The Father of Therese, after the death of his wife, likewise made his home in the delightful town which lies amid the beautiful apple orchards of the valley of the Touques.  Lisieux is deeply interesting by reason of its fine old churches of St. Jacques and St. Pierre, and its wonderful specimens of quaint houses, some of which date from the twelfth century.  In matters of faith it is neither fervent nor hostile, and in 1877 its inhabitants little thought that through their new citizen, Marie Francoise Therese Martin, their town would be rendered immortal.

* * * * * *

“The cell at Lisieux reminds us of the cell of the Blessed Gabriel at Isola.  There is the same even tenor of way, the same magnificant fidelity in little things, the same flames of divine charity, consuming but concealed.  Nazareth, with the simplicity of its Child, and the calm abysmal love of Mary and Joseph—­Nazareth, adorable but imitable, gives the key to her spirit, and her Autobiography does but repeat the lessons of the thirty hidden years."[2]

And it repeats them with an unrivalled charm.  “This master of asceticism,” writes a biographer[3] of St. Ignatius Loyola, “loved the garden and loved the flowers.  In the balcony of his study he sat gazing on the stars:  it was then Lainez heard him say:  ’Oh, how earth grows base to me when I look on Heaven!’ . . .  The like imaginative strain, so scorned of our petty day, inhered in all the lofty souls of that age.  Even the Saints of our day speak a less radiant language:  and sanctity shows ‘shorn of its rays’ through the black fog of universal utilitarianism, the materiality which men have drawn into the very lungs of their souls.”

This is not true of the sainted authoress of the chapters that follow—­ “less radiant,” in the medium of a translation.  In her own inimitable pages, as in those of a Campion or an Ignatius, a Teresa of Avila, or a John of the Cross—­the Spirit of Poetry is the handmaiden of Holiness.  This new lover of flowers and student of the stars, this “strewer of roses,” has uplifted a million hearts from the “base earth” and “black fog” to the very throne of God, and her mission is as yet but begun.

The pen of Soeur Therese herself must now take up the narrative.  It will do so in words that do not merely tell of love but set the heart on fire, and at the same time lay bare the workings of God in a soul that “since the age of three never refused the Good God anything.”  The writing of this Autobiography was an act of obedience, and the Prioress who imposed the task sought, in all simplicity, her own personal edification.  But the fragrance of its pages was such that she was advised to publish them to the world.  She did so in 1899 under the title of L’Histoire d’une Ame. An English version by M. H. Dziewicki appeared in 1901.

This new translation relates more fully the story of the childhood, girlhood, and brief convent days of Soeur Therese.  It tells of her “Roses,” and sets forth again, in our world-wide tongue, her world-wide embassy—­the ever ancient message of God’s Merciful Love, the ever new way to Him of “confidence and self-surrender.”