“Now we’ll finish off the obstinate, impudent little beast, I wish I dare kill her,” said the Superior, grinding her teeth, “only I should lose too much, she is worth more alive than dead.”
A couple of lady’s riding whips were now produced, and the two women attacked me afresh; I was cut all over my body, each cut seemed as if done with a red hot knife, the blood flowed down my back in streams, and yet their rage seemed to increase at the sight of my sufferings. My screams were awful, but only so much music to their ears. They jeered and derided my cries for “God to have mercy on me, &c.,” said “my time was come to die, but they would make me last as long as possible, and draw out my agony to the very last gasp.”
This must all have passed in a very short time, but was an age of intense suffering to me, and the finale was such a display of ferocity that I sank under it, and thus robbed them of the pleasure of prolonging my torture. The Superior seized me by the hair, and drawing my head back, lashed her whip across my face and bosom, drawing more blood at every cut, whilst old Serena, not to be outdone, took my right leg under her arm, cut me dreadfully inside my thighs, along the crack of my pussey, and made the tip of her whip reach the Mons Veneris.
This was the last I could recollect, but when I came to myself I was in my own bed, wrapped up in cloths soaked in water. No bones were broken, and my health soon recovered sufficiently to enable me to effect my escape, and avoid their further malice.
It was about 3 A.M. one fine morning when I escaped from the Ursuline Convent; and made my way to the Hotel d’Angleterre, the porter in answer to my summons was about to refuse to give me refuge, when a young Englishman, who was just taking his candle in the hall, said, “he’d be damned if I should not be taken care of,” and ordered the chambermaid to be called to attend on me, and added that he would be responsible for all expenses. “Certainly, my lord,” said the porter of the hotel, but he added _sotto voce_, “I think he’s a fool to be so easily imposed upon.”
I was too glad to have found a protector, (especially when I found he was an aristocrat), so I quietly followed the _femme de chambre_, and was content to await awhile for the _denouement_ of my adventure.