At first, in spite of herself, but soon with a real sensual pleasure, that fallen angel will think, when alone, on what she has heard and what she has said in the confessional-box. In spite of herself, the vilest thoughts will at first irresistibly fill her mind; and soon the thoughts will engender temptations and sins. But those vile temptations and sins, which would have filled her with horror and regret before her entire surrender into the hands of the foe, beget very different sentiments now that she is no more her own self-possessor and guide, under the eyes of God. The conviction of her sins is no more connected with the thought of a God, infinitely holy and just, whom she must serve and fear. The conviction of her sins is now immediately connected with the thought of the man with whom she will have to speak, and who will easily make everything right and pure in her soul by his absolution. When the day of going to confess comes, instead of being sad and uneasy and bashful, as she used to be formerly, she feels pleased and delighted to have a new opportunity of conversing on those matters, without impropriety and sin to herself; for she is now fully persuaded that there is no impropriety, no shame, no sin, nay, she believes, or tries to believe, that it is a good, honest, Christian, and godly thing to converse with her priest on those matters. Her most happy hours are when she is at the feet of that spiritual physician showing him all the newly made wounds of her soul; explaining all her constant temptations, her bad thoughts, her most intimate secret desires and sins. Then it is that the most sacred mysteries of the married life are revealed; then it is that the mysterious and precious pearls which God has given as a crown of mercy to those whom He has made one body, one heart, one soul, by the blessed ties of a christian union, are lavishly thrown before swine. Whole hours are thus passed by the fair penitent in speaking to her Father Confessor with the utmost freedom on matters which would rank her among the most profligate and lost women, if it were only suspected by her friends and relatives. A single word of those intimate conversations would be followed by an act of divorce on the part of the husband, if it were known by him.