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A list of amendments is at the end of the text. I will hasten on, not to tell of my feelings, but of the results which they produced. A new world of hope was opened to me. I thought I saw liberty on the face of heaven when I walked in the garden. But I did not, amid all this, neglect the most scrupulous precautions suggested by my brother.
Am I confessing the strength or the weakness of my heart? In the midst of all the systematic dissimulation that I was prepared and eager to carry on, the only circumstance that gave me real compunction, was my being obliged to destroy the letters of that dear and generous youth who had risked every thing for my emancipation.
In the mean time, I pursued my preparations with industry inconceivable to you, who have never been in a convent. They shut themselves up,βthey prostrated themselves before the shrines of the saints,βthey occupied themselves whole hours in taking minutes of their consciences, and magnifying the trivial defects of conventual discipline into offences in the eye of God, in order to give consequence to their penitence in the hearing of the confessor,βin fact, they would have been glad to accuse themselves of a crime, to escape from the monotony of a monastic conscience.
There was a kind of silent bustle in the house, that very much favoured my purposes. Hour after hour I demanded paper for my confession. I obtained it, but my frequent demands excited suspicion,βthey little knew what I was writing. The Superior watched me in silence. He was alarmed, and with reason. He consulted with some of the discreet brethren, whom I mentioned before, and the result was a restless vigilance on their part, to which I supplied an incessant fuel, by my absurd and perpetual demand for paper.
