All Madrid believes you to be no more; your relations are thoroughly persuaded of your death, and the nuns your partisans have assisted at your funeral. Your existence can never be suspected; I have taken such precautions, as must render it an impenetrable mystery. Then abandon all thoughts of a world from which you are eternally separated, and employ the few hours which are allowed you, in preparing for the next.”

This exordium led me to expect something terrible. I trembled, and would have spoken to deprecate her wrath: but a motion of the domina commanded me to be silent. She proceeded.

“Though of late years unjustly neglected, and now opposed by many of our misguided sisters, (whom heaven convert!) it is my intention to revive the laws of our order in their full force. That against incontinence is severe, but no more than so monstrous an offence demands: submit to it, daughter, without resistance; you will find the benefit of patience and resignation in a better life than this. Listen then to the sentence of

St.