, as soon as he has
received the dangerous pledge of the first secrets, and he will hold it
faster and faster. The two husbands now take shares, for now there are
two--one has the soul, the other the body.

Take notice that in this sharing, one of the two really has the whole;
the other, if he gets anything, gets it by favour. Thought by its
nature is prevailing and absorbing; the master of her thought, in the
natural progress of his sway, will ever go on reducing the part that
seemed to remain in the possession of the other. The husband may think
himself well off, if a widower with respect to the soul, he still
preserves the involuntary, inert, and lifeless possession.

How humiliating, to obtain nothing of what was your own, but by
authorisation and indulgence;[1] to be seen, and followed into your
most private intimacy, by an invisible witness, who governs you and
gives you your allowance; to meet in the street a man who knows better
than yourself your most secret weaknesses, who bows cringingly, turns
and laughs. It is nothing to be powerful, if one is not powerful
alone--alone! God does not allow shares.

It is with this reasoning that the priest is sure to comfort himself in
his persevering efforts to sever this woman from her family, to weaken
her kindred ties, and, particularly, to undermine the rival
authority--I mean, the husband's. The husband is a heavy encumbrance
to the priest. But if this husband suffers at being so well known,
spied, and seen, when he is alone, he who sees all suffers still more.
She comes now every moment to tell innocently of things that transport
him beyond himself. Often would he stop her, and would willingly say,
"Mercy, madam, this is too much!" And though these details make him
suffer the torment of the damned, he wants still more, and requires her
to enter further and further into these avowals, both humiliating for
her, and cruel for him, and to give him the detail of the saddest
circumstances.

The Confessor of a young woman may boldly be termed the jealous secret
enemy of the husband. If there be one exception to this rule (and I am
willing to believe there may be), he is a hero, a saint, a martyr, a
man more than man.

The whole business of the confessor is to insulate this woman, and he
does it conscientiously. It is the duty of him who leads her in the
way of salvation to disengage her gradually from all earthly ties. It
requires time, patience, and skill.