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The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus by Saint of Avila Teresa
page 45 of 699 (06%)
through her friends, but to no purpose. "The utmost I could get
from him," she says, "was that I might do as I pleased after his
death." [4] How long this contest with her father lasted is not
known, but it is probable that it lasted many months, for the
Saint was always most careful of the feelings of others, and
would certainly have endured much rather than displease a father
whom she loved so much, and who also loved her more than his
other children. [5]

But she had to forsake her father, and so she left her father's
house by stealth, taking with her one of her brothers, whom she
had persuaded to give himself to God in religion. The brother
and sister set out early in the morning, the former for the
monastery of the Dominicans, and the latter for the Carmelite
monastery of the Incarnation, in Avila. The nuns received her
into the house, but sent word to her father of his child's
escape. Don Alfonso, however, yielded at once, and consented to
the sacrifice which he was compelled to make.

In the monastery of the Incarnation the Saint was led on, without
her own knowledge, to states of prayer so high, that she became
alarmed about herself. In the purity and simplicity of her soul,
she feared that the supernatural visitations of God might after
all be nothing else but delusions of Satan. [6] She was so
humble, that she could not believe graces so great could be given
to a sinner like herself. The first person she consulted in her
trouble seems to have been a layman, related to her family, Don
Francisco de Salcedo. He was a married man, given to prayer, and
a diligent frequenter of the theological lectures in the
monastery of the Dominicans. Through him she obtained the help
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