Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/335

Rh license they do take for themselves. For in our lands they have no such dire treatment to fear as the Romans in old days did mete out to their Vestal virgins which had gone astray. This was verily hateful and abominable in its cruelty; but then they were pagans and abounding in horrors and cruelties. On the contrary we Christians, which do follow after the gentleness of our Lord Christ, should be tender-hearted as he was, and forgiving as he was forgiving. I would describe here in writing the fashion of their punishment; but for very horror my pen doth refuse to indite the same.

Let us now leave these poor recluses, which I do verily believe, once they be shut up in their nunneries, do endure no small hardship. So a Spanish lady one time, seeing them setting to the religious life a very fair and honourable damsel, did thus exclaim: O tristezilla, y en que pecasteis, que tan presto vienes à penitencia, y seis metida en sepultura viva!—"Poor creature, what so mighty sin have you done, that you be so soon brought to penitence and thus buried alive!" And seeing the nuns offering her every complaisance, compliment and welcome, she said: que todo le hedia, hasta el encienso de la yglesia,—"that it all stank in her nostrils, to the very incense in the church."

Now as to these vows of virginity, Heliogabalus did promulgate a law to the effect that no Roman maid, not even a Vestal virgin, was bound to perpetual virginity, saying how that the female sex was over weak for women to be bound to a pact they could never be sure of keeping. And for this reason they that have founded hospitals for the nourishing, rescuing and marrying poor girls, have done a very charitable work, no less