 when released
from my prison, I brought away my child in my arms. 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 bade 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 repressed 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 shew 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 orders, she
frequently strove to convince
