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Small wonder that peace reigned among the discalced Carmelites so long as Teresa ruled. Practical and fearless (save when a lizard ran up her sleeve, on which occasion she confesses she nearly “died of fright,”) her much-sought advice was always on the side of reason. Asceticism she prized; dirt she abhorred. “For the love of Heaven,” she wrote to the Provincial, Gratian, then occupied with his first foundation of discalced friars, “let your fraternity be careful that they have clean beds and tablecloths, even though it be more expensive, for it is a terrible thing not to be cleanly.” No persuasion could induce her to retain a novice whom she believed to be unfitted for her rule:–“We women are not so easy to know,” was her scornful reply to the Jesuit, Olea, who held his judgment in such matters to be infallible; but nevertheless her practical soul yearned over a well-dowered nun. When an “excellent novice” with a fortune of six thousand ducats presented herself at the gates of the poverty-stricken convent in Seville, Teresa, then in Avila, was consumed with anxiety lest such an acquisition should, through some blunder, be lost. “For the love of God,” wrote the wise old saint to the prioress in Seville, “if she enters, bear with a few defects, for well does she deserve it.”

This is not the type of anecdote which looms large in the volumes of “minced saints” prepared for pious readers, and its absence has accustomed us to dissever humour from sanctity. But a candid soul is, as a rule, a humorous soul, awake to the tragi-comic aspect of life, and immaculately free from self-deception. And to such souls, cast like Teresa’s in heroic mould, comes the perception of great moral truths, together with the sturdy strength which supports enthusiasm in the face of human disabilities. They are the lantern-bearers of every age, of every race, of every creed, les ames bien nees whom it behooves us to approach fearlessly out of the darkness, for so only can we hope to understand.