er 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. Her tears and her sobs, mingled with the so
frank declaration of the most humiliating actions, had made upon me such a
profound impression that I was, for some time, unable to speak. It had come
to my mind also that I might be mistaken about her identity, and that
perhaps she was not the young lady that I had imagined. I c