s have I told you that
it is better for a person to die than commit a deadly sin. You know that
I cannot avoid death except by committing a deadly sin. Also I feel sure
that even by prolonging my life by this means, I should be dishonoured
for ever, and a reproach to all. Folks would say of me, 'There is the
lady who ----'.

"All of you,--however you may advise me--would cease to reverence and
love me, for I should seem--and with good cause--unworthy to preside
over and govern you."

"You must neither say nor think that," said the Treasurer. "There is
nothing that we should not attempt to avoid death. Does not our good
father, St. Augustine, say that it is not permissible to anyone to take
his own life, nor to cut off one of his limbs? And are you not acting in
direct opposition to his teaching, if you allow yourself to die when you
could easily prevent it?"

"She says well!" cried all the sisters in chorus. "Madam, for God's sake
obey the physician, and be not so obstinate in your own opinion as to
lose both your body and soul, and leave desolate, and deprived of your
care, the convent where you are so much loved."

"My dear sisters," replied the Abbess, "I much prefer to bow my head to
death than to live dishonoured. And would you not all say--'There is the
woman who did so and so'."

"Do not worry yourself with what people would say: you would never be
reproached by good and respectable people."

"Yes, I should be," replied the Abbess.

The nuns were greatly moved, and retired and held a meeting, and passed
a resolution, which the Prioress was charged to deliver to the Abbess,
which she did in the following words.

"Madam, the nuns are greatly grieved,--for never was any convent more
troubled than this is, and you are the cause. We believe that you are
ill-advised in allowing yourself to die when we are sure you could
avoid it. And, in order that you should comprehend our loyal and
single-hearted love for you, we have decided and concluded in a general
assembly, to save you and ourselves, and if you have connection secretly
with some respectable man, we will do the same, in order that you may
not think or imagine that in time to come you can be reproached by any
of us. Is it not so, my sisters?"

"Yes," they all shouted most willingly.

The Abbess heard the speech, and was much moved by the testimony of the
love the sisters bore her, and consented, though with much regret, that
the doctor's advice should