shoulders for the length
of time that it would take to repeat a Miserere. In conclusion, he
informed me that the nuns of Anticaille would probably lend me the
necessary instrument of flagellation; but, if they made any difficulty
about it, he was benevolently ready to furnish me with a new and special
cat-o'-nine-tails of his own making.

Never was woman more amazed or more angry than I, when I first read this
letter. "What!" cried I to myself, "does this man seriously recommend me
to lash my own shoulders? Just Heaven, what impertinence! And yet, is it
not my duty to put up with it? Does not this apparent insolence proceed
from the pen of a holy man? If he tells me to flog my wickedness out of
me, is it not my bounden duty to lay on the scourge with all my might
immediately? Sinner that I am! I am thinking remorsefully of my plump
shoulders and the dimples on my back, when I ought to be thinking of
nothing but the cat-o'-nine-tails and obedience to Father Deveaux?"

These reflections soon gave me the resolution which I had wanted at
first. I was ashamed to ask the nuns for an instrument of flagellation;
so I made one for myself of stout cord, pitilessly knotted at very short
intervals. This done, I shut myself up while the nuns were at prayer,
uncovered my shoulders, and rained such a shower of lashes on them,
in the first fervour of my newly-awakened zeal, that I fairly flogged
myself down on the ground, flat on my nose, before I had repeated more
of the Miserere than the first two or three lines.

I burst out crying, shedding tears of spite against myself when I ought
to have been shedding tears of devotional gratitude for the kindness of
Father Deveaux. All through the night I never closed my eyes, and in the
morning I found my poor shoulders (once so generally admired for their
whiteness) striped with all the colours of the rainbow. The sight threw
me into a passion, and I profanely said to myself while I was dressing,
"The next time I see Father Deveaux, I will give my tongue full swing,
and make the hair of that holy man stand on end with terror!" A few
hours afterwards, he came to the convent, and all my resolution melted
away at the sight of him. His imposing exterior had such an effect on
me that I could only humbly entreat him to excuse me from indicting a
second flagellation on myself. He smiled, benignantly, and granted my
request with a saintly amiability. "Give me the cat-o'-nine-tails," he
said, in con