Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/257

Rh feel ready wholly and humbly to make my confessions to him, if he and the good Catholics here would not consider it as a conversion to their church, from which I never was further than I am at the present moment.

But seriously, I would warn Protestant families from sending their young daughters into Convents such as this. Young people are not equal to a combat with these Catholics, more especially as the Protestant church still possesses so much faith in Catholic authority, although with her it has another object than that of the Catholics.

April 17th.—Edith's first communion, according to the Catholic custom, took place to-day, with great solemnity, in the little chapel Mater Admirabilis. Père Marie Louis preached, and the nuns sang so beautifully, that I was affected to tears, although, within myself, I made a protest against the one-sided comprehension of the church which furnished the subject of his discourse, and the equally one-sided distribution of the sacramental elements,—the bread alone,—when Christ, in his communion of the Last Supper, gave both of the bread and the wine to his followers. The Catholic church, which places itself in Christ's stead, puts the people—they who are not priests—upon half rations. And not merely with regard to the sacrament of the Last Supper. The sphere of intelligence also is circumscribed or diminished. The young, lately-converted, Catholic-girl, with whom I have dined alone for the last two days, said to me yesterday, at dinner, reproachfully:

“You will now soon be leaving this Convent, and