the tomb of her
iniquities. This is the way I have lived these last few years. But last
Sabbath, God, in His infinite mercy, looked down upon me. He
inspired you to give us the Prodigal Son as a model of true conversion,
and as the most marvelous proof of the infinite compassion of the dear
Saviour for the sinner. I have wept day and night since that happy day,
when I threw myself into the arms of my loving, merciful Father. Even
now I can hardly speak, because my regret for my past iniquities, and
my joy that I am allowed to bathe the feet of my Saviour with my tears,

are so great that my voice is as choked.
"You understand that I have for ever given up my last confessor. I
come to ask you the favour to receive me among your penitents. Oh! do
not reject nor rebuke me, for the dear Saviour's sake! Be not afraid to
have at your side such a monster of iniquity! But before going farther, I
have two favours to ask from you. The first is, that you will never do
anything to know my name; the second is, that you will never put me
any of those questions by which so many penitents are lost and so
many priests for ever destroyed. Twice I have been lost by those
questions. We come to our confessors that they may throw upon our
guilty souls the pure waters which flow from heaven to purify us; and,
instead of that, with their unmentionable questions, they pour oil on the
burning fires which arc already raging in our poor sinful hearts. Oh!
dear father, let me become your penitent, that you may help me to go
and weep with Magdalene at the Saviours feet! Do respect me, as He
respected that true model of all the sinful but repenting women! Did
Our Saviour put to her any question? did He extort from her the history
of things which a sinful woman cannot say without forgetting the
respect she owes to herself and to God? No! You told us, not long ago,
that the only thing our Saviour did was to look at her tears and her love.
Well, please do that, and you will save me!"
I was a very young priest, and never had any words so sublime come to
my ears in the confessional-box.