eat is the number of
parishes where women have been destroyed by their confessors, but I will
speak only of one.

When curate of Beauport, I was called by the Rev. Mr. Proulx, curate of St.
Antoine, to preach a retreat (a revival) with the Rev. Mr. Aubry, to his
parishioners, and eight or ten other priests were also invited to come and
help us to hear the confessions.

The very first day after preaching and passing five or six hours in the
confessional, the hospitable curate gave us a supper before going to bed.
But it was evident that a kind of uneasiness pervaded the whole company of
the father confessors. For my own part, I could hardly raise my eyes to
look at my neighbour, and when I wanted to speak a word it seemed that my
tongue was not free as usual; even my throat was as if it were choked; the
articulation of the sounds was imperfect. It was evidently the same with
the rest of the priests. Instead, then, of the noisy and cheerful
conversation of the other meals, there were only a few insignificant words
exchanged with a half-supressed tone.

The Rev. Mr. Proulx (the curate) at first looked as if he were partaking
also of that singular though general despondent feeling. During the first
part of the lunch he hardly said a word; but at last, raising his head and
turning his honest face towards us, in his usual gentlemanly and cheerful
manner, he said:--

"Dear friends, I see that you are all under the influence of the most
painful feelings. There is a burden on you that you can neither shake off
nor bear as you wish. I know the cause of your trouble, and I hope you will
not find fault with me if I help you to recover from that disagreeable
mental condition. You have heard in the confessional the history of many
great sins, but I know that this is not what troubles you. You are all old
enough in the confessional to know the miseries of poor human nature.
Without any more preliminaries I will come to the subject. It is no more a
secret in this place that one of the priests who has preceded me has been
very unfortunate, weak, and guilty with the greatest part of the married
women whom he has confessed. Not more than one in ten have escaped him. I
would not mention this fact had I got it only from the confessional, but I
know it well from other sources, and I can speak of it freely without
breaking the secret seal of the confessional. Now what troubles you is
that, probably, when a good number of those women have c