She said in a stifled
voice, “Advance,--break your vows,--but you must rush to perjury over
the body of your mother.” I attempted to raise her, but she clung to the
ground, repeating the same words; and her magnificent dress, that
overspread the floor of stone with gems and velvet, frightfully
contrasted her posture of humiliation, and the despair that burned in
her eyes, as she raised them to me for a moment. Convulsed with agony
and horror, I reeled into the arms of the Superior, who seized that
moment to bear me to the church. My mother followed,--the ceremony
proceeded. I vowed chastity, poverty, and obedience, and in a few
moments my destiny was decided. * * * * *

“Day followed day for many a month, of which I have no recollections,
nor wish to have any. I must have experienced many emotions, but they
all subsided like the waves of the sea under the darkness of a midnight
sky,--their fluctuation continues, but there is no light to mark their
motion, or trace when they rise and fall. A deep stupor pervaded my
senses and soul; and perhaps, in this state, I was best fitted for the
monotonous existence to which I was doomed. It is certain that I
performed all the conventual functions with a regularity that left
nothing to be blamed, and an apathy that left nothing for praise. My
life was a sea without a tide. The bell did not toll for service with
more mechanical punctuality than I obeyed the summons. No automaton,
constructed on the most exquisite principles of mechanism, and obeying
those principles with a punctuality almost miraculous, could leave the
artist less room for complaint or disappointment, than I did the
Superior and community. I was always first in my place in the choir. I
received no visits in the parlour,--when I was permitted to go, I
declined the permission. If penance was enjoined, I submitted; if
relaxation was permitted, I never partook of it. I never asked a
dispensation from morning prayers, or from vigils. I was silent in the
refectory,--in the garden I walked alone. I neither thought, nor felt,
nor lived,--if life depends on consciousness, and the motions of the
will. I slept through my existence like the Simorgh in the Eastern
fable, but this sleep was not to last long. My abstraction and calmness
would not do for the Jesuits. My stupor, my noiseless tread, my fixed
eyes, my ghastly silence, might indeed have impressed a superstitious
community with the idea that it was no human creature who stalked
through their cloisters, and haunted their choir. But they had quite
different ideas. They considered all this as a tacit reproach to the
struggles, the squabbles, the intrigues, and the circumventions, in
which they were immersed, body and soul, from morn till night. Perhaps
they thought I was lying in reserve, only to watch them. Perhaps there
might have been a dearth of some matter of curiosity or complaint in the
convent just then,--a very little serves for either. However it was,
they began to revive the old story of my being deranged, and resolved to
make the most of it. They whispered in the refectory, consulted in the
garden,--shook their heads, pointed at me in the cloister, and finally,
I faithfully believe, worked themselves into the conviction that what
they wished or imagined was actually true. Then they all felt their
consciences interested in the investigation; and a select party, headed
by an old monk of influence and reputation, waited on the Superior. They
stated to him my abstraction, my mechanical movements, my automaton
figure, my meanless words, my stupified devotion, my total alienation
from the spirit of the monastic life, while my scrupulous, _wooden_,
_jointless_ exactness in its forms was only a mockery. The Superior
heard them with great indifference. He had held secret intelligence with
my family, had communicated with the Director, and pledged himself that
I should be a monk. He had succeeded by dint of exertions, (the result
of which has been seen), and now cared very little whether I was mad or
not. With a grave air he forbid their further interference in the
matter, and reserved its future cognizance to himself. They retired
defeated, but not disappointed, and they all pledged themselves to each
other to _watch me_; that is, to harass, persecute, and torment me into
being the very character with which their malice, their curiosity, or
their mere industry of idleness and wantonness of unoccupied invention,
had invested me already. From that hour the whole convent was in a
tumult of conspiracy and combination. Doors were clapped to wherever I
was heard to approach; and three or four would stand whispering near
where I walked, and clear their throats, and exchange signs, and pass
_audibly_ to the most trifling topics in my hearing, as if to intimate,
while they affected to conceal it, that their last topic had been _me_. I laughed at this internally. I said to myself, “Poor perverted beings,
with what affectation of dramatic bustle and contrivance you labour to
diversify the misery of your hopeless vacancy;--you struggle,--I
submit.” Soon the toils they were preparing began to tighten round me. They would throw themselves in my way with an assiduity I could not
avoid, and an appearance of kindness I did not willingly repel. They
would say, in the blandest tones, “My dear brother, you are
melancholy,--you are devoured with chagrin,--would to God our fraternal
efforts could banish your regrets. But from what arises that melancholy
that appears to consume you?” At these words I could not help fixing on
them eyes full of reproaches, and I believe of tears,--but I did not
utter a word. The state in which they saw me, was a sufficient cause for
the melancholy with which I was reproached. * * * * * *

“This attack having failed, another method was tried. They attempted to
make me a party in the parties of the convent. They told me a thousand
things of unjust partialities,--of unjust punishments, daily to be
witnessed in the convent. They talked of a sickly brother being
compelled to attend matins, while the physician pronounced his
attendance on them must be his death,--_and he died_,--while a young
favourite, in the bloom of health, had a dispensation from matins
whenever he pleased to lie till nine in the morning;--of complaints that
the confessional was not attended to as it ought,--and this might have
made some impression on me, till another complainant added, and the
_turning-box is not attended to as it ought to be_. This union of
dissonant sounds,--this startling transition from a complaint of
neglecting the mysteries of the soul in its profoundest communion with
God, to the lowest details of the abuses of conventual discipline,
revolted me at once. I had with difficulty concealed my disgust till
then, and it was now so obvious, that the _party_ gave up their attempt
for the moment, and beckoned to an _experienced_ monk to join me in my
solitary walk, as I broke from them.