Then the Prior departed and assembled the whole Chapter, and, causing Sister Marie to appear on her knees before him, he said to her with wondrous malignity—­

“Sister Marie, it grieves me to see that the good counsels I have given you have been of no effect, and to find you fallen into such evil ways that, contrary to my wont, I must needs lay a penance upon you.  I have examined your confessor concerning certain crimes with which he is charged, and he has confessed to me that he has abused your person in the place where the witnesses say that they saw him.  And so I command that, whereas I had formerly raised you to honourable rank as Mistress of the Novices, you shall now be the lowest placed of all, and further, shall eat only bread and water on the ground, and in presence of all the Sisters, until you have shown sufficient penitence to receive forgiveness.”

Sister Marie had been warned by one of her companions, who was acquainted with the whole matter, that if she made any reply displeasing to the Prior, he would put her in pace—­that is, in perpetual imprisonment—­and she therefore submitted to this sentence, raising her eyes to heaven, and praying Him who had enabled her to withstand sin, to grant her patience for the endurance of tribulation.  The Prior of St. Martin’s further commanded that for the space of three years she should neither speak with her mother or kinsfolk when they came to see her, nor send any letters save such as were written in community.

The miscreant then went away and returned no more, and for a long time the unhappy maiden continued in the tribulation that I have described.  But her mother, who loved her best of all her children, was much astonished at receiving no tidings from her; and told one of her sons, who was a prudent and honourable gentleman, (6) that she thought her daughter was dead, and that the nuns were hiding it from her in order that they might receive the yearly payment.  She, therefore, begged him to devise some means of seeing his sister.

6 It is conjectured by M. Lacroix that this “prudent and honourable gentleman,” Mary Heroet’s brother, was Antoine Heroet or Herouet, alias La Maisonneuve, who at one time was a valet and secretary to Queen Margaret, and so advanced himself in life that he died Bishop of Digne in 1544.  He was the author of La Parfaite Amie, L’Androgyne, and De n’aimer point sans etre aime, poems of a semi-metaphysical, semi- amorous character such as might have come from Margaret’s own pen.  Whether he was Mary Heroet’s brother or not, it is at least probable that he was her relative.-B.  J. and L.

He went forthwith to the convent, where he met with the wonted excuses, being told that for three years his sister had not stirred from her bed.  But this did not satisfy him, and he swore that, if he did not see her, he would climb over the walls and force his way into the convent.  Thereupon, being in great fear, they brought his sister to him at the grating, though the Abbess stood so near that she could not tell her brother aught that was not heard.  But she had prudently set down in writing all that I have told you, together with a thousand others of the Prior’s devices to deceive her, which ’twould take too long to relate.