That next day—Oh! that I could describe it!—but it is impossible—the profound stupefaction in which I was plunged prevented my noticing things which would have inspired the most uninterested spectator. I was so absorbed, that though I remember facts, I cannot paint the slightest trace of the feelings which they excited. During the night I slept profoundly, till I was awoke by a knock at my door.—“My dear child, how are you employed?”
I knew the voice of the Superior, and I replied, “My father, I was sleeping.”
“And I was macerating myself at the foot of the altar for you, my child—the scourge is red with my blood.”
I returned no answer, for I felt the maceration was better merited by the betrayer than the betrayed. Yet I was mistaken; for in fact, the Superior felt some compunction, and had undergone this penance on account of my repugnance and alienation of mind, more than for his own offences. But oh! how false is a treaty made with God, which we ratify with our own blood, when he has declared there is but one sacrifice he will accept, even that of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world! Twice in the night, I was thus disturbed, and twice answered in the same language. The Superior, I make no doubt, was sincere. He thought he was doing all for God, and his bleeding shoulders testified his zeal. But I was in such a state of mental ossification, that I neither felt, heard, or understood; and when he knocked a second and third time at the door of my cell to announce the severity of his macerations, and the efficacy of his intercessions with God, I answered, “Are not criminals allowed to sleep the night before their execution?”
At hearing these words, which must have made him shudder, the Superior fell prostrate before the door of my cell, and I turned to sleep again. But I could hear the voices of the monks as they raised the Superior, and bore him to his cell. They said, “He is incorrigible—you humiliate yourself in vain—when he is ours, you shall see him a different being—he shall then prostrate himself before you.”
I heard this, and slept on. The morning came—I knew what it would bring—I dramatized the whole scene in my own mind. I imagined I witnessed the tears of my parents, the sympathy of the congregation. I thought I saw the hands of the priests tremble as they tossed the incense, and even the acolytes shiver as they held their robes. Suddenly my mind changed: I felt—what was it I felt?—a union of malignity, despair, and power, the most formidable. Lightning seemed flashing from my eyes as I reflected—I might make the sacrificers and the sacrificed change places in one moment—I might blast my mother as she stood, by a word—I might break my father’s heart, by a single sentence—I might scatter more desolation around me, than it was apparently possible for human vice, human power, or human malignity, more potent than both, to cause to its most abject victim.—Yes!—on that morning I felt within myself the struggles of nature, feeling, compunction, pride, malevolence, and despair.—The former I had brought with me, the latter had been all acquired in the convent. I said to those who attended me that morning, “You are arraying me for a victim, but I can turn the executioners into the victims if I please”—and I laughed. The laugh terrified those who were about me—they retreated—they represented my state to the Superior. He came to my apartment. The whole convent was by this time alarmed—their credit was at stake—the preparations had all been made—the whole world was determined I was to be a monk, mad or not.
The Superior was terrified, I saw, as he entered my apartment. “My son, what means all this?”
“Nothing, my father—nothing but a sudden thought that has struck me.”
“We will discuss it another time, my son; at present—”
“At present,” I repeated with a laugh that must have lacerated the Superior’s ears—“At present I have but one alternative to propose—let my father or my brother take my place—that is all. I will never be a monk.” The Superior, at these words, ran in despair round the cell. I followed him, exclaiming, in a voice that must have filled him with horror, “I exclaim against the vows—let those who forced me to it, take the guilt on themselves—let my father, in his own person, expiate his guilt in bringing me into the world—let my brother sacrifice his pride—why must I be the only victim of the crime of the one, and the passions of the other?”
“My son, all this was arranged before.”
“Yes, I know that—I know that by a decree of the Almighty I was doomed to be cursed even in my mother’s womb, but I will never subscribe that decree with my own hand.”
“My son, what can I say to you—you have passed your noviciate.”
“Yes, in a state of stupefaction.”
“All Madrid is assembled to hear you take your vows.”
“Then all Madrid shall hear me renounce them, and disavow them.”
“This is the very day fixed on. The ministers of God are prepared to yield you to his arms. Heaven and earth—all that is valuable in time, or precious in eternity, are summoned, are waiting for the irrevocable words that seal your salvation, and ensure that of those you love. What demon has taken possession of you, my child, and seized the moment you were coming to Christ, to cast you down, and tear you? How shall I—how shall the fraternity, and all the souls who are to escape from punishment by the merit of your prayers, answer to God for your horrible apostacy?”
“Let them answer for themselves—let every one of us answer for ourselves—that is the dictate of reason.”
“Of reason, my deluded child—when had reason anything to do with religion?”
I had sat down, folded my arms on my
