She turned her face a little towards me, and said with trembling voice, “Yes, dear father, I am ready.”
But she then stopped again to weep and pray, though I could not hear what she said.
After some time in silent prayer, I said, “My dear sister, if you are ready, please begin your confession.” She then said, “My dear father, do you remember the prayers which I made to you, the other day? Can you allow me to confess my sins without forcing me to forget the respect that I owe to myself, to you, and to God, who hears us? And can you promise that you will not put to me any of those questions which have already done me such irreparable injury? I frankly declare to you that there are sins in me that I cannot reveal to anyone, except to Christ, because He is my God, and that he already knows them all. Let me weep and cry at His feet: can you not forgive me without adding to my iniquities by forcing me to say things that the tongue of a Christian woman cannot reveal to a man?”
“My dear sister,” I answered, “were I free to follow the voice of my own feelings I would be only too happy to grant your request; but I am here only as the minister of our holy church, and bound to obey the laws. Through her most holy Popes and theologians she tells me that I cannot forgive your sins, if you do not confess them all, just as you have committed them. The church tells me also that you must give the details, which may add to the malice or change the nature of your sins. I am sorry to tell you that our most holy theologians make it a duty of our confessor to question the penitent on the sins which he has good reason to suspect have been voluntarily omitted.”
With a piercing cry she exclaimed, “Then, O my God, I am lost—forever lost!”
This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; but I was still more terror-stricken when, looking through the aperture, I saw she was fainting; I heard the noise of her body falling upon the floor, and of her head striking against the sides of the confessional box.
Quick as lightning I ran to help her, took her in my arms, and called a couple of men who were at a little distance, to assist me in laying her on a bench. I washed her face with some cold water and vinegar. She was as pale as death, but her lips were moving, and she was saying something which nobody but I could understand—
“I am lost—lost forever!”
We took her home to her disconsolate family, where, during a month she lingered between life and death. Her two first confessors came to visit her; but having asked every one to go out of the room, she politely, but absolutely, requested them to go away, and never come again. She asked me to visit her every day, “for,” she said, “I have only a few more days to live. Help me to prepare myself for the solemn hour which will open to me the gates of eternity!”
Every day I visited her, and I prayed and I wept with her.