“But,” I said, “dear Father, I did not feel a repugnance, or let myself think anything; I obeyed at once.”
“Then why did you write this note to me?”
I replied, “The reverend Mother told me to write it.”
I then said, “Well, she did not exactly tell me. She wrote the confession, and sent a note telling me to copy and sign it.”
The reverend Father then said, “Give me her note.”
I said, “I cannot, for she told me to send it back to her directly I had read it, and I did so.”
He then turned to her, and she put on the most innocent face, looking at the same time aghast at me, and groaned:
“Oh!” she cried, shaking her head, as if it was too awful to listen to me. After a great deal of talking on their part, I was finally dismissed with:
“Poor child! She is not accountable for anything she says. She is quite possessed.”
These words from Father Ignatius, who I thought would at last see how unjust she was to me, caused me deep grief.
This was by no means the first time I had a false confession to copy, and send as my own. Mother Cecilia (the Novice-mistress) once gave me a confession, in her writing, to copy and send to the reverend Father. I read it, and then knelt down, and kissed the hem of her dress, and said:
“I am very sorry, but I cannot write this, as it is untrue.”
Her reply was, “You can do anything you are told.”
I then knew that I _must_ obey, and therefore I wrote at the end of the confession:
“Dear Father, this is not true, I have only copied it.”
I sealed the letter, and was going to send it, but Mother Cecilia took it, read it, and severely lectured me, saying:
“You have not a spark of the spirit of obedience in you.”
She often told me to do or say what was not true, and I could not, and often I used to cry and say:
“Mother mistress, I really do want to be obedient; but that is not true, and I cannot write it.”
“No,” she would tauntingly reply, “I know you cannot. You have plenty of sense, you are quick and clever, etc.; but there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot give up your will, you cannot do as you are told. Therefore you cannot be a nun.”
The truth was, that they did not want me to become a fully professed nun, because, as such, I should have had a voice in the community; and having been with Father Ignatius so long, I was not afraid of him, and used to speak about everything to him, and let him know what otherwise he would not have known. In order, then, to gain their own ends, they must first lower me in his eyes, and prove by all manner of intriguing that I had “no vocation.” After four years they succeeded in convincing him of it, and he finally told me I had no vocation for the “religious life.” He must have been very slow of discernment not to have found that out before, considering that I had been a sister for seventeen years.