venial when I first became acquainted with the choir-master's sister, and first gave way to the impulses of pride and self-confidence. But, alas! I was too careless to remember the doctrine which I had yet often inculcated on others, that _venial_ errors, unless immediately corrected, form a sure and solid foundation for sins which are _mortal_. Then the Devil threw that Elixir into my way, which, like a poison working against the soul instead of the body, completed his victory over me. I heeded not the earnest admonitions of the unknown painter, the Abbess, or the Prior. Aurelia's appearance at the confessional was a decisive effort for my destruction. Then, as the body, under the influence of poison, falls into disease, so my spirit, under the operation of that hellish cordial, was infected and destroyed by sin. How could the votary, the slave of Satan, recognize the true nature of those bonds by which Omnipotence, as a symbol of that eternal love, (whose marriage festival is death,) had joined Aurelia's fate and mine? Rejoicing in his first victories, Satan then haunted me in the form of an accursed madman, between whose spirit and mine there seemed to be a reciprocal and alternate power of influencing each other. I was obliged to ascribe his apparent death (of which I in reality was guiltless) to myself; and thus became familiarized with the thought of murder. Or was Victorin really killed, and did the Arch-Fiend re-animate his body, (as the vampyres in Hungary rise from the grave,) for his own especial purposes? May it not suffice to say, that this brother, called Victorin, who derived his birth from an accursed and abominable crime, became to me an impersonization of the evil principle, who forced me into hideous guilt, and tormented me with his unrelenting persecution? Till that very moment when I heard Aurelia pronounce her vows, my heart was not yet pure from sin; not till then had the Evil One lost over me his dominion; but the wonderful inward tranquillity--the cheerfulness as if poured from Heaven into my heart, when she addressed to me her last words, convinced me that her death was the promise of my forgiveness and reconciliation. Then, as in the solemn requiem, the choir sung the words--"_Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis_," I trembled; but at the passage, "_Voca me cum benedictis_," it seemed to me as if I beheld, in the dazzling radiance of celestial light, Aurelia, who first looked down with an expression of saintly compassion upon me, and then lifting up her head, which was surrounded with a dazzling ring of stars, to the Almighty, preferred an ardent supplication for the deliverance of my soul! At the words, "_Ora supplex et acclinis cor contritum, quasi cinis_," I sank down into the dust; but how different now were my inward feelings of humility and submission, from that _passionate_ self-condemnation, those cruel and violent penances, which I had formerly undergone at the Capuchin Convent!