uncle's house, with a feeling of shame and uneasiness, as
if I had done a bad action and feared lest I should be detected. My trouble
was much increased when my uncle, jestingly, said: "now that you have been
to confess, you will be a good boy. But if you are not a better boy, you
will be a more learned one, if your confessor has taught you what mine did
when I confessed for the first time."

I blushed and remained silent. My aunt said: "you must feel happy, now that
you have made your confession: do you not?"

I gave an evasive answer, but could not entirely conceal the confusion
which overwhelmed me. I went to bed early; but I could hardly sleep.

I thought that I was the only boy whom the priest had asked these polluting
questions: but great was my confusion, the next day when on going to
school, I learned that my companions had not been happier than I had been.
The only difference was that, instead of being grieved as I was, they
laughed at it.

"Did the priest ask you this and that," they would demand laughing
boisterously; I refused to reply, and said: "are you not ashamed to speak
of these things."

"Ah! Ah! how scrupulous you are:" continued they, "if it is not a sin for
the priest to speak to us on these matters, how can it be a sin for us to
laugh at it." I felt confounded, not knowing what to answer. But my
confusion increased not a little, when soon after, I perceived that the
young girls of the school had not been less polluted, or scandalized than
the boys. Although keeping at a sufficient distance from us to prevent us
from understanding every thing they had to say on their confessional
experience, those girls were sufficiently near to let us hear many things
which it would have been better for us not to know. Some of them seemed
thoughtful, sad and shameful: but several laughed heartily at what they had
learned in the confessional box.

I was very indignant against the priest; and thought in myself, that he was
a very wicked man, for having put to us such repelling questions. But I was
wrong. That priest was honest; he was only doing his duty, as I have known
since, when studying the theologians of Rome. The Rev. Mr. Beaubien was a
real gentleman, and if he had been free to follow the dictates of his
honest conscience it is my strong conviction he would never have sullied
our young hearts with such impure ideas. But what has the honest conscience
of a priest to do in the confessional, except to be s