Oh yes! That to be sure she had; every body talks of his folly and
brutality, but that will not excuse her conduct. I hear every thing, and
can assure you she is here much against her inclination; nay, she would
not have come, had she not dreaded an order for imprisonment.
Imprisonment! Oh! heavens!
Not for her good behaviour, as you may suppose. Why she is neither
suffered to go out, nor see any person whatever, except her nearest
relations. Oh! she leads a very melancholy life! You may well think, our
Nuns won’t have any communication with a wife false to her husband’s
bed. The very Boarders will not look at her; every body avoids her as
they would infection. God forgive her! she must do penance yet: but
instead of that, she is playing upon the harpsichord all day long; is as
fresh as a rose, and looks better every day: she must be stubborn in
sin.
And does not she seem sorrowful?
Not at all; her woman says, she never saw her so contented; for my own
part, I am charitable, and hope she may yet be reclaimed, for she has
not a bad heart; she is generous and charitable; and yet she has
insisted upon having all her fortune restored, and has left her husband
in absolute want. You will tell me he is mad and foolish, has ruined
himself nobody knows how, and has just suffered the disgrace of being
degraded in the army. I own they have taken away his commission: yes, he
has lost his regiment; but yet, I say, a husband is a husband. The poor
man wrote to her about a month since to beg her assistance, but no! she
told him plainly, no! ’Tis very hard though!---I have all these things
from the best authority; I don’t talk by hearsay; I have been fifteen
years in this house, and, I thank my God, nobody could ever say I was a
tatler, or a vender of scandal.
The Touriere continued at her own ease praising herself; I had not the
power of interruption left. She was loudly called for, kept talking all
the way she went, and in a few minutes returned.
It was the relation of a young Novice who takes the veil to-morrow, that
wanted me, said she. Ah! now; there; there is a true convert! A call of
grace! Gives fifty thousand francs (2083l. sterling) to the convent! You
ought to see the ceremony: our Boarders will all be there, and you can
take a peep through the church window.
At what o’clock will it begin?
Three in the afternoon. The Novice is as beautiful as an angel, and is
only twenty. Had she not lost her lover and her father in the same year,
the would never have attended to the blessed inspiration of the Spirit.
How good Providence is to us! Her father died first, and her lover, who
was imprisoned at Saumur, about five months after, of a broken heart, as
it is thought.
What was his name? cried I, in an agony not to be described.
The Marquis of Clainville, replied the Touriere, and our novice is
called Mademoiselle d’Elbene.
This last sentence went with inexpressible torture to my heart. I rose
suddenly, and ran out with an exclamation that threw the Touriere into
astonishment and terror.
Arrived at my lodgings, I threw myself upon the sopha, penetrated, torn,
and confounded at all that I had heard. The veil was rent away, the
illusion passed, I knew at length the extent of my misery; saw to what a
point my extravagant conduct had stained my wife’s reputation; felt how
impossible it was for this innocent victim of my destruction truly to
pardon the injury I had done her, by destroying the most precious thing
a woman possesses; and owned, that the unjust contempt with which the
world treated her, ought incessantly to reanimate her resentment against
me its author. To her virtue alone could I now attribute her generous
manner of acting.
In fact from the account given by the Touriere, it was evident that
Julia, consoled by the testimony of a good conscience, was resigned to
her fate, and lived at peace; which she could not continue to do, but by
burying my memory in eternal oblivion.
(_To be continued._)
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+For the New-York Weekly Magazine.+
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