“Under these impressions, I deliberated, I prayed, I wept in the agony of doubt. At last I wrote a few lines to Juan, in which I honestly stated my doubts and apprehensions. I stated first my doubts of the possibility of my escape. I said, “Can it be imagined that a being whom all Madrid, whom all Spain, is on the watch for, can elude their detection? Reflect, dear Juan, that I am staked against a community, a priesthood, a nation. The escape of a monk is almost impossible,--but his concealment afterwards is downright impossible. Every bell in every convent in Spain would ring out _untouched_ in pursuit of the fugitive. The military, civil, and ecclesiastical powers, would all be on the “qui vive.” Hunted, panting, and despairing, I might fly from place to place--no place affording me shelter. The incensed powers of the church--the fierce and vigorous gripe of the law--the execration and hatred of society--the suspicions of the lowest order among whom I must lurk, to shun and curse their penetration; think of encountering all this, while the fiery cross of the Inquisition blazes in the van, followed by the whole pack, shouting, cheering, hallooing on to the prey. Oh Juan! if you knew the terrors under which I live--under which I would rather die than encounter them again, even on the condition of liberation! Liberation! Great God! what chance of liberation for a monk in Spain? There is not a cottage where I could rest one night in security--there is not a cavern whose echoes would not resound to the cry of my apostacy. If I was hid in the bowels of the earth, they would discover me, and tear me from its entrails. My beloved Juan, when I consider the omnipotence of the ecclesiastical power in Spain, may I not address it in the language applied to Omnipotence itself: “If I climb up to heaven, thou art _there_;--if I go down to hell, thou art _there_ also;--if I take the wings of the morning, and flee unto the _uttermost parts of the sea_, _even there_--” And suppose my liberation was accomplished--suppose the convent plunged in a profound torpor, and the unsleeping eye of the Inquisition winked at my apostacy--where am I to reside? how am I to procure subsistence? The luxurious indolence of my early years unfit me for active employment. The horrible conflict of apathy the deepest, with hostility the most deadly, in monastic life, disqualifies me for society. Throw the doors of every convent in Spain open, and for what will their inmates be fit? For nothing that will either embellish or improve it. What could I do to serve myself?--what could I do that would not betray me? I should be a persecuted, breathless fugitive,--a branded _Cain_. Alas!--perhaps expiring in flames, I might see _Abel_ not _my_ victim, but that of the Inquisition.”