Soon I was to travel again through the French countryside but its splendors were to leave me unmoved. The landscape no longer interested me. The birds music no longer cheered my heart. There were no more garlands. Rather than the light-hearted joy of my previous pilgrimage, my veil shielded me from the vanities of nature and beauty. A garment of sackcloth took from me the simple pleasures of my own healthy skin. My eyes swollen from weeping for my lost Cordelia. Following the night I have described, my love and I awoke early and took the cure with our other pious ladies. We prayed devoutly although the two of us felt secure. We had given each other the miracle. We were to stay another day and head back to the hated castle. Strangely enough Grimaldus had disappeared. Our trip back was uneventful but beautiful, colored as it was by our burgeoning love. We could not be as open as we liked, yet we still found the opportunity to steal a thousand kisses and at least a hundred caresses. We held hands wherever we went. M.’s estates had just come into view. Men on horseback were riding at full speed to greet us. Without a word these men laid hands on Cordelia and myself, roughly stripping us of our mounts and taking us into custody. Our ladies gasped in shock. What could this mean? Cordelia was kaçak iddaa taken away from me in a direction that was wooded as far as the eye could see. I howled in horror but the men stopped my mouth and took me, devastated, through those gloomy corridors, to deposit me at the feet of my Master. He scowled at me. Amidst his invectives a fleck of spit accompanied the word “tribadism,” shooting from between his pursed lips like an oath. It was then I knew all was lost. I knew not why at the time, only that my happiness had been discovered. Why oh why did we not hide ourselves better? Everyone must have noticed the way we looked at each other on our return trip, the little games we played and tender glances we exchanged. I only learned later that the treacherous Grimaldus had been enlisted to spy for my master. The carbuncle had followed us and spied as we immersed ourselves in love. I will never forgive him and may God never do so. I still don’t know why Monsieur felt the need to have me watched. I’d never given him cause for suspicion before. Perhaps he sensed that I craved happiness and would slip from him in an instant given the chance to taste it. I listened to M. but after his first few words I felt faint and could no longer. I pleaded for my Cordelia, I offered my life for hers but kaçak bahis this elicited only sneers of contempt and further abuse. The gruesome man beat me, slapped me, kicked me, spat at me, vituperated. When he tired of this, I was thrown into a cell deep beneath the castle in a murky, dripping dungeon, shoved a piece of mouldy bread and left to rot. For days, how many in that darkness I know not, I lived on tears. I raged, I shouted, I threatened, then I would relent, plead, apologize, promise to live contritely and to bear Monsieur beautiful children if only my Cordelia might be spared. One night I was awakened by a familiar voice. It was my father opening the door of my cell. News of my calamity had reached our village and my father, doubtless feeling guilty, had hurried here to save me and succeeded in bribing a guard. Monsieur was trumping up charges of witchcraft, using my tribadism as evidence to convince the elders of the town to burn me. This was my only chance at life. I would be hidden away in a nunnery, to live a life of fasting prayer and devotion. On no account could I ever see Cordelia again. We rode all night, my father and I. I could see that he had not believed the charges against me at first but my reaction to the news of having lost her, my one true wife in the eyes illegal bahis of the Lord, my misery, made plain to him the dire news of my sin. Only penitence and mortification, a lifetimes worth, could expiate the crime of our love. Soon the Order of the Sacred Heart came into view. I wept to consider my fate within its walls. At first it was difficult, but I soon learned to welcome the convent life and its oppressive boredom. A nun is expected to live her life inwardly in communion with the Holy Spirit. Ostensibly this was so with all of us but none knows the depths of the human soul and where it seeks its real communion. As for me, I brooded over my Cordelia and all my prayers were for her. I fasted, I prayed, I listened to the Scriptures, I chanted. But pious at heart I was not. Under my coarse habit I felt my warm body glow, desiring more life, more pleasure, not less. Most of the sisters were and are, dull nondescript devout types. Types whose personalities disappear beneath their habits. They are the real nuns and are necessary for an order like ours which deviates from the norm somewhat. The real leaders consist of a small coterie. Our leader, abbess Clarissa, a tall voluptuous redhead of a fierce and proud demeanor. Square-jawed and forceful, almost masculine in her beauty. Sister Genevieve, her right hand, the first Negress I had ever known or seen. From Sierra Leone, she was mistress to a Portuguese trader who brought her here after her parents had been captured for the slave trade.