I resolved to force myself into it" The discipline of Santa Maria da Grada, with which she was familiar, was too strict for her views at that time, and she decided to go to the convent of the Incarnation, just outside the south wall of Avila, where her friend Juana Suarez was a nun. Her father, however, steadily re- fused his consent. Teresa was his favourite daughter, and the utmost she could extract from him was his permis- sion to do as she pleased after his death. Early in the morning, and secretly, lest her natural affection should overcome her purpose, Teresa fled from her home. Her brother Antonio, whom she had per- suaded to choose the same vocation, went with her. That day the Sisters of the Incarnation sent word to Alfonso de Cepeda, that his daughter was with them asking to become a nun. He went to the convent at once, and seeing her de- termined, unselfishly gave his consent. She made her profession a year after- wards, Nov. 3, ir)34. The convent of the Incarnation, which Teresa had chosen, observed the mitigated Carmelite Hule, made necessary by the loss of the primi- tive fervour of the Order and sanctioned by Pope Engenius IV. The Sisters were not bound by any rule of enclosure, and the convent, when she entered it, was practically a part of the general society of Avila." For nearly thirty years Teresa was a member of this community. She entered it Dona Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, she went out Teresa of Jesus. A long battle with self intervened. By command of hor confessors, she herself wrote the history of the whole period, in the wonderful book of mystical theology known as hor " Autobiography," which in her lifetime was twice in the hands of the Inquisi- tion, but now ranks in the Eoman Church with the Confessions of St Augiistine.
The first delight in religion which she experienced when she had taken her vows, was interrupted by a severe illness. The change in habits of life and food seriously affected her health. She left the convent to be nursed by her sister. During four years her disease defied medical skill; the doctors of Castile wore able to make her worse but not better. At one time she Imj for seveiil days in a swoon so deathlike that eveiy one believed she was dead except her father; a grave stood open for her in the burial ground of her oonTent, part of the burial service was said, and when she revived, she found that wax had already been dropped upon her eyelida The trance left her paralysed. She attributed her recovery to the interces- sion of St. Joseph, to whom in gratitude she afterwards dedicated many of her foundations.
She still suffered, however, from at- tacks of sickness, fainting fits and paroxysms of pain ; and this bad health increased the difScnlties of her spiritual life. For a period "of nearly twenty years she passed her days," to borrow t phrase from the Bollandists, ** now dry, now bedewed iith divine consolation." Mental prayer was an effort. ** 1 was more occupied with the wish to see the end of the time I had appointed for my- self to spend in prayer," she writes, " and in watching the hour-glass, than with other thoughts that were good." The way of life in the convent was easy and the secular people of Avila were not dis- couraged when they came to gossip with the shrewd and witty Dona Teresa. Teresa was exercised in mind about these conversations. They seem to have taken the place of romance reading and she liked them too well to give them up; yet she felt they were wrong. *' I was once with a person," she writes, it was at the very beginning of my ac- quaintance with her — when our Lord was pleased to show me that these friendiships were not good for me. . . . Christ stood before me stem and grave, giving me to understand what in my conduct was offensive to Him. I saw Him with the eyes of the soul more dis- tinctly than I could have seen him with the eyes of the body." A picture was painted, from Teresa's description of this vision, depicting Christ bound to the pillar and scourged. It now hangs in the locutorium of the Incarnation. Teresa was greatly disturbed and resolved not to see that person again, but she still continued to talk with other visitors. " She halted between two sides," say the
