Knights, was first in battle, in faith- | ourselves. We can see the gloomy On these interiors, full of intimate charm, the medieval workman exhausted all his art. fulness, in chivalry. Queen Isabella grey façade, irregularly studded with passed her youth in its palace, the narrow slits, the arched gateway, the Madrigal, now a deserted convent. heavy doors, leading into a kind of The expulsion of the Jews, which took covered entrance hall, on one side of place in 1492-twenty-three years be- which were the stables. Beyond lies fore the birth of Teresa-proved the the courtyard, round which the house death-blow to the prosperity of the is built. town. Eleven and a half thousand Jews, including cloth workers, carpet makers, and famous artificers who enriched the place, were banished at one stroke. Whole quarters of Avila were deserted, and remain unoccupied to this day. Torquemada, the grand inquisitor, whose name is branded with infamy, lies buried in the Dominican monastery of Santo Tomás, to the south of the town. He was the chief founder of that great house. It was built with the confiscated wealth of Jews and Moors, and the first sanbenitos seen in Spain were guarded before its high altar. The flames of persecution first kindled against the Jews in Avila spread over the land, and robbed Spain of eighty-five thousand of her most learned and industrious citizens. Such was the town in which the future saint was born. The convent of Pastrana still preserves a paper in her father's writing. "On Wednesday, on the 28th day of March, of the year 1515, was born Teresa, my daughter, at five o'clock in the morning, half an hour before or after." The font in the parish church of San Juan, where she was baptized six days later, stands in a dusky corner, its rim protected by a thin strip of brass carved in arabesques and covered with a heavy board of olive wood. At its base are the rough blocks of stone worn by the knees of generations of godfathers and godmothers. The saint's father, Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda, belonged to a noble Toledan family. His mother was a Cepeda -a race distinguished in the long struggle against the Moors. Teresa's mother, Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, could boast as proud an ancestry as her husband. No vestige remains of the house in which Teresa first saw the light, but many buildings still survive which help us to reconstruct it for Round both stories ran open galleries, whose colonnades of Gothic arches were supported by slender columns with delicately wrought capitals, on which were sometimes repeated the arms of the house. The ground floor was occupied by the kitchen, offices, and servants' dwellings. The rooms occupied by the family were on the floor above. The projecting eaves of the roof, which rested on wooden soffits most quaintly carved, submerged the upper Wherever the irregular wavy outline of the tiles cut gallery in shadowy obscurity. against the sky, it framed a patch of dazzling, glittering light. Perhaps a vine clung limpet-like to the pillars or the walls. A conspicuous object in the centre of the courtyard was the draw-well, with its characteristic brim, buckets, and chains. In the whole building and its accessories an indescribable mixture of Moorish and Gothic elements, impossible to separate or define. The walls were hung with tapestries or lovely leather. Wooden chests placed against the sides served both as benches and cupboards. From Teresa's writings we learn that her father was dignified, honorable, and kindly, a great lover of books of devotion, of which he had formed a considerable collection for the use of his children. He could never be induced to own a slave, and treated one belonging to his brother, then staying with him, like a child of the house. He said "he could not for very pity bear to see a person deprived of. freedom." Teresa's mother was a woman of great beauty, much younger than her husband, and his second wife. She died in her thirty-third year, having borne seven sons and two daughters during her brief married life. Teresa was her third child. It was a happy family. "They were all bound to each other,' ," she says, "by a tender love, | Teresa bitterly reproached herself in and all resembled their parents in after life for the days spent in her virtue except myself." Six of her father's old grey tower in poring over brothers became soldiers and went to these wild and unprofitable stories. push their fortune in the New World, She was now growing into womanwhence only two of them ever re- hood. She was tall and well-proporturued. Teresa and her favorite tioned, with a fair brow encircled by brother Rodrigo, four years younger black curling hair, sparkling black eyes, than herself, pored over the lives of a dimpled chin, small hauds with long, saints and martyrs till they were filled tapering fingers. She had a charm of with longing to tread in their steps in manner and a personal magnetism order to enjoy as soon as possible the which never failed to produce a deep great treasures which they understood impression. The consciousness of her to be stored up in heaven. After talk- beauty made her eager to win admiraing the matter over Teresa says, "We tion. 66 "I began," she says, in telling agreed to go to the land of the Moors, the story of these years, "to wear fine begging our way for the love of God, clothes, and to wish to please by lookthere to be beheaded; and it seems to ing well, and to bestow much care me that the Lord gave us courage even on my hands and hair, and to use at so tender an age, if we could have perfumes and every other vanity I discovered any means of accomplishing could procure, for I was very curious." it. But our parents seemed to us the By curious she means that she was greatest obstacle." It is said- but scrupulously careful as to her person this have been a mere legend may and dress. In after years she strugthat the children set out on their jour-gled hard and often vainly to teach her ney, but were espied by an uncle and nuns so much of this curiousness as brought safely back to their anxious would make them neat and clean. Bemother. neath all her pride in dress and beauty there lay the foundation of a strong character and a sharply marked individuality. Honest and straightforward, she had all the punctilious dignity of a Castilian, and longed to excel in everything she attempted. 66 Here is her portrait of her childhood. "I gave in alms what I could, and that was very little. I tried to be alone to say my prayers, which were many; above all the rosary, to which my mother had a great devotion, with which she inspired us also. Although The only men allowed to cross her I was very wicked, I tried in some way father's threshold were some gay young since I was a child to serve God, and cousins who brought a spice of fun did not do some things I see, which the and laughter into her monotonous and world seems to consider of no impor- secluded life. "We were always totance. I was not disposed to murmur, gether," she says; "they were very or to speak ill of others, nor does it fond of me, and I kept up the talk in seem to me I could dislike another, everything in which they were internor was I covetous, nor do I remem-ested, and they told me of their love ber to have felt envy." Her mother affairs and childish folly, in no way died when she was twelve years old. good; and, what was worse, my soul Henceforth Teresa was left much to began to be accustomed to what was herself. Stories of knight-errantry the cause of all its hurts." A relative now took the place of the lives of the whom her mother had vainly endeavsaints. She had caught this taste from ored to discourage from coming to the her mother. The books had been care-house abetted the girl in her amusefully concealed from her father, who ments. Teresa says that until the age heartily and justly disliked the unre- of fourteen, when this relative became strained licentiousness and coarseness her confidant, she did not think she of such romances. It was a strange had left God through mortal sin, nor phase in the history of a future saint. lost his fear, although she feared more the good companionship, that I began lest anything should be said or done to | such was the effect the words of God I reflect upon her honor. "This feeling read and heard had on my heart, aud was strong enough to prevent its being altogether lost; nor do I think that anything in the world, nor love for any person in it, could change or make me yield in this." Her father and elder sister were much grieved at her friendship with this relative, but their remonstrances were unheeded. Her eyes were opened in later years. "I am sometimes frightened," she said afterwards, "at the harm done by evil company, and had I not experienced it, could not believe it. In the season of youth greater must be the evil it works." Scarcely any trace of her early seriousness was left. She abhorred everything impure, but the intimacy gave rise to scandal and alarmed her father, who packed her off to the old Augustinian convent of Santa Maria de Gracia. Thus ended for the moment the future saint's pitiful little story of youthful frivolity. The girl felt no vocation for the cloister. She thought at first that one, like herself, who had been used to delicate living could not bear its privations; but this was set down as a temptation of the devil to be fought and conquered. We watch with growing pity that fierce struggle of a mind torn asunder by doubts and temptations. "Her aversion to the cloister was only equalled by a tremendous dread of hell." After three months of torture she told her father that she had resolved to enter a convent. He refused his consent. Teresa was his favorite child. He could not bear to part with her, though he hinted that after his death she might take her own course. Teresa was not, however, turned from her purpose. On November 2, 1533, the girl of seventeen rose early one morning and betook herself to the Carmelite convent of the Encarnacion, about half a mile north of the city walls. She had been repelled by the severe discipline among the demure nuns of Santa Maria de Gracia, and though she was moved by servile fear In the cloister the girl of sixteen soon won all hearts. She had entered Santa Maria with a great aversion to a nun's life, but she was not unaffected by the atmosphere around her. "If I saw one of the sisters shed tears when she prayed, or possess other virtues, I longed to be like her, for, as regards this, my heart was so hard that I could not shed a tear, even though I read the whole Passion through; this gave me pain." She asked the prayers of the community that she might find her own vocation. She feared marriage, but hoped that she might escape a convent life. After eighteen months a painful illness compelled her to return to enter a religious house, she turned to her father's house. During her days of convalescence she visited her married sister, who lived in the country, two days' journey from Avila. On her way she stayed with an uncle at Hortigosa, who was a strange mixture of country squire and ascetic. He asked Teresa to read aloud his favorite books of devotion. She concealed her distaste for them in order to give the old man pleasure. The result is thus told in her autobiography: "Although the days I stayed with him were few, 66 towards the merry, noisy, squabbling, sometimes hungry, chattering, and scandal-loving" sisterhood of the Carmelite convent, where she might keep for herself a world within the world." It is a pitiful picture painted by herself. "I do not think that when I die, the wrench will be greater than when I went forth from my father's house; for it seems to me that every bone was wrenched asunder, and as there was no love of God to take the place of the love of father and kins men, the struggle was so great that, if | One night, after a violent paroxysm, the Lord had not helped me, my own she fell into a trance which lasted four resolutions would not have been days. Her friends thought she was enough to carry me through." Her dead. Only her father's firmness prefather was sent for, and arrived in time vented her from being buried. When to see her take the habit. For a while she came out of her trance her eyes Teresa seemed at rest. She fulfilled were full of the wax which had run her lowly duties with a cheerful spirit, down from the candles set about what sweeping the floors, hanging up the seemed to be a corpse. Gradually she nun's cloaks which were left in the crept back to life. She herself considchoir, and lighting the sisters through ered the disease to be quartan ague, their dark and draughty corridors. but others describe her attacks as She was neat and fond of all religious hysteric and epileptic convulsions. observances, but was pained because Teresa returned to the convent on her tears and love of solitude were Palm Sunday, 1537, after more than sometimes harshly misinterpreted. eighteen months of terrible illness. After a year of probation she became She was then only twenty-two. She a professed nun after another terrible lay for three years in the convent struggle. infirmary alone with her books and The mental distress which she passed prayers. Fear had given place to love. through seems to have told seriously Her cheerful resignation and care for on her health. The fainting fits from others made a profound impression on which she had suffered before became the sisterhood. She gradually regained more frequent and prolonged, and were a measure of strength, but to the end accompanied with severe pains at the of life was an ailing and feeble woman, heart. She had to be moved to her only borne along the path of duty by father's house, and when the medical her tenacious will and nervous energy. men of Avila failed to relieve her, she Few saints have been so long in reachwas put under the care of a female ing even a modest degree of sanctity quack a curandera-in one of the as Teresa. Eighteen years more rolled villages. On her way to this place she by before her name was heard outside stayed for a time with her sister, por- the cloister. The parlors of the coning over a mystic classic by Francisco vent were thronged with visitors, great de Osuna the "Abecedario Espi- ladies and even idle young gallants rituel " given her by her uncle. went and came without restriction. The book fascinated her. Her nuns of Young, amiable, fascinating, witty, Avila still preserve the copy over miraculously restored to something which she pored. She has scored and like health, Teresa seems to have underlined it, marking her favorite inspired and returned some ardent passages with a cross, a heart, or a attachments. Her religious duties at hand. She was no stranger to the one period palled upon her. She "gift of tears" of which Osuna spoke, began to fear prayer, and though she and his "Prayer of Quiet and Union" managed to retain the good opinion was her chief solace amid these months of the nuns generally, one old relative of pain and weakness. The delicate in the cloister did not fail to utter girl suffered agonies from the brutal repeated warnings. It was the old treatment of the curandera, which left struggle between the world and the ber almost lifeless. Sharp teeth cloister which had begun afresh. seemed to gnaw incessantly at her heart, her nerves shrivelled up with intolerable agony; she knew no rest day or night; and, consumed with disease and fever, she became the prey of She the profoundest sadness." returned to Avila more dead than alive. Teresa labored hard to reconcile the spiritual life with the things of the world, and waged a continual war between conscience and inclination. The death of her father opened her eyes. She had lent him books, and guided him in his meditation and prayers, for with all her natural fri- | became her warm friend and counselvolity she had a deep vein of religious lor. He advised her to open her mind feeling. Even during her own days of to Padranos, a young and zealous memspiritual declension she had not been ber of the Society of Jesus, which was able to resist the impulse to guide him then in its infancy. Padranos, she and others. As she nursed her father says, "bid me take courage, for what in his last illness she learnt many a did I know whether through me the solemn lesson. She laid bare her heart Lord intended to do good to many." to her father's confessor, who taught He also led her to practise mortification her to take the sacrament and resume and penance from which she had hithher habits of prayer. It was long be-erto held aloof. One shudders to read fore she won peace, but she saw after- of the tin shirt pierced with holes like wards "how great a mercy the Lord a grater which she wore next her skin, did me in granting them (her bitter wounding every part it touched, of the tears) with such a deep repentance." bed of briars, and of the scourgings The change that was passing over her with nettles and keys. "In Segovia," was not unnoted by the nuns of the says her biographer, "she sent her Encarnacion with their lax standard of nuns to the choir, and, rising from the duty. They made the road rough in- bed where she lay consumed with fever, deed for Teresa. It was personal ex-scourged herself until she broke her perience that dictated her sentence: arm. She slept on a straw mattress ; "The friar and the nun, who, in very her meals were frugal, she drank no truth begin to follow their vocation, have more to fear from those of their own community than from all the devils combined." wine. For some time the tunic she wore next the skin, her sheets and pillows, were of the coarse blanketing used for horse-cloths." Teresa was now forty-one. Her soul Teresa soon became the talk of Avila. was weary, but her evil dispositions The mystic visions which she saw in seemed to stand between her and true her convent cell were discussed in town peace. One day, as she entered her and cloister with a keenness and acrioratory, her gaze fell on a wooden mony which we of this age can scarcely image of Christ which had been placed understand. The first of these experithere in readiness for some convent ences came one day when, "after havfestival. She says: "As I gazed on it ing been deep in prayer," she began my whole being was stirred to see him to repeat the hymn "Veni Creator." in such a state, for all he went through Whilst saying this, she tells us, "I was was well set forth. Such was the sor- seized with a rapture so sudden that it row I felt for having repaid those almost carried me beside myself, and wounds so ill, that my heart seemed of this I could not doubt, for it was rent in twain; and in floods of tears I very palpable. It was the first time cast myself down before it, beseeching that the Lord had done me this favor. him once for all to give me strength I heard these words: 'I no longer not to offend him more." Whilst thus wish thee to converse with men, but. impressed she met with "St. Augus- with angels.'" This was the earliest. tine's Confessions." She seemed to of those divine "locutions " which see herself in those pages, and when henceforth guided all Teresa's conduct. she read of the voice which Augustine She says they were "words very clearly heard in the garden before his conver-formed, not heard by the bodily hearsion it thrilled her heart almost as if ing, but impressed on the understandthe Lord had called on her. The spir- ing much more clearly than if they itual world now became more real to were so heard; and in spite of all reher. She was soon an ecstatic mystic sistance it is impossible to fail to undergiven up to devout contemplations. A stand them." Her friends betrayed layman of the town, who devoted his her confidences, so that her visions life to charity and good works, now became known to all the town. The |