midst of nature,
beneath the full sunshine, the prisoner regained her soul, withstood
the stranger spirit, dared to be herself, to use her own will.
Girard's two spies were far from edified thereat. On their return from
this short journey, from the 17th to the 22nd May, they warned him of
the change. He was convinced of it from his own experience. She fought
against the trance, seeming no longer wishful to obey aught save
reason.

He had thought to hold her both by his power of charming and through
the holiness of his high office, and, lastly, by right of possession
and carnal usage. But he had no hold upon her at all. The youthful
soul, which, after all, had not been so much conquered as
treacherously surprised, resumed its own nature. This hurt him.
Besides his business of pedant, his tyranny over the children he
chastised at will, over nuns not less at his disposal, there remained
within a hard bottom of domineering jealousy. He determined to snatch
Cadiere back by punishing this first little revolt, if such a name
could be given to the timid fluttering of a soul rising again from its
long compression. On the 22nd May she confessed to him after her wont;
but he refused to absolve her, declaring her to be so guilty that on
the morrow he would have to lay upon her a very great penance indeed.

What would that be? A fast? But she was weakened and wasted already.
Long prayers, again, were not in fashion with Quietist directors,--were
in fact forbidden. There remained the _discipline_, or bodily
chastisement. This punishment, then everywhere habitual, was enforced
as prodigally in convents as in colleges. It was a simple and summary
means of swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age, carried
out in the churches themselves. The _Fabliaux_ show us an artless
picture of manners, where, after confessing husband and wife, the
priest gave them the discipline without any ceremony, just as they
were, behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were all
punished in the same way.[112]

[112] The Dauphin was cruelly flogged. A boy of fifteen,
according to St. Simon, died from the pain of a like
infliction. The prioress of the Abbey-in-the-Wood, pleaded
before the King against the "afflictive chastisement"
threatened by her superior. For the credit of the convent,
she was spared the public shame; but the superior, to whom
she was consigned, doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The