Oh yes, replied she, and married women too, I assure you. Here my heart beat violently, and she, with a whisper, a smile, and an air of secrecy, added----You must know, Sir, it is this very convent that incloses the beautiful Madame de la Paliniere, of whom you have certainly heard so much.
Yes---yes---I have---She is a charming woman.
Charming! Oh beautiful to a degree! It is a great pit!---but it is to be hoped God will grant her the gift of repentance.
Sir!----Yes, yes, Sir, it is plain enough you are just come from the country, or you could not ask such a question. So you don’t know!
I have heard she had a capricious unjust husband, but--------
Oh yes! That to be sure she had; every body talks of his folly and brutality, but that will not excuse her conduct. I hear every thing, and can assure you she is here much against her inclination; nay, she would not have come, had she not dreaded an order for imprisonment.
Not for her good behaviour, as you may suppose. Why she is neither suffered to go out, nor see any person whatever, except her nearest relations. Oh! she leads a very melancholy life! You may well think, our Nuns won’t have any communication with a wife false to her husband’s bed. The very Boarders will not look at her; every body avoids her as they would infection. God forgive her! she must do penance yet: but instead of that, she is playing upon the harpsichord all day long; is as fresh as a rose, and looks better every day: she must be stubborn in sin.
Not at all; her woman says, she never saw her so contented; for my own part, I am charitable, and hope she may yet be reclaimed, for she has not a bad heart; she is generous and charitable; and yet she has insisted upon having all her fortune restored, and has left her husband in absolute want. You will tell me he is mad and foolish, has ruined himself nobody knows how, and has just suffered the disgrace of being degraded in the army. I own they have taken away his commission: yes, he has lost his regiment; but yet, I say, a husband is a husband. The poor man wrote to her about a month since to beg her assistance, but no! she told him plainly, no! ’Tis very hard though!---I have all these things from the best authority; I don’t talk by hearsay; I have been fifteen years in this house, and, I thank my God, nobody could ever say I was a tatler, or a vender of scandal.