Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/69

65

MUST now come to a deed in which 1 had some part, and which I look back upon with great horror and pain. In it I was not the principal sufferer. It is not necessary to attempt to excuse myself in this or any other case. Those who judge fairly, will make allowances for me, under the fear and force, the command and examples, before me. It was about five months after I took the veil, the weather was cool, perhaps in October. One day the Superior sent for me and several other nuns, to receive her commands. 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 St. Frances up stairs." A command so unusual, with her tone and manner, excited in me the most gloomy anticipations. It did not strike me as strange that St. Frances should be in the room to which the Superior directed us; 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. I had seen ber there a little before. What terrified me was, first, the Superior's angry manner; second, the expression she used, a French term, 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