CHAPTER LIV
FORCED TO DO PENANCE LIKE A TRAPPIST MONK
"By the King's orders"—I submit for the sake of my children—Must fast as well as pray—In delicate health, I insist upon returning to Dresden—Bernhardt, to avoid being maltreated by King, threatens him with his sword—The King's awful wrath—Bernhardt prisoner in Nossen—I escape, temporarily, protracted ennui.
Pillnitz, May 28, 1901.
Though I am in delicate health, the King, having recovered from his illness, commanded me to do penance,—almost public penance.
Fast and pray, pray and fast is the order of the day for the next two weeks.
I arise every morning at five. At six a closed carriage takes me to a distant nunnery of the Ursulines, a good hour's travel. I am forced to attend mass, which also lasts an hour. Then a half-hour's sermon, dealing with fire and brimstone, hell and damnation.
When that's over the Mother Superior kindly asks me to her cell and lectures me for an hour on the duties of a wife and mother, and on the terrors that follow in the wake of adultery.
(I wonder where she gets her wisdom. She isn't married, she isn't supposed to have children, and she ought to know that the founder of her religion was most kind to the adulteress.)