a new source of innumerable criminal thoughts, desires, and actions.

"A month later, we were obliged, by the rules of our convent, to go to
confess; but this time, I was so completely lost that I no longer blushed
at the idea of confessing my shameful sins to a man; it was the very
contrary. I had a real, diabolical pleasure in the thought that I should
have a long conversation with my confessor on those matters, and that he
would ask me more of his strange questions.

"In fact, when I had told him everything, without a blush, he began to
interrogate me, and God knows what corrupting things fell from his lips
into my poor criminal heart! Every one of his questions was thrilling my
nerves, and filling me with the most shameful sensations. After an hour of
this criminal _tete-a-tete_ with my old confessor (for it was nothing else
but a criminal _tete-a-tete_), I perceived that he was as depraved as I was
myself. With some half-covered words, he made me a criminal proposition,
which I accepted with covered words also; and during more than a year, we
have lived together in the most sinful intimacy. Though he was much older
than I, I loved him in the most foolish way. When the course of my convent
instruction was finished, my parents called me back to their home. I was
really glad of that change of residence, for I was beginning to be tired of
my criminal life. My hope was that, under the direction of a better
confessor, I should reconcile myself to God and begin a Christian life.

"Unfortunately for me, my new confessor, who was very young, began also his
interrogations. He soon fell in love with me, and I loved him in a most
criminal way. I have done with him things which I hope you will never
request me to reveal to you, for they are too monstrous to be repeated,
even in the confessional, by a woman to a man.

"I do not say these things to take away the responsibility of my iniquities
with this young confessor from my shoulders, for I think I have been more
criminal than he was. It is my firm conviction that he was a good and holy
priest before he knew me; but the questions he put to me, and the answers I
had to give him, melted his heart--I know it--just as boiling lead would
melt the ice on which it flows.

"I know this is not such a detailed confession as our holy Church requires
me to make, but I have thought it necessary for me to give you this short
history of the life of the greatest and the most miserable sinn