ved: vast subterraneous
prisons, deep pits without air, staircases that you ascend for ever
without reaching the top, bridges that lead to an abyss, low vaults,
narrow passages of catacombs growing closer and closer. In these
dreadful prisons, which are punishments, you may perceive, moreover,
instruments of torture, wheels, iron collars, whips.

In what, I should like to know, do convents of our time differ from
houses of correction and mad-houses?[4] Many convents seem to unite
the three characters.

I know but one difference between them; whilst the houses of correction
are inspected by the law, and the mad-houses by the police, both stop
at the convent doors; the law is afraid, and dares not pass the
threshold.

The inspection of convents, and the precise designation of their
character, are, however, so much more indispensable in these days, as
they differ in a very serious point from the convents of the old
_regime_.

Those of the last century were properly asylums, where, for a donation
once paid, every noble family, whether living as nobles, or rich
citizens, placed one or more daughters to make a rich son. Once shut
up there, they might live or die as they pleased; they were no longer
cared for. But now _nuns inherit_, they become an object to be gained,
a prey for a hundred thousand snares--an easy prey in their state of
captivity and dependence. A superior, zealous to enrich her community,
has infallible means to force the nun to give up her wealth; she can a
hundred times a-day, under pretence of devotion and penitence, humble,
vex, and even ill-treat her, till she reduces her to despair. Who can
say where asceticism finishes and captation begins, that "_compelle
intrare_" applied to fortune? A financial and administrative spirit
prevails to such a degree in our convents, that this sort of talent is
what they require in a superior before every other. Many of these
ladies are excellent managers. One of them is known in Paris by the
notaries and lawyers, as able to give them lessons in matters of
donations, successions, and wills. Paris need no longer envy Bologna
that learned female jurisconsult, who, occasionally wrapped in a veil,
professed in the chair of her father.

Our modern laws, which date from the Revolution, and which, in their
equity, have determined that the daughter and younger son should not be
without their inheritance, work powerfully in this respect in favour of
the counter-r