g at church made me appear better than I was. Vanity, which
had been excluded to my heart now resumed its seat. I began to pass a
great part of my time before a looking glass. I found so much pleasure
in viewing myself, that I thought others were in the right who
practiced the same. Instead of making use of this exterior, which God
had given me, that I might love Him the more, it became to me only the
means of a vain complacency. All seemed to me to look beautiful in my
person, but I saw not that it covered a polluted soul. This rendered me
so inwardly vain, that I doubt whether any ever exceeded me therein.
There was an affected modesty in my outward deportment that would have
deceived the world.

The high esteem I had for myself made me find faults in everyone else
of my own sex. I had no eyes but to see my own good qualities, and to
discover the defects of others. I hid my own faults from myself, or if
I remarked any, yet to me they appeared little in comparison of others.
I excused, and even figured them to myself as perfections. Every idea I
had of others and of myself was false. I loved reading to such excess,
particularly romances, that I spent whole days and nights at them.
Sometimes the day broke while I continued to read, insomuch, that for a
length of time I almost lost the habit of sleeping. I was ever eager to
get to the end of the book, in hopes of finding something to satisfy a
certain craving which I found within me. My thirst for reading was only
increased the more I read. Books are strange inventions to destroy
youth. If they caused no other hurt than the loss of precious time, is
not that too much? I was not restrained, but rather encouraged to read
them under this fallacious pretext, that they taught one to speak well.

Meanwhile, through thy abundant mercy, O my God, Thou camest to seek me
from time to time, Thou didst indeed knock at the door of my heart. I
was often penetrated with the most lively sorrow and shed abundance of
tears. I was afflicted to find my state so different from what it was
when I enjoyed Thy sacred presence; but my tears were fruitless and my
grief in vain. I could not of myself get out of this wretched state. I
wished some hand as charitable as powerful would extricate me; as for
myself I had no power. If I had had any friend, who would have examined
the cause of this evil, and made me have recourse again to prayer,
which was the only means of relief, all would have been wel