commands at a particular room. We found the Bishop and some priests with
her; and speaking in an unusual tone of fierceness and authority, she
said, "Go to the room for the Examination of Conscience, and drag Saint
Francis up-stairs." Nothing more was necessary than this unusual
command, with the tone and manner which, accompanied it, to excite in me
most gloomy anticipation. It did not strike me as strange, that St.
Francis should be in the room to which the Superior directed us. It was
an apartment to which we were often sent to prepare for the communion,
and to which we voluntarily went, whenever we felt the compunctions
which our ignorance of duty, and the misinstructions we received,
inclined us to seek relief from self-reproach. Indeed, I had seen her
there a little before. What terrified me was, first, the Superior's
angry manner, second, the expression she used, being a French term,
whose [illegible] we had learnt in the Convent, and whose meaning is rather
softened when translated into _drag_; third, the place to which we
were directed to take the interesting young nun, and the persons
assembled there as I supposed to condemn her. My fears were such,
concerning the fate that awaited her, and my horror at the idea that she
was in some way to be sacrificed, that I would have given any thing to
be allowed to stay where I was. But I feared the consequence of
disobeying the Superior, and proceeded with the rest towards the room
for the examination of conscience.

The room to which we were to proceed from that, was in the second story,
and the place of many a scene of a shameful nature. It is sufficient for
me to say, after what I have said in other parts of this book, that
things had there occurred which made me regard the place with the
greatest disgust Saint Francis had appeared melancholy for some time. I
well knew that she had cause, for she had been repeatedly subject to
trials which I need not name--our common lot. When we reached the room