“It was a few nights before the time of the great confession, that I had to entrust the last packet of my memorial to the porter. Our meetings had been hitherto unsuspected. I had received and answered my brother’s communications, and our correspondence had been conducted with a secrecy unexampled in convents. But this last night, as I put my packet into the porter’s hand, I saw a change in his appearance that terrified me. He had been a comely, robust man, but now, even by the moon-light, I could perceive he was wasted to a shadow,--his hands trembled as he took the papers from me,--his voice faultered as he promised his usual secrecy. The change, which had been observed by the whole convent, had escaped me till that night; my mind had been too much occupied by my own situation. I noticed it then, however, and I said, “But what is the matter?” “Can you then ask? I am withered to a spectre by the terrors of the office I have been bribed to. Do you know what I risk?--incarceration for life, or rather for death,--perhaps a denunciation to the Inquisition. Every line I deliver from you, or to you, seems a charge against my own soul,--I tremble when I meet you. I know that you have the sources of life and death, temporal and eternal, in your hands. The secret in which I am an agent should never be intrusted but to _one_, and _you are another_. As I sit in my place, I think every step in the cloister is advancing to summon me to the presence of the Superior. When I attend in the choir, amid the sounds of devotion your voice swells to accuse me. When I lie down at night, the evil spirit is beside my bed, reproaching me with perjury, and reclaiming his prey;--his emissaries surround me wherever I move,--I am beset by the tortures of hell. The saints from their shrines frown on me,--I see the painting of the traitor Judas on every side I turn to. When I sleep for a moment, I am awakened by my own cries. I exclaim, “Do not betray me, he has not yet violated his vows, I was but an agent,--I was bribed,--do not kindle those fires for me.” I shudder,--I start up in a cold sweat. My rest, my appetite, are gone. Would to God you were out of this convent;--and O! would that I had never been instrumental to your release, then both of us might have escaped damnation to all eternity.” I tried to pacify him, to assure him of his safety, but nothing could satisfy him but my solemn and sincere assurance that this was the last packet I would ever ask him to deliver. He departed tranquillized by this assurance; and I felt the dangers of my attempt multiplying around me every hour.