In this as in most other convents there were two kinds of cells--the dormitories, divided into cubicles, and rooms forming independent abodes dispersed throughout the edifice. These latter the nuns of the seventeenth century called their ‘houses,’--_as suas casas_,--and it was one of these which Marianna possessed. The former were in accordance with the Constitutions, while the latter, though strictly forbidden, nevertheless existed. These separate abodes were, it is true, often necessitated by the growth of the convent population, and generally appertained to nuns of a better position, while the dormitories served for those who were either poorer or of an inferior rank. Many of these _casas_, too, were built by private individuals who had some connection or other with the particular convent, and there are indications that the father of Marianna had caused some to be erected in that of the Conception.[3] From the year 1665 to 1667, then, Beja was, as we have said, the centre of the various military movements in which Chamilly took part under the leadership of Schomberg, and there is no doubt that he spent much of his time there. Marianna was twenty-five years old. She had been intrusted to the Cloister when a child,[4] as she herself tells us, and her renunciation of the world must have been little more than a form. She had probably made her ‘profession’ too at the age of sixteen, that provided for by the Constitutions, if not at an earlier date. The dull routine of her life was suddenly broken in upon by the sight of a man surrounded with all the prestige of military glory--one who was the first to awaken in her a consciousness of her own beauty--the first to tell her that he loved her, one, moreover, who was ready to throw all his greatness, his present and his future, at her feet. ‘I was young; I was trustful. I had been shut up in this convent since my childhood. I had only seen people whom I did not care for. I had never heard the praises which you constantly gave me. Methought I owed you the charms and the beauty which you found in me, and which you were the first to make me perceive. I heard you well talked of; every one spoke in your favour. You did all that was necessary to awaken love in me.’[5] Such is her simple confession, and, comments Cordeiro, nothing more natural.