hought should be
confessed in order that the confessor may judge of their mortal or venial
character. What sort of a chain this links around the strictly
conscientious I would attempt to portray, if I could. But it must have been
worn to understand its torturing character! Suffice it to say that, for
months past, according to this standard, I had not made a good confession
at all! And now, filled with remorse for my past sacrilegious sinfulness, I
resolved on making a new general confession to the _religieux_ alluded to.
But this confessor's scrupulosity exceeded everything I had, hitherto,
encountered. He told me some things were mortal sins, which I had never
before imagined could be such: and thus threw so many fetters around my
conscience, that a host of anxieties for my first general confession was
awakened within me. I had no resource then, but to re-make that, and thus I
afresh entered on the bitter path I had deemed I should never have occasion
again to tread. But if my first confession had lacerated my feelings, what
was it to this one? Words have no power, language has no expression to
characterise the emotion that marked it!

"The difficulty I felt in making a full and explicit avowal all that
distressed me, furnished my confessor with a plea for his assistance in the
questioning department, and fain would I conceal much of what passed then,
as a foul blot on my memory. I soon found that he made mortal sins of what
my first confessor had professed to treat but lightly, and he did not
scruple to say that I had never yet made a good confession at all. My ideas
therefore became more complicated and confused as I proceeded, until, at
length, I began to feel doubtful of ever accomplishing my task in any
degree satisfactorily: and my mind and memory were positively racked to
recall every iota of every kind, real or imaginary, that might, if omitted,
hereafter be occasion of uneasiness. Things heretofore held comparatively
trifling were recounted, and pronounced damnable sins: and as, day after
day, I knelt at the feet of that man, answering questions and listening to
admonitions calculated to bow my very soul to the dust, I felt as though I
should hardly be able to raise my head again!" (page 63.)

This is the peace which flows from auricular confession. I solemnly declare
that except in a few cases, in which the confidence of the penitents is
bordering on idiocy, or in which they have been transformed into immoral