, when alone, in My presence, without adding to
thine iniquity, by allowing that man to know what should never have been
revealed to him? Do you not feel that you make that man your own accomplice
the very moment that you throw into his heart and soul the mire of your
iniquities? He is as weak as you are; he is not less a sinner than
yourself; what has tempted you will tempt him; what has made you weak will
make him weak? what has polluted you will pollute him; what has thrown you
down into the dust will throw him down into the dust. Is it not enough that
My eyes had to look upon your iniquities? must my ears to-day listen to
your impure conversation with that man? Were that man as holy as My prophet
David, may he not fall before the unchaste unveiling of the new Bathsheba?
Were he as strong as Sampson, may he not find in you his tempting Delilah?
Were he as generous as Peter, may he not become a traitor at the
maid-servant's voice?"

Perhaps the world has never seen a more terrible, desperate, solemn
struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of the poor trembling
young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has to decide whether or not she
will open her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God,
united to the no less infallible voice of her womanly honour and
self-respect, tell her never to reveal to any man!

The history of that secret, fierce, desperate, and deadly struggle has
never yet, so far as I know, been fully given. It would draw the tears of
admiration and compassion of the whole world, if it could be written with
its simple, sublime, and terrible realities.

How many times I have wept as a child when some noble-hearted and
intelligent young girl, or some respectable married woman, yielding to the
sophisms with which I, or some other confessor, had persuaded them to give
up their self-respect, their womanly dignity, to speak with me on matters
on which a decent woman would never say a word with a man! They told me of
their invincible repugnance, their horror of such questions and answers,
and they asked me to have pity on them. Yes! I often wept bitterly on my
degradation when a priest of Rome! I felt all the strength, the grandeur,
the holiness of their motives for being silent on those defiling matters. I
could not but admire them. It seemed, at times, that they were speaking the
language of angels of light; that I ought to fall at their feet, and ask
their pardon for having spoken to