Day by day the princess grew more and
more weary of the amusements and
occupations of the outer world. She closed the
parloir whenever she could, and declined all
visits that could be declined. Nevertheless,
the Emperor Joseph the Second, the Archduke,
Prince Henry of Prussia, and
Gustavus of Sweden, all visited her simple cell,
to wonder at her straw bed, wooden spoon,
and the earthen pitcher. To such visitors
the devotee would boast of her health and
happiness. " Every time," she said, " that
my sisters enter their carriage to return to
Versailles, I bless Divine Providence for
not being obliged to follow them. In this
convent years pass like days. They say
that there are souls who go straight to
Paradise without passing through Purgatory.
I despair ever to be of that number,
for I am too happy a Carmelite. Even
the dust of our convent becomes holy."

As old age crept nearer, the devotee
loaded herself with greater austerities. She
would not confess illness, for fear the
indulgences shown her should countenance a
relaxation among the novices. When
unable to assist at the choir, she lay on the
threshold of the door. She refused all
titles of honour, and rebuked a preacher
who apostrophised her in his sermon, and
who called the Carmelites "ladies." In the
seventeen years of her monastic life the
princess wore, in all, only three gowns.
Her shifts were of serge, her stockings of
cloth, her slippers of packthread. She
wore patched veils. Her cell was narrow
and poor, containing only the celebrated
straw bed, a straw chair, a wooden crucifix,
a table, and three paper pictures. The
convent was damp and draughty. She
forbade all ornaments in any part of the
monastery. So frugal was she, that she
never allowed the purveyor to spend more
than seven shillings a day for fish for
sixty nuns. So careless was she about
her food, that it became a saying among the
novices, if the cook had been more than
usually careless: " Why, Mother Theresa
of Saint Austin herself could not eat it!"
For seven years she went on eating eggs,
cooked in a particular manner repugnant to
her without mentioning her antipathy. She
one day, without complaining, partook of a
decayed artichoke, which had been served at
table by mistake. At another meal she ate
an egg which had broken and fallen into a
wash-tub. Still, even to the last, some of
the old refined tastes clung to the devotee.
She sometimes cried like a child at her
chapped and frost-bitten hands. Heat, too,
she much dreaded, but nevertheless she
almost lived in the infirmary. It being
discovered that the hair robe she wore made
her skin bleed, she said, " I wish to expiate,
as a Theresan, the folly I showed formerly
in wearing the livery and bracelets of hell."

The nun is always trying to check the
divinely-implanted emotions of the heart:
knowing so much better than the divine
Author of our being, what the human heart
should be. When the king died, and the
Carmelites had to recite the office for the dead,
every one but the princess (then prioress)
burst into tears; but she continued singing
the Psalms in all the pride of fanaticism.
She delighted in nothing so much as in
decorating altars, taking care of the sacred
vestments, or sweeping and cleaning the
oratories. When Pope Clement the
Fourteenth suppressed the Jesuits, she mourned
in silence.

The night before any great church festival
she generally passed at the foot of the altar.
She went to confession twice a week. She
had a great belief in holy water, which she
said, " acquires by the exorcisms of the
church a great virtue against the Powers
of Darkness." At night she always kept
her crucifix in her bed: to speak to (so
she said) till she fell asleep. She was now
considered the special glory of the Theresan
order, and the protectress of the nuns all
over France. At court on her five-and-
twentieth birthday, the Bishop of Langres
had predicted she would die at fifty; she
had always believed in this prediction, and
it proved true.

In 1787, some democratic changes affecting
the church are supposed to have brought
on her last illness. She refused to have
an altar erected in the infirmary where her
bed was, because that was a court custom
when any of the royal family were ill.

"You propose to me a very ill-becoming
distinction. Living or dying, I will be a
simple Carmelite."

Day after day, she examined her letters,
burning some and arranging others. She
wrote farewell letters to her sisters, and to
the king. On her death-bed she was meek
and gentle, repeatedly asking pardon of her
attendants for giving them so much trouble.
She still refused to see her physician save
at the outer gate of the monastery. She
begged one of the sisters, who waited on
her, to inform her when she was
approaching her end. She then received the
viaticum, called the nuns around her,
urged a special nun to correct certain
faults, and reproved those about her bed