ng soul. She endeavored to draw her
thoughts from herself by reading. She could not even pray without a
book. She was afraid to be left alone with herself. Her situation was
made still worse by the fact that her superiors did not understand her.
When they noticed that she sought solitude, and shed tears for her sins,
they fancied she had a discontented disposition, and added to her
unhappiness by telling her so. But she conformed to all the rules,
irksome or not, and endured every mortification, and even performed acts
of devotion which were not required. She envied the patience of a poor
woman who died of the most painful ulcers, and thought it would be a
blessing if she could be afflicted in the same way, in order, as she
said, to purchase eternal good. And this strange desire was fulfilled,
for a severe and painful malady afflicted her for three years.

Again was she removed to some place for cure, for her case was
desperate. And here her patience was supernal. Yet patience under bodily
torments did not give the sought-for peace. It happened that a learned
ecclesiastic of noble family lived in this place, and she sought relief
in confessions to him. With a rare judgment and sense, and perhaps pride
and delicacy, she disliked to confess to ignorant priests. She said
that the half-learned did her more harm than good. The learned were
probably more lenient to her, and more in sympathy with her, and assured
her that those sins were only venial which she had supposed were mortal.
But she soon was obliged to give up this confessor, since he began to
confess to her, and to confess sins in comparison with which the sins
she confessed were venial indeed. He not only told her of his slavery to
a bad woman, but confessed a love for Theresa herself, which she of
course repelled, though not with the aversion she ought to have felt. It
seems that her pious talk was instrumental in effecting his deliverance
from a base bondage. He soon after died, and piously, she declared; so
that she considered it certain that his soul was saved.

Theresa remained three months in this place, in most grievous
sufferings, for the remedy was worse than the disease. Again her father
took her home, since all despaired of her recovery, her nervous system
being utterly shattered, and her pains incessant by day and by night;
the least touch was a torment. At last she sank into a state of
insensibility from sheer exhaustion, so that she was supposed to be