Goodness and Gayety
vice 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 reply to the Jesuit, Olea, who held his judgment in such matters to be infallible; but nevertheless her practical soul yearned over a well-dowered nun. When an "excellent novice" with a fortune of six thousand ducats presented herself at the gates of the poverty-stricken convent in Seville, Teresa, then in Avila, was consumed with anxiety lest such an acquisition should, through some blunder, be lost. "For the love of God," wrote the
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