bigot, had unobtrusively instilled her religious principles into her daughter's mind. Although Manon's infant reason had been troubled by the idea that God should have permitted the transformation of the Devil into a serpent, her feelings were gradually touched by the moral beauty of Christianity; and after her first confirmation, the teachings of the New Testament took deep and deeper hold of her. She now began to meditate on the mysteries of faith and eternal salvation, and felt that she was but ill-prepared for her first communion. Thereupon she became convinced that she ought to enter a convent, where her devotion would be entirely untrammelled; and while daily studying the folio Lives of the Saints, she deplored those happy days of martyrdom when persecuted Christians triumphantly proclaimed their creed in the very fangs of death. Alas! the child's wish was granted to the woman: to her was indeed given the martyr's death and the martyr's crown. Nor did she, in the fulness of time, falter in her new faith beneath the knife of the guillotine.
In this solemn state of mind she at last, one evening, took courage to proffer her request to her parents. "I fell at their feet," she says, "shedding at the same time a torrent of tears which almost deprived me of speech. Troubled and surprised, they asked me the reason of my strange excitement. 'I am going to beg of you,' I said, sobbing, 'to do something which grieves me sorely but which conscience demands. Send me to a nunnery.' They raised me from the ground. My good mother was much moved. While it was pointed out to me that I had never been refused any reasonable request, they asked me what had put me into this frame of mind. I replied that I wished
