Page:Saint Theresa of Avila (Gilman 1889).djvu/41

Rh she had learned from experience to despise that led her to retire from it so early, but a superstitious fear lest she could not endure the perils and temptations she had heard so feelingly described. There were no wise friends to counsel this young girl. She had been left alone for weeks with a gloomy, unhappy man who had outlived his usefulness, whose domestic grief naturally led him to take false views of life. Her constant reading had been from the writings of Jerome, the famous Monk of Bethlehem, whose confessions of rapture and despair have always had a mighty influence over the female heart. According to the Bollandist’s record of our saint’s life, Theresa read and re-read Jerome’s “Letters to Paula Marcella and Eutichium,” pondering long over such passages as:—