Page:Saint Theresa of Avila (Gilman 1889).djvu/35

During the year and a half that Theresa spent with the Augustinian nuns she had time to become thoroughly impregnated with all the fundamental doctrines of the Roman Church. Her religious nature had always been sensitive, and soon succumbed to the gentle influences of the cloister life. Her friendship with Doña Maria banished in some degree her dislike for the convent, but she still resisted the vocation the good sisters tried to urge upon her. The “flesh-pots of Egypt,” in the shape of romances, bull-fights, and court assemblies, had not yet lost their power to charm her, and the hair-shirt and scourge she could not make up her mind to endure without complaint. The sensitive young pupil had a physical fear of austerities, and at that time a worldly horror of pious books. But the natural instincts in that age of asceticism had little chance of being allowed to assert themselves, and the pressure brought to bear upon Theresa by the good sisters was almost beyond her power of resistance. As the time drew near for her to leave the convent, the necessity for deciding upon her future life dis-