Among my friends at Rome, during a few weeks that I spent there, was one old resident of the 'Eternal City' whom I had often begged to give me some authentic narrative of Catholic experience. He was naturally reserved, jealously truthful, a 'know-nothing' upon religious controversy, not at all the man to invent an exciting story, not fond of legends, Romish or Genevan, not a violent partisan of republicanism in church or state, and not familiar enough with American thought to suspect the use that might be made in the United States of such an incident as I am now to repeat. In fact, as I compare him with other sources of intelligence open to travelers, sure as I am that no one could question his belief of whatever he told, every weight that character, intelligence, years, experience, could confer, rests upon the only monkish secret which he professed to know. One night he invited me to a subterranean restaurant, famous for its excellent creature-comforts, and there over some royal English beer, without any graces of style or attempts to exaggerate the incidents, he unfolded what I believe to be a true record of unblessed love. General readers are familiar with the fact that many a nun immures herself for life under a sort of moral compulsion, because her high-born family has become too indigent to maintain its stately style of living, because the lady herself is in danger of contracting some degrading alliance, declines peremptorily such connection as her relations approve, or has committed some imprudence that clouds over her future prospects. The secret influences which entangle men in the Catholic orders correspond to this. It would be arrant bigotry to doubt that some offer up an unstained heart, in aspirations for usefulness or sighs for holiness; but many times a youth is led blindfold to the altar by ambitious relatives, like Talleyrand, and discovers too late his perfect unfitness for the vow he has assumed. And these last are they whose lives become a scandal to their profession, whose levity shocks so many Protestant observers, whose consciences have no true peace, who die sometimes in open unbelief and, living, are the worst enemies of the cause they advocate. As my story goes, at nearly the same time that a gallant young man of high family disappeared from the gay circles of Rome, a lovely girl of distinguished parentage had suffered her blonde tresses to be shorn, her graceful limbs draped in forlorn russet, her merry meetings with girlish spirits like herself exchanged for the tears of the confessional, the lengthened prayers of the cloister, the frequent fastings and sometimes scourgings of monastic life. The cause of this contemporaneous disappearance was known only to the most intimate friends of two celebrated but no longer wealthy families, who deemed the sacrifice necessary, and so recked not of the wounds it might make, the perjuries it might tempt, the life-struggle of duty with feeling it might cause.