I have said that the ardent reformer is seldom gay.  Small wonder, when his eyes are turned upon the dark places of earth, and his whole strength is consumed in combat.  Yet Saint Teresa, the most redoubtable reformer of her day, was gay.  No other word expresses the quality of her gladness.  She was not only spiritually serene, she was humanly gay, and this in the face of acute ill-health, and many profound discouragements.  We have the evidence of all her contemporaries,—­friends, nuns, patrons, and confessors; and we have the far more enduring testimony of her letters, in proof of this mirthfulness of spirit, which won its way into hearts, and lightened the austerities of her rule.  “A very cheerful and gentle disposition, an excellent temper, and absolutely void of melancholy,” wrote Ribera.  “So merry that when she laughed, every one laughed with her, but very grave when she was serious.”

There is a strain of humour, a delicate and somewhat biting wit in the correspondence of Saint Teresa, and in her admonitions to her nuns.  There is also an inspired common sense which we hardly expect to find in the writings of a religious and a mystic.  But Teresa was not withdrawn from the world.  She travelled incessantly from one end of Spain to the other, establishing new foundations, visiting her convents, and dealing with all classes of men, from the soldier to the priest, from the prince to the peasant.  The severity of her discipline was tempered by a tolerant and half-amused insight into the pardonable foibles of humanity.  She held back her nuns with one hand from “the frenzy of self-mortification,” which is the mainstay of spiritual vanity, and with the other hand from a too solicitous regard for their own comfort and convenience.  They were not to consider that the fear of a headache,—­a non-existent headache threatening the future—­was sufficient excuse for absenting themselves from choir; and, if they were too ailing to practise any other austerities, the rule of silence, she reminded them, could do the feeblest no harm.  “Do not contend wordily over matters of no consequence,” was her counsel of perfection.  “Fly a thousand leagues from such observations as ‘You see I was right,’ or ’They did me an injustice.’”

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