Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/226

Rh Jesus Christ to become his spouse, which could not be rejected without great guilt.

The Superior told me that I should be richly rewarded if I succeeded. She thought I would soon be made an old (or confidential) nun: and she would give me a most precious relic, with a piece of the heart of Mary Magdalen, and intercede for me with the Virgin.

After I had listened attentively to all these instructions, received from a woman to whom I looked with unbounded respect and veneration, I left her, prepared to put them in practice to the best of my ability, much excited with the hope of accomplishing what I thought a truly great and meritorious act, and one that would ensure the salvation of my friend.

The reader may perhaps recall the disclosures I have heretofore made, of the crimes I had witnessed, and the sufferings I had undergone before this period of my convent life, and wonder how I could possibly have been so far deluded as really to believe what I was thus prepared to say. Such, however, is indeed the truth; except that I must allow that my conscience repeatedly disturbed me, and seriously, too, with the suggestion that I should be guilty of direct deception, if I said either that I was happy in the Convent, or that I had at all times unshaken faith in any of the declarations I was about to make. More than once, too, I was shocked at the idea of deceiving my confiding young friend. But as I believed what I had been so often taught, about the virtue of deception, in certain circumstances, I did my best to smother my scruples.

The promised arrangements were made by the Superior; the old nuns were instructed not to interrupt any conversation they might witness between Miss Ross and myself, and I was directed, at the appointed hour, to read the lecture. I thus easily found the opportunity I sought, and was soon with Miss Ross, while the old nuns appeared very busy in another part