When Magdalen was gone, the mother-superior told us that the poor girl had many good qualities, and if God willed that she should keep some particle of sense she did not doubt her becoming a saint like her patroness.

“She has begged me,” she added, “to take down the pictures of St. Louis de Gonzaga and St. Antony from the chapel wall because she says they distract her fearfully.  I have thought it my duty to yield to her request, in spite of our confessor, who says it’s all nonsense.”

The confessor was a rude churl.  I did not exactly tell the abbess that, but I said enough for a clever woman as she was to grasp my meaning.

We left the sorrowful place in sadness and silence, cursing the sovereign who had made such ill use of her power.

If, as our holy religion maintains, there is a future life before us all, Marie Therese certainly deserves damnation, if only the oppressions she has used towards those poor women whose life is wretched enough at the best.  Poor Mary Magdalen had gone mad and suffered the torments of the damned because nature had given her two of her best gifts—­beauty, and an excellent heart.  You will say she had abused them, but for a fault which is only a crime before God, should a fellow-creature and a greater sinner have condemned her to such a fearful doom?  I defy any reasonable man to answer in the affirmative.

On our way back to the castle Clementine, who was on my arm, laughed to herself once or twice.  I felt curious to know what she was laughing at, and said,—­

“May I ask you, fair countess, why you laugh thus to yourself?”

“Forgive me; I was not amused at the poor girl’s recognizing you, for that must have been a mistake, but I cannot help laughing when I think of your face at her wordy ‘You are more deserving of imprisonment than I.’”

“Perhaps you think she was right.”

“I?  Not at all.  But how is it that she attacked you and not my brother-in-law?”

“Probably because she thought I looked a greater sinner than he.”

“That, I suppose, must have been the reason.  One should never heed the talk of mad people.”

“You are sarcastic, but I take it all in good part.  Perhaps I am as great a sinner as I look; but beauty should be merciful to me, for it is by beauty that I am led astray.”

“I wonder the empress does not shut up men as well as women.”

“Perhaps she hopes to see them all at her feet when there are no more girls left to amuse them.”

“That is a jest.  You should rather say that she cannot forgive her own sex the lack of a virtue which she exercises so eminently, and which is so easily observed.”

“I have nothing to allege against the empress’s virtue, but with your leave I beg to entertain very strong doubts as to the possibility of the general exercise of that virtue which we call continence.”

“No doubt everyone thinks by his own standard.  A man may be praised for temperance in whom temperance is no merit.  What is easy to you may be hard to me, and ‘vice versa’.  Both of us may be right.”