CHAPTER XVIII.
PUNISHMENTS AND CRIMES.
THIS punishment was occasionally resorted to for very trifling offences, such as washing the hands without permission; and it was generally applied on the spot, and before the other nuns in the community-room.
I have mentioned before, that the country, so far down as Three Rivers, is furnished with priests by the Seminary of Montreal; and that these hundred and fifty men are liable to be occasionally transferred from one station to another. Numbers of them are often to be seen in the streets of Montreal, as they may find a home in the Seminary.
They are considered as having an equal right to enter the Black Nunnery whenever they please; and, then, according to our oaths, they have complete control over the nuns. To name all the works of shame of which they are guilty in that retreat, would require much time and space, neither would it be necessary to the accomplishment of my object, which is, the publication of but some of their criminality to the world, and the development in general terms of scenes thus far carried on in secret within the walls of that Convent where I was so long an inmate.
Secure against detection by the world, they never believed that an eye-witness would ever escape to tell of their crimes, and declare some of their names before the world; but the time has come, and some of their deeds of darkness must come to the day. I have seen in
