go away and never come again. She asked me to visit her everyday, "for," she said, "I have only a few more days to live. Help me to prepare myself for the solemn hour which will open to me the gates of eternity!"

Every day I visited her, and I prayed and I wept with her.

Many times, with tears, I requested her, when alone, to finish her confession; but, with a firmness which then seemed to me mysterious and inexplicable, she politely rebuked me.

One day when, alone with her, I was kneeling by the side of her bed to pray, I was unable to articulate a single word, because of the inexpressible anguish of my soul on her account; she asked me, "Dear Father, why do you weep?"

I answered, "How can you put such a question to your murderer? I weep because I have killed you, dear friend."

This answer seemed to trouble her exceedingly. She was very weak that day. After she had wept and prayed in silence, she said, "Do not weep for me, but weep for so many priests who destroy their penitents in the confessional. I believe in the holiness of the sacrament of penitence, since our holy Church has established it. But there is, somewhere, something exceedingly wrong in the confessional. Twice I have been destroyed, and I know many girls who have also been destroyed by the confessional. This is a secret, but will that secret be kept for ever? I pity the poor priests the day that our fathers will know what becomes of the purity of their daughters in the hands of their confessors. Father would surely kill my two last confessors, if he could know how they have destroyed his poor child."

I could not answer except by weeping.

We remained mute for a long time; then she said, "It is true that I was not prepared for the rebuke you have given me, but you acted conscientiously as a good and honest priest. I know you must be bound by certain laws."

She then pressed my hand with her cold hand and said, "Weep not, dear Father, because that sudden storm has wrecked my too fragile back. This storm was to take me out from the bottomless sea of my iniquities to the shore where Jesus was waiting to receive and pardon me. The night after you brought me, half dead, here to father's house, I had a dream. Oh, no, it was not a dream, it was a reality. My Jesus came to me; He was bleeding. His crown of thorns was on His head, the heavy cross was bruising His shoulders. He said to me, with a voice so sweet that no human tongue can imitate it, "I have seen thy tears, I have heard thy cries, and I know thy love for Me: thy sins are forgiven. Take courage; in a few days thou shalt be with Me!'"

She had hardly finished her last word when she fainted, and I feared lest she should die just then when I was alone with her.

I called the family, who rushed into the room. The doctor was sent for. He found her so weak that he thought proper to allow only one or two persons to remain in the room. He requested us not to speak at all, "For," said he, "the least emotion may kill her instantly; her disease is, in all probability, an aneurism of the aorta, the big vein which brings the blood to the heart; when it breaks she will go as quick as lightning."

It was nearly ten at night when I left the house, to go and take some rest. But it is not necessary to say that I passed a sleepless night. My dear Mary was there, pale, dying from the deadly blow which I had given her in the confessional. She was there, on her bed of death, her heart pierced with the dagger which my Church had put into my hands! And instead of rebuking, cursing me for my savage, merciless fanaticism, she was blessing me! She was dying from a broken heart, and I was not allowed by my Church to give her a single word of consolation and hope, for she had not yet made her confession! I had mercilessly bruised that tender plant, and there was nothing in my hands to heal the wounds I had made!

It was very probable that she would die the next day, and I was forbidden to show her the crown of glory which Jesus has prepared in His kingdom for the repenting sinner!

My desolation was really unspeakable, and I think I would have been suffocated, and have died that night, if the stream of tears which constantly flowed from my eyes had not been as a balm to my distressed heart.

How dark and long the hours of that night seemed to me!

Before the dawn of day I arose, to read my theologians again, and see if I could not find some one who would allow me to forgive the sins of that dear child without forcing her to tell me everything she had done. But they seemed to me more than ever unanimously inexorable, and I put them back on the shelves of my library with a broken heart.

At nine a.m. the next day I was by the bed of our dear sick Mary. I cannot sufficiently tell the joy I felt when the doctor and the whole family said to me, "She is much better; the rest of last night has wrought a marvelous change indeed."

With a really angelic smile she extended her hand towards me, that I might press it in mine; and she said, "I thought, last evening, that the dear Saviour would take me to Him, but He wants me, dear Father, to give you a little more trouble; but be patient, it cannot, be long before the solemn hour of the appeal will ring. Will you please read me the history of the sufferings and death of the beloved Saviour which you read me the other day? It does me so much good to see how He has loved me, such a miserable sinner."

There was a calm and a solemnity in her words which struck me singularly, as well as all those who were there.

After I had finished reading, she exclaimed, "He has loved me so much that He died for my sins!" And she shut her eyes as if to meditate in silence, but there was a stream of big tears rolling down her cheeks.

I knelt down by her bed with her family to pray, but I could not utter a single word. The idea that this dear child was there, dying from the cruel fanaticism of my theologians and my own cowardice in obeying them, was as a mill-stone to my neck. It was killing me.

Oh! if by dying a thousand times I could have added a single day to her life, with what pleasure I would have accepted those thousand deaths!

After we had silently prayed and wept by her bed-side, she requested her mother to leave her alone with me.

When I saw myself alone, under the irresistible impression that this was her last day, I fell on my knees again, and with tears of the most sincere compassion for her soul, I requested her to shake off her shame and to obey our holy Church, which requires every one to confess their sins if they want to be forgiven.

She calmly, but with an air of dignity which no human words can express, said, "Is it true that, after the sin of Adam and Eve, God Himself made coats of skins, and clothed them, that they might not see each other's nakedness?"

"Yes," I said, "this is what the Holy Scriptures tell us."

"Well, then, how is it possible that our confessors dare to take away from us that holy, divine coat of modesty and self-respect? Has not Almighty God Himself made with His own hands that coat of womanly modesty and self-respect that we might not be to you and to ourselves a cause of shame and sin?"

I was really stunned by the beauty, simplicity, and sublimity of that comparison. I remained absolutely mute and confounded. Though it was demolishing all the traditions and doctrines of my Church, and pulverizing all my holy doctors and theologians, that noble answer found such an echo in my soul that it seemed to me a sacrilege to try to touch it with my finger.

After a short time of silence, she continued, "Twice I have been destroyed by priests in the confessional. They took away from me that divine coat of modesty and self-respect which God gives to every human being who comes into this world, and twice I have become for those very priests a deep pit of perdition, into which they have fallen, and where, I fear, they are for ever lost! My merciful Heavenly Father has given me back that coat of skins, that nuptial robe of