guilty of a step that violates the decorum of a convent, I am sorry,—but I am not reprehensible. Those who forced me into a convent, are guilty of the violence which is falsely ascribed to me. I am determined, if it be possible, to change my situation. You see the efforts I have already made, be assured they will never cease. Disappointment will only redouble their energy; and if it be in the power of heaven or earth to procure the annulment of my vows, there is no power in either I will not have recourse to.” I expected he would not have heard me out, but he did. He even listened with calmness, and I prepared myself to encounter and repel that alternation of reproach and remonstrance, of solicitation and menace, which they so well know how to employ in a convent. “Your repugnance to a conventual life is then invincible?” “It is.” “But to what do you object?—not to your duties, for you perform them with the most edifying punctuality,—not to the treatment you receive, for it has been the most indulgent that our discipline admits of,—not to the community itself, who are all disposed to cherish and love you;—of what do you complain?” “Of the life itself,—that comprehends every thing. I am not fit to be a monk.” “Remember, I implore you, that though the forms of earthly courts must be obeyed, from the necessity that makes us dependent on human institutions, in all matters between man and man, they never can be available in matters between God and man. Be assured, my deluded child, that if all the courts on earth pronounced you absolved from your vows this moment, your own conscience never can absolve you. All your ignominious life, it will continue to reproach you with the violation of a vow, whose breach man has connived at, but God has not. And, at your last hour, how horrible will those reproaches be!” “Not so horrible as at the hour I took that vow, or rather at the hour when it was extorted.” “Extorted!” “Yes, my father, yes,—I take Heaven to witness against you. On that disastrous morning, your anger, your remonstrances, your pleadings, were as ineffectual as they are now, till you flung the body of my mother before my feet.” “And do you reproach me with my zeal in the cause of your salvation?” “I do not wish to reproach you. You know the step I have taken, you must be aware I will pursue it with all the powers of nature,—that I will never rest till my vows are annulled, while a hope of it remains,—and that a soul, determined as mine, can convert despair itself into hope. Surrounded, suspected, watched as I have been, I yet found the means of conveying my papers to the hands of the advocate. Calculate the strength of that resolution which could effectuate such a measure in the very heart of a convent. Judge of the futility of all future 

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