Meanwhile St. Dominic, having put his hand to the plough, was not the man to turn back. He succeeded in making some converts. The penance laid upon one of these, in order to reconcile him to the Church, has been preserved. Its date seems to be 1207 or 1208. It prescribes that Pons Roger of Treville “en Lauraguais” for three successive Sundays is to strip to the waist and walk from the outskirts of his village to the church, being beaten with rods all along the way by a priest. He is to wear a religious (i.e., monkish) habit with crosses sewn upon it. For the rest of his life he is to eat no meat, eggs, or cheese. Exception is made for the great feasts of Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, not for the comfort of the penitent but so that he might openly show that he had broken with the Catharan law of fasting described in the preceding chapter. Three days a week he is to have no fish, oil or wine, unless in case of sickness. He is to keep three Lents a year, and to live in perpetual chastity. The obligation, to hear mass at least once a day and to show his letter of penitence once a month to his parish priest, round out his sentence. Should he disobey, he is ipso facto excommunicate as a heretic and perjurer on top of that. A propos of this bristling catalogue the good Mother Drane, comparing it with the comparative gentleness of present-day Roman Catholic penitence, remarks that ... (the) ... “difference ... should cover us with humiliation for the feebleness of modern penitence, rather than send us to criticize the severity with which the Church has ever looked on sin.”[31] Unfortunately even in the thirteenth century few Provençals seem to have been of the good lady’s opinion. It appears quite certain that converts willing to tread such an heroic road for the sake of reconciliation with the Church were few. In another direction St. Dominic’s labours were more fruitful. He had observed that the heretics made a practice of caring for the children of the very poor in order to bring them up in Catharan practices and beliefs. Accordingly he founded the famous nunnery of Prouille to receive the girl children of poor Catholics and also female converts from heresy who desired a secure refuge in which they might enjoy their new faith. The place filled a real need and prospered from the first. However, in spite of the fame that Prouille was to have in the future, its foundation had little immediate effect upon the situation. Converts by preaching were few, as we have seen. The people cared no more for sermons than for rotten apples, remarks the “Chanson de la Crusade.” For the third time discouragement fell upon the papal mission to Languedoc.