The mildness of these monastic rules being unsatisfactory to the fiery spirit of bigotry, many convents have been founded under the title of _Reformed_, where, without the least regard to the sex of the votaries, young and delicate females are subjected to a life of privation and hardship, as the only infallible method of obtaining the favour of Heaven. Their dress is a tunic of sackcloth, tied round the waist with a knotted rope. The rule allows them no linen either for clothing or bedding. Woollen of the coarsest kind frets their bodies, day and night, even during the burning summers of the South of Spain. A mantle of the same sackcloth is the only addition which the nuns make to their dress in winter, while their feet, shod with open sandals, and without either socks or stockings, are exposed to the sharp winter blasts, and the deadening chill of the brick-floors. A band of coarse linen, two inches in breadth, is worn by the Capuchin nuns, bound tight six or eight times round the head, in remembrance, it is said, of the _crown of thorns_; and such is the barbarous spirit of the rule, that it does not allow this band to be taken off, even under an access of fever. A young woman who takes the veil in any of the reformed convents, renounces the sight of her nearest relations. The utmost indulgence, as to communication with parents and brothers, extends only to a short conversation once a month, in the presence of one of the elder nuns, behind a thick curtain spread on the inner side of the iron grating, which completely intercepts the view. The religious vows, however, among the Capuchin nuns, put a final end to all communication between parents and children.