“Miss Perras is running to the church after the curate,” she answered, “and I do not know where the other girl is gone.”
In that instant Mr. Perras entered, rushed toward his sister, and said, “Are you not ashamed to present yourself naked before such a gentleman?” and with his strong arms he tried to force her to give me up.
Turning her face towards him, with tigress eyes, she cried out, “Wretched brother! what have you done with my child? I see her blood on your hands!”
When she was struggling with her brother, I made a sudden and extreme effort to get out of her grasp; and this time I succeeded: but seeing that she wanted to throw herself again upon me, I jumped through a window which was opened.
Quick as lightning she passed out of the hands of her brother, and jumped also through the window to run after me. She would, surely, have overtaken me; for I had not run two rods, when I fell headlong, with my feet entangled in my long, black, priestly robe. Providentially, two strong men, attracted by my cries, came to my rescue. They wrapped her in a blanket, taken there by her sister, and brought her back into the upper chambers, where she remained safely locked, under the guard of two strong servant maids.
The history of that woman is sad indeed. When in her priest-brother’s house, when young and of great beauty, she was seduced by her father confessor, and became mother of a female child, which she loved with a real mother’s heart. She determined to keep it and bring it up. But this did not meet the views of the curate. One night, while the mother was sleeping, the child had been taken away from her. The awakening of the unfortunate mother was terrible. When she understood that she could never see her child any more, she filled the parsonage with her cries and lamentations, and, at first, refused to take any food, in order that she might die. But she soon became a maniac.
Mr. Perras, too much attached to his sister to send her to a lunatic asylum, resolved to keep her in his own parsonage, which was very large. A room in its upper part had been fixed in such a way that her cries could not be heard, and where she would have all the comfort possible in her sad circumstances. Two servant maids were engaged to take care of her. All this was so well arranged, that I had been eight months in that parsonage, without even suspecting that there was such an unfortunate being under the same roof with me. It appears that occasionally, for many days, her mind was perfectly lucid, when she passed her time in praying, and singing a kind of poem which she had composed herself, and which she sang while holding me in her grasp. In her best moments she had fostered an invincible hatred for the priests whom she had known. Hearing her attendants often speak of me, she had, several times, expressed a desire to see me, which, of course, had been denied her. Before she had broken her door, and escaped from the hands of her keeper, she had passed several days in saying that she had received from God a message for me which she would deliver, even if she had to pass on the dead bodies of all in the house.
Unfortunate victim of auricular confession! How many others could sing the sad words of thy song,
“Satan’s priest’s have defiled my heart,
Damned my soul! murdered my child!”