When I was about fourteen years of age, I was sent to the Ursuline Convent, to receive my education.  My dear mother would have preferred a governess or a competent teacher to teach me at home but her will was but a mere straw in the hands of our confessor and priestly tyrant.  It was solely at the recommendation of the confessor, that I was imprisoned four years in the Ursuline Convent.  As my confessor was also the confessor of the convent, he called himself my guardian and protector, and recommended me to the special care of the Mother Abbess, and her holy nuns, the teachers, who spent much of their time in the school department.  As my father paid a high price, quarterly, for my tuition and board, I had a good room to myself, my living was of the best kind, and I always had wine at dinner.  The nuns, my teachers, took much more pains to teach me the fear of the Pope, bishops and confessors, than the fear of God, or the love of virtue.  In fact, with the exception of a little Latin and embroidery, which I learned in those four years, I came out as ignorant as I was before, unless a little hypocrisy may be called a useful accomplishment.  For, of all human beings on earth, none can teach hypocrisy so well as the Romish priests and nuns.  In the school department young ladies seldom have much to complain of, unless they are charity scholars; in that case the poor girls have to put up with very poor fare, and much hard work, hard usage and even heavy blows; how my heart has ached for some of those unfortunate girls, who are treated more like brutes, than human beings, because they are orphans, and poor.  Yet they in justice are entitled to good treatment, for thousands of scudi (dollars) are sent as donations to the convents for the support of these orphans, every year, by benevolent individuals.  So that as poor and unfortunate as these girls are, they are a source of revenue to the convents.

For the first three years of my convent life, I passed the time in the school department, without much anxiety of mind.  I was gay and thoughtless, my great trouble was to find something to amuse myself, and kill time in some way.  Though I treated all the school-mates with kindness, and true Italian politeness, I became intimate with only one.  She was a beautiful girl, from the dukedom of Tuscany.  She made me her confidant, and told me all her heart.  Her parents were wealthy, and both very strict members of the Romish Church.  But she had an aunt in the city of Geneva, who was a follower of John Calvin, or a member of the Christian church of Switzerland.  This aunt had been yearly a visitor at her father’s house.  She being her father’s only sister, an affectionate intimacy was formed between the aunt and niece.  The aunt, being a very pious, amiable woman, felt it her duty to impress the mind of the niece, with the superiority of the religion of the holy bible over popish traditions; and the truth of the Scriptures soon found its way to the heart of my