Calmly, and with a smile of joy, such as I had never seen before, nor have seen since, she said, "I thank and bless you, dear father, for the parable of the Prodigal Son, on which you preached a month ago. You have brought me to the feet of the dear Saviour; there, I have found a peace and a joy which surpa.s.s anything which human heart can feel; I have thrown myself into the arms of my heavenly Father, and I know He has mercifully accepted and forgiven His poor prodigal child! Oh, I see the angels with their golden harps around the throne of the Lamb! Do you not hear the celestial harmony of their songs? I go--I go to join them in my Father's house. I shall not be lost!"

While she was thus speaking to me, my eyes were really turned into two fountains of tears, and I was unable, as well as unwilling, to see anything, so entirely overcome was I by the sublime words which were flowing from the dying lips of that dear child, who was no more a sinner, but a real angel of Heaven to me. I was listening to her words; there was a celestial music in every one of them. But she had raised her voice in such a strange way, when she had begun to say, "I go to my Father's house," and she had made such a cry of joy when she had let the last words, "not be lost," escape her lips, that I raised my head and opened my eyes to look at her. I suspected that something strange had occurred.

I got upon my feet, pa.s.sed my handkerchief over my face, to wipe away the tears which were preventing me from seeing with accuracy, and looked at her.

Her hands were crossed on her breast, and there was on her face the expression of a really superhuman joy; her beautiful eyes were fixed as if they were looking on some grand and sublime spectacle; it seemed to me at first that she was praying.

In that very same instant the mother rushed into the room, crying, "My G.o.d!

my G.o.d! what does that cry 'lost' mean?"--for her last words, "not be lost," particularly the last one, had been p.r.o.nounced with such a powerful voice that they had been heard almost everywhere in the house.

I made a sign with my hand to prevent the distressed mother from making any noise, and troubling her dying child in her prayer, for I really thought that she had stopped speaking, as she used so often to do, when alone with me, in order to pray. But I was mistaken. That redeemed soul had gone, on the golden wings of love, to join the mult.i.tudes of those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, to sing the eternal Alleluia.

CHAPTER II.

AURICULAR CONFESSION A DEEP PIT OF PERDITION FOR THE PRIEST

It was some time after our Mary had been buried. The terrible and mysterious cause of her death was known only to G.o.d and to me. Though her loving mother was still weeping over her grave, she had soon been forgotten, as usual, by the greatest part of those who had known her: but she was constantly present to my mind. I never entered the confessional-box without hearing her solemn, though so mild, voice telling me, "There must be somewhere something wrong in the auricular confession. Twice I have been destroyed by my confessors; and I have known several others who have been destroyed in the same way."

More than once, when her voice was ringing in my ears from her tomb, I had shed bitter tears on the profound and unfathomable degradation into which I, with the other priests, had to fell in the confessional-box. For many, many times, stories as deplorable as that of this unfortunate girl were confessed to me by city as well as country females.

One night I was awakened by the rumbling noise of thunder, when I heard some one knocking at the door. I hastened out of bed to ask who was there.

The answer was that the Rev. Mr. ---- was dying, and that he wanted to see me before his death. I dressed myself, and was soon on the highway. The darkness was fearful; and often, had it not been for the lightning which was almost constantly tearing the clouds, we should not have known where we were. After a long and hard journey through the darkness and the storm, we arrived at the house of the dying priest. I went directly to his room, and really found him very low; he could hardly speak. With a sign of his hand he bade his servant-girl and a young man who were there go out, and leave him alone with me.

Then, with a low voice, he said, "Is it you who prepared poor Mary to die?"

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"Please tell me the truth. Is it the fact that she died the death of a reprobate, and that her last words were, 'Oh, my G.o.d! I am lost'?"

I answered: "As I was the confessor of that girl, and we were talking together on matters which pertained to her confession, in the very moment that she was unexpectedly summoned to appear before G.o.d, I cannot answer your question in any way; please, then, excuse me if I cannot say any more on that subject: but tell me who can have a.s.sured you that she died the death of a reprobate."

"It was her own mother," answered the dying man. "She came, last week, to visit me, and when she was alone with me, with many tears and cries, she said how her poor child had refused to receive the last sacraments, and how her last cry was, 'I am lost!'" She added that that cry, 'Lost!' was p.r.o.nounced with such a frightful power that it was heard through all the house."

"If her mother has told you that," I replied, "you may believe what you please about the way that poor child died. I cannot say a word--you know it--about that matter."

"But if she is lost," rejoined the old, dying priest, "I am the miserable one who has destroyed her. She was an angel of purity when she came to the convent. Oh! dear Mary, if you are lost, I am a thousandfold more lost! Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d! what will become of me? I am dying; and I am lost!"

It was indeed an awful thing to see that old sinner tearing his own hands, rolling on his bed as if he had been on burning coals, with all the marks of the most frightful despair on his face, crying, "I am lost! Oh, my G.o.d, I am lost!"

I was glad that the claps of thunder, which were shaking the house and roaring without ceasing, prevented the people outside the room from hearing those cries of desolation from that priest, whom every one considered a great saint.

When it seemed to me that his terror had somewhat subsided, and that his mind was calmed a little, I said to him, "My dear friend, you must not give yourself up to such despair. Our merciful G.o.d has promised to forgive the repenting sinner who comes to Him, even at the last hour of the day.

Address yourself to the Virgin Mary, she will ask and obtain your pardon."

"Do you not think that it is too late to ask pardon? The doctor has honestly warned me that death is very near, and I feel I am just now dying!

Is it not too late to ask and obtain pardon?" asked the dying priest.

"No, my dear sir, it is not too late, if you sincerely regret your sins.

Throw yourself into the arms of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; make your confession without any more delay, and you will be saved."

"But I have never made a good confession. Will you help me to make a general one?"

It was my duty to grant him his request, and the rest of the night was spent by me in hearing the confession of his whole life.

I do not want to give many particulars of the life of that priest. I will only mention two things. First: It was then that I understood why poor young Mary was absolutely unwilling to mention the iniquities which she had done with him. They were simply surpa.s.singly horrible--unmentionable. No human tongue can express them--few human ears would consent to hear them.

The second thing that I am bound in conscience to reveal is almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true. The number of married and unmarried females he had heard in the confessional was about 1500, of which he said he had destroyed or scandalized at least 1000 by his questioning them on most depraving things, for the simple pleasure of gratifying his own corrupted heart, without letting them know anything of his sinful thoughts and criminal desires towards them. But he confessed that he had destroyed the purity of ninety-five of those penitents, who had consented to sin with him.

And would to G.o.d that this priest had been the only one whom I have known to be lost through the auricular confession! But, alas! how few are those who have escaped the snares of the tempter compared with those who have perished! I have heard the confessions of more than 200 priests, and, to say the truth, as G.o.d knows it, I must declare that only twenty-one had not to weep over the secret or public sins committed through the irresistibly corrupting influences of auricular confession!

I am sixty six years old; in a short time I shall be in my grave. I shall have to give an account of what I say to-day. Well, it is in the presence of my great Judge, with my tomb before my eyes, that I declare to the world that very few--yes, very few--priests escape from falling into the pit of the most horrible moral depravity the world has ever known, through the confession of females.

I do not say this because I have any bad feelings against those priests: G.o.d knows that I have none. The only feelings I have are of supreme compa.s.sion and pity. I do not reveal these awful things to make the world believe that the priests of Rome are a worse set of men than the rest of the innumerable fallen children of Adam. No, I do not entertain any such views; for, everything considered and weighed in the balance of religion, charity, and common sense--I think that the priests of Rome are far from being worse than any other set of men who would be thrown into the same temptations, dangers and unavoidable occasions of sin.

For instance, let us take lawyers, merchants, or farmers, and, preventing them from living with their lawful wives, let us surround each of them from morning to night by ten, twenty, and sometimes more, beautiful women and tempting girls, who would speak to them of things which can pulverize a rock of Scotch granite, and you will see how many of those lawyers, merchants or farmers will go out of that terrible moral battle-field without being mortally wounded.

The cause of the supreme--I dare say incredible, though unsuspected--immorality of the priests of Rome is a very evident and logical one. By the diabolical power of the Pope, the priest is put out of the ways which G.o.d has offered to the generality of men to be honest, upright, and holy[1]. And after the Pope has deprived them of the grand, holy, I say Divine (in this sense that it comes directly from G.o.d) remedy which G.o.d has given to man against his own concupiscence--holy marriage, they are placed unprotected, unguarded in the most perilous, difficult, irresistible moral dangers which human ingenuity or depravity can conceive.

Those unmarried men are forced to be, from morning to night, in the midst of beautiful girls, and tempting, charming women, who have to tell them things which would melt the hardest steel. How can you expect that they will cease to be men, and become stronger than angels?

Not only are the priests of Rome deprived by the devil of the _only_ remedy which G.o.d has given to help them to stand up, but they have, in the confessional, the greatest facility which can possibly be imagined for satisfying all the bad propensities of fallen human nature. In the confessional _they know_ those who are strong, and they know those who are weak among the females by whom they are surrounded; they know who would resist any attempt from the enemy; and they know who are ready--nay, who are longing after the deceitful charms of sin. If they still retain the fallen nature of man, what a terrible hour for them! what frightful battles inside the poor heart! What superhuman efforts and strength would be required to come out a conqueror from that battle field, where a David, a Samson, have fallen, mortally wounded!

It is simply an act of supreme stupidity on the part of the Protestant, as well as Catholic public, to suppose, or suspect, or hope, that the generality of the priests can stand that trial. The pages of the history of Rome herself are filled with the unanswerable proofs that the great _generality_ of the confessors fall. If it were not so, the miracle of Joshua, stopping the march of the sun and the moon, would be a childish play compared with the miracle which would stop and reverse all the laws of our common fallen nature in the hearts of the 100,000 Roman Catholic confessors of the Church of Rome. Were I attempting to prove by public facts what I know of the horrible depravity caused by the confessional-box among the priests of France, Canada, Spain, Italy, England, I should have to write many big volumes in folio. For brevity's sake, I will speak only of Italy. I take that country because, being under the very eyes of their infallible and most holy (?) Pontiff, being in the land of daily miracles, of painted Madonnas, who weep and turn their eyes left and right, up and down, in a most marvellous way, being in the land of miraculous medals and heavenly spiritual favors, constantly flowing from the chair of St. Peter, the confessors in Italy are in the best possible circ.u.mstances to be strong, faithful, and holy. Well, let us hear an eye-witness, a contemporary, an unimpeachable witness about the way the confessors deal with their penitent females, in the only holy, apostolical, infallible (?) Church of Rome.

The witness we will hear is of the purest blood of the princes of Italy.

Her name is Henrietta Carracciolo, daughter of the Marshal Carracciolo, Governor of the Province of Bari, in Italy. Let us hear what she says of the Father Confessors, after twenty years of personal experience in different nunneries of Italy, in her remarkable book, "Mysteries of the Neapolitan Convents," pp. 150, 151, 152: "My confessor came the following day, and I disclosed to him the nature of the troubles which beset me.

Later in the day, seeing that I had gone down to the place where we used to receive the holy communion, called Communichino, the conversa of my aunt rang the bell for the priest to come with the pyx.[2] He was a man of about fifty years of age, very corpulent, with a rubicund face, and a type of physiognomy as vulgar as it was repulsive.

"I approached the little window to receive the sacred wafer on my tongue, with my eyes closed, as it is customary. I placed it upon my tongue; and, as I drew back, I felt my cheeks caressed. I opened my eyes, but the priest had withdrawn his hand, and, thinking I had been deceived, I gave it no more attention.

"On the next occasion, forgetful of what had occurred before, I received the sacrament with closed eyes again, according to precept. This time I distinctly felt my chin caressed again; and on opening my eyes suddenly, I found the priest gazing rudely upon me, with a sensual smile on his face.

"There could be no longer any doubt: these overtures were not the result of accident.

"The daughter of Eve is endowed with a greater degree of curiosity than man. It occured to me to place myself in a contiguous apartment, where I could observe if this libertine priest was accustomed to take similar liberties with the nuns. I did so, and was fully convinced that only the old left him without being caressed!

"All the others allowed him to do with them as he pleased; and even, in taking leave of him, did so with the utmost reverence.

"'Is this the respect,' said I to myself, 'that the priests and the spouses of Christ have for the sacrament of the Eucharist? Shall the poor novice be enticed to leave the world in order to learn, in this school, such lessons of self-respect and chast.i.ty?'"

Page 163, we read, "The fanatical pa.s.sion of the nuns for their confessors, priests, and monks, exceeds belief. That which especially renders their incarceration endurable is the illimitable opportunity they enjoy of seeing and corresponding with those persons with whom they are in love. This freedom localizes and identifies them with the convent so closely that they are unhappy when, on account of any serious sickness, or while preparing to take the veil, they are obliged to pa.s.s some months in the bosom of their own families, in company with their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. It is not to be presumed that these relatives would permit a young girl to pa.s.s many hours each day in a mysterious colloquy with a priest, or a monk, and maintain with him this continual correspondence. This is a liberty which they can enjoy in the convent only.

"Many are the hours which the Helose spends in the confessional, in agreeable pastime with her Abelard in ca.s.sock.

"Others, whose confessors happen to be old, have in addition a spiritual director, with whom they amuse themselves a long time every day, _tete-a-tete_, in the parlatorio. When this is not enough, they simulate an illness, in order to have him alone in their own rooms."