immediately double-locked on me; this beginning was by no means
calculated to give me a favorable opinion of my situation. I was then
conducted to a large apartment, whose furniture consisted of a wooden
altar at the farther end, on which was a large crucifix, and round it
several indifferent chairs, of the same materials. In this hall of
audience were assembled four or five ill-looking banditti, my comrades in
instruction, who would rather have been taken for trusty servants of the
devil than candidates for the kingdom of heaven. Two of these fellows
were Sclavonians, but gave out they were African Jews, and (as they
assured me) had run through Spain and Italy, embracing the Christian
faith, and being baptised wherever they thought it worth their labor.

Soon after they opened another iron gate, which divided a large balcony
that overlooked a court yard, and by this avenue entered our sister
catechumens, who, like me, were going to be regenerated, not by baptism
but a solemn abjuration. A viler set of idle, dirty, abandoned harlots,
never disgraced any persuasion; one among them, however, appeared pretty
and interesting; she might be about my own age, perhaps a year or two
older, and had a pair of roguish eyes, which frequently encountered mine;
this was enough to inspire me with the desire of becoming acquainted with
her, but she had been so strongly recommended to the care of the old
governess of this respectable sisterhood, and was so narrowly watched by
the pious missionary, who labored for her conversion with more zeal than
diligence, that during the two months we remained together in this house
(where she had already been three) I found it absolutely impossible to
exchange a word with her. She must have been extremely stupid, though
she had not the appearance of it, for never was a longer course of
instruction; the holy man could never bring her to a state of mind fit
for abjuration; meantime she became weary of her cloister, declaring
that, Christian or not, she would stay there no longer; and they were