In conclusion, he informed me that the nuns of Anticaille
would probably lend me the necessary instrument of flagellation; but, if
they made any difficulty about it, he was benevolently ready to furnish
me with a new and special cat-o'-nine-tails of his own making.
Never was woman more amazed or more angry than I, when I first read this
letter. "What!" cried I to myself, "does this man seriously recommend
me to lash my own shoulders? Just Heaven, what impertinence! And yet,
is it not my duty to put up with it? Does not this apparent insolence
proceed from the pen of a holy man? If he tells me to flog my
wickedness out of me, is it not my bounden duty to lay on the scourge
with all my might immediately? Sinner that I am! I am thinking
remorsefully of my plump shoulders and the dimples on my back, when I
ought to be thinking of nothing but the cat-o'-nine-tails and obedience
to Father Deveaux?"
These reflections soon gave me the resolution which I had wanted at
first. I was ashamed to ask the nuns for an instrument of flagellation;
so I made one for myself of stout cord, pitilessly knotted at very short
intervals. This done, I shut myself up while the nuns were at prayer,
uncovered my shoulders, and rained such a shower of lashes on them, in
the first fervour of my newly-awakened zeal, that I fairly flogged
myself down on the ground, flat on my nose, before I had repeated more
of the Miserere than the first two or three lines.
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