One cannot read this solemn--albeit superstitious--service, in the quaint old mediæval character, out of the very book which has, perhaps, been used in the actual enclosing of some recluse, without being moved. Was it some frail woman, with all the affections of her heart and the hopes of her earthly life shattered, who sought the refuge of this living tomb? was it some man of strong passions, wild and fierce in his crimes, as wild and fierce in his penitence? or was it some enthusiast, with the over-excited religious sensibility, of which we have instances enough in these days? We can see them still, in imagination, prostrate, "in total and solemn silence," before the wax taper placed upon the altar of the little chapel, and listening while the chant of the returning procession grows fainter and fainter in the distance. Ah! we may scornfully smile at it all as a wild superstition, or treat it coldly as a question of mere antiquarian interest; but what broken hearts, what burning passions, have been shrouded under that recluse's robe, and what wild cries of human agony have been stifled under that "total and solemn silence!" When the processional chant had died away in the distance, and the recluse's taper had burnt out on his little altar, was that the end of the tragedy, or only the end of the first act? Did the broken heart find repose? Did the wild spirit grow tame? Or did the one pine away and die like a flower in a dungeon, and the other beat itself to death against the bars of its self-made cage? CHAPTER IV. CONSECRATED WIDOWS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.