If the order of white penitents had been the cause of the punishment of an innocent person, and of the utter ruin and dispersion of a whole family, and of branding them with that ignominy which is annexed to those who suffer, when it ought properly to fall only upon those who pass an unjust sentence; if the frantic hurry of these penitents in celebrating as a saint one whom they ought to have treated as a self-murderer, brought a virtuous, an innocent fellow-citizen to the scaffold, surely this fatal mistake ought to make them true penitents for the rest of their lives, and they and the judges ought to have their eyes continually filled with tears, without wearing a white cloak or a mask on their faces, to hide those tears. We have a proper respect for all religious orders—they are edifying; but will all the good they have ever been able to do the state compensate for the shocking disaster of which they have been the cause? Their institution seems to have been the work of that zeal which animates the Catholics of Languedoc against those we call Huguenots. One would be tempted to imagine that they had made a vow to hate their brethren; and that, though men have religion enough to hate and persecute, they have not sufficient to love and cherish one another. But what would be the case if these orders were governed by enthusiastic superiors, as were certain congregations, among whom, to use the words of one of our most eloquent and learned magistrates, the custom of seeing visions was reduced to an art and system? Or that their convents had in them those dark rooms, called meditation rooms, which were filled with pictures of frightful devils, armed with long horns and talons, flaming gulfs, crosses, and daggers, with the holy name of Jesus in a scroll over them? Edifying spectacles, doubtless, for eyes already blinded with fanaticism, and for imaginations no less filled with mistaken zeal than with abject submission to the will of their directors!