evolution: and that explains the rapid and unheard-of
increase of religious houses.

Nothing stops the monastic recruiters in their zeal for the salvation
of rich souls. You may see them fluttering about heirs and heiresses.
What a premium for the young peasants who people our seminaries is this
prospect of power! Once priests, they may direct fortunes as well as
consciences![5]

Captation, so conspicuous in the busy world, is not so in the convents;
though it is here still more dangerous, being exercised over persons
immured and dependent. There it reigns unbridled, and is formidable
with impunity. For who can know it? Who dares enter here? No one.
Strange! There are houses in France that are estranged to France. The
street is still France; but pass yonder threshold, and you are in a
foreign country which laughs at your laws.

What, then, are their laws? We are ignorant upon the subject. But we
know for certain (for no pains are taken to disguise it) that the
barbarous discipline of the middle ages is preserved in full force.
Cruel contradiction! This system that speaks so much of the
distinction of the soul and the body, and believes it, since it boldly
exposes the confessor to carnal temptations! Well! this very same
system teaches us that the body, distinct from the soul, modifies it by
its suffering; that the soul improves and becomes more pure under the
lash![6] It preaches spiritualism to meet valiantly the seduction of
the flesh, and materialism when required to annihilate the will!

What! when the law forbids to strike even our galley slaves, who are
thieves, murderers, the most ferocious of men--you men of grace, who
speak only of charity, _the good holy Virgin, and the gentle
Jesus_--you strike women!--nay, girls, even children--who, after all,
are only guilty of some trifling weakness!

How are these chastisements administered? This is a question, perhaps,
still more serious. What sort of terms of composition may not be
extorted by fear? At what price does authority sell its indulgence?

Who regulates the number of stripes? Is it you, My Lady Abbess? or
you, Father Superior? What must be the capricious partial decision of
one woman against another, if the latter displeases her; an ugly woman
against a handsome one, or an old one against a young girl? We shudder
to think.

A strange struggle often happens between the superior nun and the
director. The latter, however hardened he ma