For some time longer, I lay quietly in my bed, slowly gaining strength and the ability to think connectedly. I was indeed like one waking from a long dream, and I began to realize what I had done. All the instructions I had received in my youth—the very psalms I had learned from my foster-mother—returned upon me, and would not be put aside. My eyes were opened, and I was compelled to see and to own that I had deliberately sold myself to the world, and that unless I could find a place of repentance—which did not yet appear to me—I must reckon upon paying the price of the bargain, namely, my immortal soul. Little did my aunt and my nurse guess, while I lay so quietly with closed eyes, what was going on within. I would have given worlds to weep, but I had no tears. Neither could I pray. My heart was dry as dust, and the unmeaning repetitions which had served me instead of prayers now inspired me with nothing but weariness and disgust. Oh, how I hated that image of the Virgin which stood opposite my bed, dressed in laces and satin, and wearing my own mother's pearl clasp! I had myself given it away for this purpose in one of my fits of devotion. If I had dared, I would have crushed the simpering waxen baby under my feet. The stronger I grew, the more wretched I found myself. I was obliged to go to confession, but Father Martien's threats and cajoleries had no more effect upon me than to make me hate him, as the one who had led me into the snare from which I could see no escape, unless it were such a martyrdom as my father's, or the slower hidden agonies of a convent prison. For these I was by no means prepared, and I well knew they were what awaited me if I allowed my change of feeling to become known. The king, as I have hinted, had been converted by the jubilee which had taken place some years before. He was still in the fervor of his first love, and as his spiritual guides could not succeed in making him give up Madame de Montespan and company, they compromised by urging him on to more and greater acts of severity against the so-called heretics. One might be an unbeliever even to denying the existence of a God at all, but to be a Huguenot, or even a Jansenist, was an unpardonable sin. Two or three great men, indeed, who were necessary to him by their talents as soldiers or statesmen, were allotted a sort of protection, but even these soon found their lives unbearable, and either conformed like Turenne afterward, or fled from the kingdom. For a young girl like myself, away from all near friends, and, above all, one who had only lately conformed, there would be no hope. Even a suspicion of relapse would lead at once to a convent with all its possible horrors. No, there was no escape. I had left my Lord, and he had left me. I had denied him, and he would deny me. I must go on as I had begun, and that to the bitter end.