words of the Superior appeared emblazoned on the darkened walls of my cell in characters of flame. I shuddered,—I cried aloud, though conscious that my voice would be echoed by no friendly answering tones in a community of sixty persons,—such is the sterility of humanity in a convent. At last my very fears recovered me by their excess. I said to myself, “They dare not murder me,—they dare not incarcerate me;—they are answerable to the court to which I have appealed for my forthcoming,—they dare not be guilty of any violence.” Just as I had come to this comfortable conclusion, which indeed was the triumph of the sophistry of hope, the door of my cell was thrown open, and the Superior, attended by his four satellites, re-entered. My eyes were dim from the darkness in which I had been left, but I could distinguish that they carried with them a rope and a piece of sackcloth. I drew the most frightful presages from this apparatus. I altered my reasoning in a moment, and instead of saying they dare not do so and so, I instantly argued, “What dare they not do? I am in their power,—they know it. I have provoked them to the utmost,—what is it monks will not do in the impotence of their malignity?—what is to become of me?” They advanced, and I imagined the rope was to strangle me, and the sackcloth to inclose my murdered body. A thousand images of blood swam before me,—a gush of fire choaked up my respiration. The groans of a thousand victims seemed to rise from the vaults of the convent, to which they had been hurried by a fate like mine. I know not what is death, but I am convinced I suffered the agonies of many deaths in that moment. My first impulse was to throw myself on my knees. I said, “I am in your power,—I am guilty in your eyes,—accomplish your purpose, but do not keep me long in pain.” The Superior, without heeding, or perhaps hearing me, said, “Now you are in the posture that becomes you.” At hearing these words, which sounded less dreadful than I had feared, I prostrated myself to the ground. A few moments before I would have thought this a degradation, but fear is very debasing. I had a dread of violent means,—I was very young, and life was not the less attractive from its being arrayed only in the brilliant drapery of imagination. The monks observed my posture,—they feared its effect on the Superior. They said, in that choral monotony,—that discordant unison that had frozen my blood when I knelt in the same posture but a few nights before, “Reverend father, do not suffer yourself to be imposed on by this prostituted humiliation,—the time for mercy is past. You gave him his moments of deliberation,—he refused to avail himself of them. You come now not to listen to pleadings, but to inflict justice.” At these words, that announced every thing 

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