then got on my knees with great fervour, and I blush to confess it,
immediately fell as fast asleep as a dormouse. This went on for several
nights, when Father Deveaux finding that my midnight devotions were
rather too much for me, was so obliging as to prescribe another species
of pious exercise, in a letter which he wrote to me with his own hand.
The holy father, after deeply regretting my inability to keep awake,
informed me that he had a new act of penitence to suggest to me by the
performance of which I might still hope to expiate my sins. He then, in
the plainest terms, advised me to have recourse to the discipline of
flagellation, every Friday, using the cat-o'-nine-tails on my bare
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