encouraged her sister: "We must not let slip the smallest opportunity of giving Jesus joy. We must refuse Him nothing." "We must not let slip one single occasion of sacrifice."
She herself, though she suffered constantly from a sick stomach, was so indifferent to what was served at table, to what agreed or disagreed with her, that none could discover it; the Sister next to her inadvertently always left her little wholesome food and drink, but she was silent and rejoiced; the kitchen Sisters, not knowing what to do with remains that had been warmed over half a dozen times, would remark: "No one will eat this but Sister Therese." She did, and with a smile. She sipped the most bitter medicines drop by drop. Though there was nothing from which she suffered so much physically as the cold, she took no means of keeping from feeling it; she used the discipline, struck hard and fast, and was careful not to lessen the sharpness of the pain; she refrained from indulging in little comforts such as crossing her feet while standing or sitting, and the like.
But she set an almost infinitely higher value on interior self-denial—that of the will and the mind. She would not defend herself when falsely accused, refused to read an interesting letter, kept silence perfectly, bore cheerfully with trying oddities and faults of others, did not satisfy her curiosity even on the night she was given the first indication of her death in the form of a hemorrhage, etc. "There are trifles," she said, "which please our Lord more than the conquest of the world, a smile or a kindly word, for instance, when I feel inclined to say nothing or appear bored." And again: "Believe me, the writing of pious books, the composing of the sublimest poetry, all that does not equal the smallest act of self-denial." And one is still more astounded to hear her say to a novice who had promptly answered a knock at the door: "You have done something more glorious than if, through clever diplomacy, you had procured the good-will of the government for all religious communities and had been proclaimed throughout France, as a second Judith." Whence this merit? "Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor
