“Yes! my lord. I have been her confessor since I lived in Longueuil.”
“Very well, very well,” he rejoined, “I suppose that you know that her only child is a nun, in the Congregation Convent.”
“Yes! my lord, I know it,” I replied.
“Could you not induce Mrs Chenier to become a nun also?” asked the bishop.
“I never thought of that, my lord,” I answered, “and I do not see why I should advise her to exchange her beautiful cottage, washed by the fresh and pure waters of the St. Lawrence, where she looks so happy and cheerful, for the gloomy walls of the nunnery.”
“But she is still young and beautiful; she may be deceived by temptation when she is there, in that beautiful house, surrounded by all the enjoyments of her fortune,” replied the bishop.
“I understand your lordship. Yes, Mrs Chenier has the reputation of being rich; though I know nothing of her fortune, she has kept well the charms and freshness of her youth. However, I think that the best remedy against the temptations you seem to dread so much for her, is to advise her to marry. A good Christian husband seems to me a much better remedy against the dangers, to which your lordship alludes, than the cheerless walls of a nunnery.”
“You speak just as a Protestant,” rejoined the bishop, with an evident nervous irritation. “We remark that, though you hear the confessions of a great number of young ladies, there is not a single one of them who has ever become a nun. You seem to ignore, that the vow of chastity is the shortest way to a life of holiness in this world and happiness in the next.”
“I am sorry to differ from your lordship, in that matter,” I replied. “But I cannot help it, the remedy you have found against sin is quite modern. The old remedy offered by our God Himself, is very different and much better, I think.
“‘It is not good that man shall remain alone, I will make a help-mate for him,’ said our Creator in the earthly paradise. ‘And to avoid fornication, let every man have his wife, and let every woman have her husband,’ said the same God, through His apostle Paul.