you have been of no effect, and to find you fallen into such evil ways
that, contrary to my wont, I must needs lay a penance upon you. I have
examined your confessor concerning certain crimes with which he is
charged, and he has confessed to me that he has abused your person in
the place where the witnesses say that they saw him. And so I command
that, whereas I had formerly raised you to honourable rank as Mistress
of the Novices, you shall now be the lowest placed of all, and further,
shall eat only bread and water on the ground, and in presence of all
the Sisters, until you have shown sufficient penitence to receive
forgiveness."

Sister Marie had been warned by one of her companions, who was
acquainted with the whole matter, that if she made any reply displeasing
to the Prior, he would put her _in pace_--that is, in perpetual
imprisonment--and she therefore submitted to this sentence, raising her
eyes to heaven, and praying Him who had enabled her to withstand sin,
to grant her patience for the endurance of tribulation. The Prior of St.
Martin's further commanded that for the space of three years she should
neither speak with her mother or kinsfolk when they came to see her, nor
send any letters save such as were written in community.

The miscreant then went away and returned no more, and for a long time
the unhappy maiden continued in the tribulation that I have described.
But her mother, who loved her best of all her children, was much
astonished at receiving no tidings from her; and told one of her sons,
who was a prudent and honourable gentleman, (6) that she thought her
daughter was dead, and that the nuns were hiding it from her in order
that they might receive the yearly payment. She, therefore, begged him
to devise some means of seeing his sister.