And there she remained a year, with no relief to her sufferings for three months.  Her only recreation was books, which fortified her courage.  She sought instruction, but found no one who could instruct her so as to give repose to her struggling soul.  She endeavored to draw her thoughts from herself by reading.  She could not even pray without a book.  She was afraid to be left alone with herself.  Her situation was made still worse by the fact that her superiors did not understand her.  When they noticed that she sought solitude, and shed tears for her sins, they fancied she had a discontented disposition, and added to her unhappiness by telling her so.  But she conformed to all the rules, irksome or not, and endured every mortification, and even performed acts of devotion which were not required.  She envied the patience of a poor woman who died of the most painful ulcers, and thought it would be a blessing if she could be afflicted in the same way, in order, as she said, to purchase eternal good.  And this strange desire was fulfilled, for a severe and painful malady afflicted her for three years.

Again was she removed to some place for cure, for her case was desperate.  And here her patience was supernal.  Yet patience under bodily torments did not give the sought-for peace.  It happened that a learned ecclesiastic of noble family lived in this place, and she sought relief in confessions to him.  With a rare judgment and sense, and perhaps pride and delicacy, she disliked to confess to ignorant priests.  She said that the half-learned did her more harm than good.  The learned were probably more lenient to her, and more in sympathy with her, and assured her that those sins were only venial which she had supposed were mortal.  But she soon was obliged to give up this confessor, since he began to confess to her, and to confess sins in comparison with which the sins she confessed were venial indeed.  He not only told her of his slavery to a bad woman, but confessed a love for Theresa herself, which she of course repelled, though not with the aversion she ought to have felt.  It seems that her pious talk was instrumental in effecting his deliverance from a base bondage.  He soon after died, and piously, she declared; so that she considered it certain that his soul was saved.

Theresa remained three months in this place, in most grievous sufferings, for the remedy was worse than the disease.  Again her father took her home, since all despaired of her recovery, her nervous system being utterly shattered, and her pains incessant by day and by night; the least touch was a torment.  At last she sank into a state of insensibility from sheer exhaustion, so that she was supposed to be dying, even to be dead; and her grave was dug, and the sacrament of extreme unction was administered.  She rallied from this prostration, however, and returned to the convent, though in a state of extreme weakness, and so remained for eight months.  For three years she was a cripple, and could move about only on all-fours; but she was resigned to the will of God.