“I have observed, that this man was of a temper and manners remarkably mild and attractive. Perhaps this is always connected with great weakness of intellect, and coldness of character _in men_. (It may be different in women--but my own experience has never failed in the discovery, that where there was a kind of feminine softness and pliability in the male character, there was also treachery, dissimulation, and heartlessness.) At least, if there be such an union, a conventual life is sure to give it every advantage in its range of internal debility, and external seductiveness.--That pretence of a wish to assist, without the power, or even the wish, that is so flattering both to the weak minds that exercise it, and the weaker on whom it is exercised. This man had been always judged very weak, and yet very fascinating. He had been always employed to ensnare the young novices. He was now dying--overcome by his situation, I forgot every thing but its tremendous claims, and offered him every assistance in my power. “I want nothing but to die,” was his answer. His countenance was perfectly calm, but its calmness was rather that of apathy than of resignation. “You are, then, perfectly sure of your approach to blessedness?” “I know nothing about it.” “How, my brother, are those words for a dying man to utter?” “Yes, if he speaks the truth.” “But a monk?--a catholic?” “Those are but names--I feel _that truth_, at least, now.” “You amaze me!” “I care not--I am on the verge of a precipice--I must plunge from it--and whether the by-standers utter outcries or not, is a matter of little consequence to me.” “And yet, you expressed a willingness to die?” “Willingness! Oh impatience!--I am a clock that has struck the same minutes and hours for sixty years. Is it not time for the machine to long for its winding up? The monotony of my existence would make a transition, even to pain, desirable. I am weary, and would change--that is all.” “But to me, and to all the community, you seemed to be resigned to the monastic life.” “I seemed a lie--I lived a lie--I was a lie--I ask pardon of my last moments for speaking the truth--I presume they neither can refuse me, or discredit my words--I hated the monastic life. Inflict pain on man, and his energies are roused--condemn him to insanity, and he slumbers like animals that have been found inclosed in wood and stone, torpid and content; but condemn him at once to pain and inanity, as they do in convents, and you unite the sufferings of hell and of annihilation. For sixty years I have cursed my existence. I never woke to hope, for I had nothing to do or to expect. I never lay down with consolation, for I had, at the close of every day, only to number so many deliberate mockeries of God, as exercises of devotion. The moment life is put beyond the reach of your will, and placed under the influence of mechanical operations, it becomes, to thinking beings, a torment insupportable.