The representations of my two kind
Friends,"--(Here She took the hands of the Marchioness and Virginia,
and pressed them alternately to her lips)--"at length persuaded me to
resign my unhappy Infant to the Grave. Yet I parted from it with
reluctance: However, reason at length prevailed; I suffered it to be
taken from me, and it now reposes in consecrated ground.

I before mentioned that regularly once a day Camilla brought me food.
She sought not to embitter my sorrows with reproach: She bad me, 'tis
true, resign all hopes of liberty and worldly happiness; But She
encouraged me to bear with patience my temporary distress, and advised
me to draw comfort from religion.

My situation evidently affected her more than She ventured to express:
But She believed that to extenuate my fault would make me less anxious
to repent it. Often while her lips painted the enormity of my guilt in
glaring colours, her eyes betrayed, how sensible She was to my
sufferings. In fact I am certain that none of my Tormentors, (for the
three other Nuns entered my prison occasionally) were so much actuated
by the spirit of oppressive cruelty as by the idea that to afflict my
body was the only way to preserve my soul. Nay, even this persuasion
might not have had such weight with them, and they might have thought
my punishment too severe, had not their good dispositions been represt
by blind obedience to their Superior. Her resentment existed in full
force. My project of elopement having been discovered by the Abbot of
the Capuchins, She supposed herself lowered in his opinion by my
disgrace, and in consequence her hate was inveterate. She told the
Nuns to whose custody I was committed that my fault was of the most
heinous nature, that no sufferings could equal the offence, and that
nothing could save me from eternal perdition but punishing my guilt
with the utmost severity. The Superior's word is an oracle to but too
many of a Convent's Inhabitants. The Nuns believed whatever the
Prioress chose to assert: Though contradicted by reason and charity,
they hesitated not to admit the truth of her arguments. They followed
her injunctions to the very letter, and were fully persuaded that to
treat me with lenity, or to show the least pity for my woes, would be a
direct means to destroy my chance for salvation.

Camilla, being most employed about me, was particularly charged by the
Prioress to treat me with harshness. In compliance with these