Italian priest had given me a few letters of introduction to French
ladies with whom, when they had sojourned at Florence, he had made
acquaintance. These ladies were very strict devotees, formal observers
of those decorums by which devotion proclaims itself to the world. They
had received me not only with kindness but with marked respect. They
chose to exalt into the noblest self-sacrifice the act of my leaving M.
Selby's house. Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to it in the
priest's letter, they represented me as quitting a luxurious home and an
idolising husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the
enemy of my religion. This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its
fumes. I recoiled from the thought of shattering the pedestal to which I
had found myself elevated. What if I should discover my daughter in one
from the touch of whose robe these holy women would recoil as from the
rags of a leper! No; it would be impossible for me to own her--
impossible for me to give her the shelter of my roof. Nay, if discovered
to hold any commune with such an outcast, no explanation, no excuse short
of the actual truth, would avail with these austere judges of human
error. And the actual truth would be yet deeper disgrace. I reasoned
away my conscience. If I looked for example in the circles in which I
had obtained reverential place, I could find no instance in which a girl
who had fallen from virtue was not repudiated by her nearest relatives.
Nay, when I thought of my own mother, had not her father refused to see
her, to acknowledge her child, from no other offence than that of a
misalliance which wounded the family pride? That pride, alas! was in my
blood--my sole inheritance from the family I sprang from.

"Thus it went on, till I had grave symptoms of a disease which rendered
the duration of my life uncertain. My conscience awoke and tortured me.
I resolved to take the veil. Vanity and pride again! My resolution was
applauded by those whose opinion had so swayed my mind and my conduct.