nt.

"The daughter of Eve is endowed with a greater degree of curiosity than
man. It occured to me to place myself in a contiguous apartment, where I
could observe if this libertine priest was accustomed to take similar
liberties with the nuns. I did so, and was fully convinced that only the
old left him without being caressed!

"All the others allowed him to do with them as he pleased; and even, in
taking leave of him, did so with the utmost reverence.

"'Is this the respect,' said I to myself, 'that the priests and the spouses
of Christ have for the sacrament of the Eucharist? Shall the poor novice be
enticed to leave the world in order to learn, in this school, such lessons
of self-respect and chastity?'"

Page 163, we read, "The fanatical passion of the nuns for their confessors,
priests, and monks, exceeds belief. That which especially renders their
incarceration endurable is the illimitable opportunity they enjoy of seeing
and corresponding with those persons with whom they are in love. This
freedom localizes and identifies them with the convent so closely that they
are unhappy when, on account of any serious sickness, or while preparing to
take the veil, they are obliged to pass some months in the bosom of their
own families, in company with their fathers, mothers, brothers, and
sisters. It is not to be presumed that these relatives would permit a young
girl to pass many hours each day in a mysterious colloquy with a priest, or
a monk, and maintain with him this continual correspondence. This is a
liberty which they can enjoy in the convent only.

"Many are the hours which the Heloise spends in the confessional, in
agreeable pastime with her Abelard in cassock.

"Others, whose confessors happen to be old, have in addition a spiritual
director, with whom they amuse themselves a long time every day,
_tete-a-tete_, in the parlatorio. When this is not enough, they simulate an
illness, in order to have him alone in their own rooms."

Page 166, we read:--"Another nun, being somewhat infirm, her priest
confessed her in her own room. After a time, the invalid penitent found
herself in what is called an interesting situation, on which account, the
physician declaring that her complaint was dropsy, she was sent away from
the convent."

Page 167:--"A young educanda was in the habit of going down every night to
the convent burial-place, where, by a corridor which communicated with the
vestry, she entered into a collo