You cannot guess
the importance attached to the discovery of a secret in a convent,
(particularly when the remission of our own offences depends on the
discovery of those of others.) “One evening as the young monk and his darling novice were in the
garden, the former plucked a peach, which he immediately offered to his
favourite; the latter accepted it with a movement I thought rather
awkward--it seemed like what I imagined would be the reverence of a
female. The young monk divided the peach with a knife; in doing so, the
knife grazed the finger of the novice, and the monk, in agitation
inexpressible, tore his habit to bind up the wound. I saw it all--my
mind was made up on the business--I went to the Superior that very
night. The result may be conceived. They were watched, but cautiously at
first. They were probably on their guard; for, for some time it defied
even my vigilance to make the slightest discovery. It is a situation
incomparably tantalizing, when suspicion is satisfied of her own
suggestions, as of the truth of the gospel, but still wants the _little
fact_ to make them credible to others. One night that I had, by
direction of the Superior, taken my station in the gallery, (where I was
contented to remain hour after hour, and night after night, amid
solitude, darkness, and cold, for the chance of the power of retaliating
on others the misery inflicted on myself)--One night, I thought I heard
a step in the gallery--I have told you that I was in the dark--a light
step passed me. I could hear the broken and palpitating respiration of
the person. A few moments after, I heard a door open, and knew it to be
the door of the young monk. I knew it; for by long watching in the dark,
and accustoming myself to number the cells, by the groan from one, the
prayer from another, the faint shriek of restless dreams from a third,
my ear had become so finely graduated, that I could instantly
distinguish the opening of _that door_, from which (to my sorrow) no
sound had ever before issued. I was provided with a small chain, by
which I fastened the handle of the door to a contiguous one, in such a
manner, that it was impossible to open either of them from the inside. I
then hastened to the Superior, with a pride of which none but the
successful tracer of a guilty secret in convents, can have any
conception. I believe the Superior was himself agitated by the luxury of
the same feelings, for he was awake and up in his apartment, attended by
_four monks_, whom you may remember.” I shuddered at the remembrance. “I
communicated my intelligence with a voluble eagerness, not only unsuited
to the respect I owed these persons, but which must have rendered me
almost unintelligible, yet they were good enough not only to overlook
this violation of decorum, which would in any other case have been
severely punished, but even to supply certain pauses in my narrative,
with a condescension and facility truly miraculous. I felt what it was
to acquire importance in the eyes of a Superior, and gloried in all the
dignified depravity of an informer. We set out without losing a
moment,--we arrived at the door of the cell, and I pointed out with
triumph the chain unremoved, though a slight vibration, perceptible at
our approach, showed the wretches within were already apprised of their
danger. I unfastened the door,--how they must have shuddered! The
Superior and his satellites burst into the cell, and _I_ held the light. You tremble,--why? I was guilty, and I wished to witness guilt that
palliated mine, at least in the opinion of the convent. I had only
violated the laws of nature, but they had outraged the decorum of a
convent, and, of course, in the creed of a convent, there was no
proportion between our offences. Besides, I was anxious to witness
misery that might perhaps equal or exceed my own, and this is a
curiosity not easily satisfied. It is actually possible to become
_amateurs in suffering_. I have heard of men who have travelled into
countries where horrible executions were to be daily witnessed, for the
sake of that excitement which the sight of suffering never fails to
give, from the spectacle of a tragedy, or an _auto da fe_, down to the
writhings of the meanest reptile on whom you can inflict torture, and
feel that torture is the result of your own power. It is a species of
feeling of which we never can divest ourselves,--a triumph over those
whose sufferings have placed them below us, and no wonder,--suffering is
always an indication of weakness,--we glory in our impenetrability. _I_
did, as we burst into the cell. The wretched husband and wife were
locked in each others arms. You may imagine the scene that followed. Here I must do the Superior reluctant justice. He was a man (of course
from his conventual feelings) who had no more idea of the intercourse
between the sexes, than between two beings of a different species. The
scene that he beheld could not have revolted him more, than if he had
seen the horrible loves of the baboons and the Hottentot women, at the
Cape of Good Hope; or those still more loathsome unions between the
serpents of South America and their human victims(7), when they can
catch them, and twine round them in folds of unnatural and ineffable
union. He really stood as much astonished and appalled, to see two human
beings of different sexes, who dared to love each other in spite of
monastic ties, as if he had witnessed the horrible conjunctions I have
alluded to. Had he seen vipers engendering in that frightful knot which
seems the pledge of mortal hostility, instead of love, he could not have
testified more horror,--and I do him the justice to believe he felt all
he testified. Whatever affectation he might employ on points of
conventual austerity, there was none here. Love was a thing he always
believed connected with sin, even though consecrated by the name of a
sacrament, and called marriage, as it is in our church. But, love in a
convent!--Oh, there is no conceiving his rage; still less is it possible
to conceive the majestic and overwhelming extent of that rage, when
strengthened by principle, and sanctified by religion. I enjoyed the
scene beyond all power of description. I saw those wretches, who had
triumphed over me, reduced to my level in a moment,--their passions all
displayed, and the display placing me a hero triumphant above all. I had
crawled to the shelter of their walls, a wretched degraded outcast, and
what was my crime? Well,--you shudder, I have done with that. I can only
say want drove me to it. And here were beings whom, a few months before,
I would have knelt to as to the images round the shrine,--to whom, in
the moments of my desperate penitence, I would have clung as to the
“horns of the altar,” all brought as low, and lower than myself.