Page:Impressions of Spain in 1866.djvu/198

This page needs to be proofread.
166
CARMELITE CONVENT.


clearly seen on Maria Coroners face now as on the day when the heroic deed was committed. The sisters of this convent are dressed in blue, with a long black veil, and their cloisters contain some very curious pictures and relics.

The most interesting visit, however, paid by one of the, party in Seville, was to the strictly enclosed convent of Sta. Teresa, to enter which the English lady had obtained special Papal per- mission. Of the sorrows and perils which St. Theresa experienced in founding this house, she herself speaks in writing to her niece, Mary of Ocampo : — 'I assure you that of all the persecu- tions we have had to endure, none can bear the least comparison with what we have suffered at Seville.'[1] Suffering from violent fever, calum- niated by one of her own postulants, denounced to the Inquisition, persecuted incessantly by the fathers of the mitigated rule, with no prospect of buying a house, and no money for the purchase,

  1. For both this Mid other qnotations regarding St. Theresa's foundations, the writer is indebted to the charming life of the saint published by Hurst & Blackett in 1865, and which, from its won- derftd truth and accuracy, is a perfect handbook to anyone visiting the Carmelite convents of Spain. She trusts that its author will forgive her for having, often unintentionally, used her actual ex- pressions in speaking of places and of things, from the impos- sibility of their being described by an eye-witness in any other manner.