Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/214

Rh unconsciousness. We were then requested to add our signatures, which being done, we withdrew, as we entered, I believe, without the sick novice having had any knowledge of our presence, or of her own actions.

A few hours afterwards I was called to assist in laying out her corpse, which was the first intimation I had of her being dead. The Superior, myself, and one or two other novices, had the whole of this melancholy task to perform, being the only persons admitted into the apartment where the body lay. It was swelled very much. We placed it in a coffin, and screwed on the cover alone. On account of the rapid change taking place in the corpse, it was buried about twenty-four hours after death.

Not long after the burial, two brothers of Miss Duranceau came to the Convent, and were greatly distressed when told that she was dead. Tbey complained of not being informed of her sickness; but the Superior assured them that it was at the urgent request of their sister, who was possessed of so much humility, that she thought herself unworthy of attracting the regard of any one, and not fit to be lamented even by her nearest friends. "What was she," she had said, according to the declarations made by the Superior, "what was she that she should cause pain to her family?"

This was not the only occasion on which I was present at the laying out of the dead. I assisted in three other cases. Two of the subjects died of consumption, or some similar disease; one of whom was an old country girl, and the other a squaw. The latter seemed to fall away from the time when she came into the nunnery, until she was reduced almost to a shadow. She left to the Convent a large amount of money.

Several stories were told us at different times, of nuns who had gone into a state of sanctity in the Convent. One, who had excited much attention and wonder by prophesying, was at length found to be in such a