Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/194

Rh prison. I mention this to guard you agaiust being deceived by what she may say. The devil has such a hold upon people now-a-days, that there is danger that some might believe her story."

Before he concluded his speech, as was declared, he burst into tears, and appeared to be quite overcome. When the congregation had been dismissed, a number of them came round him, and he told some of them that I was Antichrist; I was not a human being, as he was convinced, but an evil spirit, who had got among the Catholics, and being admitted into the nunnery, where I had learnt the rules so that I could repeat them. My appearance, he declared, was a fulfilment of prophecy, as Antichrist is foretold to be coming, in order to break down, if possible, the Catholic religion.

The journeyman carpenter had entered the house where I lodged under these impressions, and had conversed some time on the subject, without any suspicion that I was near. After he had railed against me with such violence, as I afterwards learned, the master of the house informed him that he knew something of the nun, and mentioned that she charged the priests of the Seminary with crimes of an awful character; in reply to which the carpenter expressed the greatest disbelief.

"You can satisfy yourself," said the master of the house, "if you will take the trouble to step upstairs, for she lives in my family."

"I see her!" he exclaimed—"No, I would not see the wretched creature for anything. I wonder you are not afraid to have her in your house.—She will bewitch you all.—The evil spirit"

After some persuasion, however, he came into the room where I was sitting, but looked at me with every appearance of dread and curiosity: and his exclamations, and subsequent conversation, in Canadian French, were very ludicrous.

"Eh bin," he began on first seeing me, "c'est ici la malheureuse?" (Well, is this the poor creature?) But