onfessed to you
what they had done with their confessor, you have not asked them how long
it was since they had sinned with him, and in spite of yourselves you think
that I am the guilty man. This does, naturally, embarrass you when you are
in my presence and at my table. But please ask them, when they come again
to confess, how many months or years have passed away since their last love
affair with a confessor, and you will see that you may suppose that you are
in the house of an honest man. You may look me in the face and have no fear
to address me as if I were still worthy of your esteem; for, thanks be to
God, I am not the guilty priest who has ruined and destroyed so many souls
here."

The curate had hardly pronounced the last word when a general "We thank
you; for you have taken away a mountain from our shoulders," fell from
almost every lip. "It is a fact that, notwithstanding the good opinion we
had of you," said several, "we were in fear that you had missed the right
track, and fallen down with your fair penitents into the ditch."

I felt myself much relieved; for I was one of those who, in spite of
myself, had my secret fears about the honesty of our host. When, very early
the next morning, I had begun to hear the confessions, one of those
unfortunate victims of the confessor's depravity came to me, and in the
midst of many tears and sobs, she told me with great details what I repeat
here in a few lines:--

"I was only nine years old when my first confessor began to do very
criminal things with me when I was at his feet, confessing my sins. At
first I was ashamed and much disgusted; but soon after I became so depraved
that I was looking eagerly for every opportunity of meeting him either in
his own house, or in the church, in the vestry, and many times in his own
garden when it was dark at night. That priest did not remain very long; he
was removed, to my great regret, to another place, where he died. He was
succeeded by another one, who seemed at first to be a very holy man. I made
to him a general confession with, it seems to me, a sincere desire to give
up for ever that sinful life, but I fear that my confessions became a cause
of sin to that good priest; for not long after my confession was finished,
he declared to me in the confessional his love, with such passionate words
that he soon brought me down again into my former criminal habits with him.
This lasted six years, when my parents removed to this pl