"Sworn before me, this 3d day of March, 1836.
_From the Protestant Vindicator of March 9._
"The following statement has been furnished by the female witness above-mentioned; the name being reserved only from delicacy to a lady's feelings."
"I was born at Montreal, and resided there until within a few months, and where my friends still remain. I was educated among the Catholics, and have never separated myself from them.
"I knew Maria Monk when quite a child. We went to school together for about a year, as near as I can remember, to Mr. Workman, Sacrament-street, in Montreal. She is about one month younger than myself. We left that school at the same time, and entered the Congregational Nunnery nearly together. I could mention many things which I witnessed there, calculated to confirm some of her accounts.
"I knew of the elopement of a priest named Leclerc, who was a confessor, with a nun sent from the Congregational Nunnery to teach in a village. They were brought back, after which she gave birth to an infant, and was again employed as a teacher.
"Children were often punished in the Congregational Nunnery, by being made to stand with arms extended, to imitate Christ's posture on the cross; and when we found vermin in our soup, as was often the case, we were exhorted to overcome our repugnance to it, because Christ died for us. I have seen such belts as are mentioned in the 'Awful Disclosures,' as well as gags; but never saw them applied.
"Maria Monk left the Congregational Nunnery before I did, and became a Novice in the Hotel Dieu. I remember her entrance into the latter very well, for we had a 'jour de congé,' holiday, on that occasion.
"Some short time subsequently, after school hours one afternoon, while in the school-room in the second story of the Congregational Nunnery, several of the girls standing near a window exclaimed, 'There is Maria Monk.' I sprang to the window to look, and saw her with several other novices, in the yard of the Hotel Dieu, among the plants which grew there. She did not appear to notice us, but I perfectly recognised her.
"I have frequently visited the public hospital of the Hotel Dieu. It is the custom there for some of the nuns and novices to enter at three o'clock, P.M., in procession with food and delicacies for the sick. I recollect some of my visits there by circumstances attending them. For instance, I was much struck, on several occasions, by the beauty of a young novice, whose slender, graceful form, and interesting appearance, distinguished her from the rest. On inquiry, I learnt that her name was Dubois, or something like it, and the daughter of an old man who had removed from the country, and lived near the Place d'Armes. She was so generally admired for her beauty, that she was called 'la belle St. François'--St. Francis being the saint's name she had assumed in the Convent.