othing. Even when the priest was young,
he was truly the father, the other the child. In our days it is just
the contrary; the layman, in cities at least, is generally more learned
than the priest. Even the peasant, if he be a father of a family, with
business and interests, or has served in the army, has more experience
than his cure, and more real knowledge; his speaking more
ungrammatically is of no consequence. But the contrast is still more
striking, when this inexperienced priest, who has known nothing but his
own seminary, sees at his knees a fashionable, intriguing, impassioned
woman, who now, perhaps, at the close of her seventh lustrum, has
passed through everything sentimental and ideal. What! _she_ ask his
advice? _she_ call him _father_? Why, every word she utters is a
revelation for him--astonishment and fear take possession of his soul.
If he is not wise enough to hold his tongue, he will be ridiculous.
His penitent, who came to him all trembling, will depart laughing.

IV. There is another difference which will strike only those who are
acquainted with the middle ages--_the language was not developed_ as it
now is. No one being then acquainted with our habits of analysing and
developing, confession was naturally reduced to a simple declaration of
sin, without any detail of circumstances. Still less could they deduce
the phenomena which accompany passion--the desires, doubts, and fears
which give it the power of illusion, and make it contagious. There
was, if you will, confession; but the woman could not express herself,
nor could the priest have understood her; she was not able to reveal
the depth of her thought, nor could he have reached it if she had done
so. Confession on one side, and sentence on the other, nothing more;
there was neither dialogue, confidence, nor disclosing of the heart.

If the priest has not enough imagination and wit to put the questions
from the store of his own mind, he has had in his hands for the last
two centuries ready-made questions, which he may ask in due order, and
by which he will force his fair penitent to dive into her own thoughts,
sift her own secrets to deliver them over to him, open her heart's
fibres, as one may say, thread by thread, and wind off before him the
complete skein, which he henceforth holds in his hands.

This terrible instrument of inquiry, which in unskilful hands may
corrupt the soul by its injudicious probing, must necessarily be
mo