Letter 269. To Father Gracian, Avila, the beginning of April, 1579

St. Teresa s delight at the prospeSl of seeing him soon. Father Angel Salazar nominated Vice-General of the Reform. That Mary of St. Joseph should be reinstated asprioress at Seville. Fray fuan de fesus journey to Rome,

JESUS!

MAY the grace of the Holy Spirit be with your Reverence, my Father, and repay you for comforting me with the hope of seeing you. It would indeed console me. I beg you, for love of our Lord, to arrange for your visit, for exped:ed pleasures are hardest to miss, and I believe that it would render God service.

With this joy in prosped; I have borne bravely the elediion of the new superior. God grant he may enjoy the office for but a short time! Not that I wish him to die, for he is the most able among the Mitigated and will be very obliging to us, especially as, being so shrewd, he will know how matters will end. In a way, the choice is as distasteful to the Calced as to us. We who prad:ise perfediion could wish for no one more appropriate than the Nuncio, who has made us all gain in merit.

Thanks to our Lord, Fray Gregorio is already back in his own house ! I shall thank Him again if your Reverence can get the Prioress of Seville reinstated, for she is certainly the right person for the post. If not, Isabel de San Francisco would do, for the present prioress is ridiculous and will ruin the house. May God guide the choice as serves Him best and may He reward your Reverence for your care of those poor strangers! It must be a great relief for them to be free from the Provincial of the cloth so that they can write and receive letters. I sent them one by the Prior of las Cuevas; I should not be sorry if it fell into the hand of the Provincial as I intended when I wrote it.

Our traveller has got ready very quickly: the more I see of him, the more confidence I feel in his success. We had a discussion because I wished a duplicate copy made of the letter to the king to be sent by the first courier who starts to Canon Montoya, with a letter I am addressing to his mother, asking her to forward it. I am telling him that the royal letter will either be given to him at the same time or delivered later on by two fathers who are on their way to proffer their obedience to our Father the Vicar-General. I think that in so important a matter it is best to send two copies of the letter by different routes, as we are uncertain whether our traveller will reach Rome safely, and it would be terrible for us, in the present condition of affairs, to wait for a second journey. Moreover, since the Canon has taken up our cause, it would be well not to set him aside, for as time goes on he will prove a good friend to us in many ways. The affair is not so easy to manage that such precautions are needless. I believe it would be best to leave the business to him, and to let the two fathers go straight to the Vicar-General. I feel little confidence in the secret's being kept, and if the fathers mention it to one another and the Vicar-General hears of it, he would probably be annoyed at their not having had recourse to him first. Nothing of the kind would happen with the Canon.

Fray Juan asks what reason there would be for his going to Rome if Canon Montoya takes the matter in hand. The excellent reason is that perhaps there may be need of both of them.

Let us hope that Fray Juan will find these matters settled when he reaches Rome. However it will be no small advantage that the superiors there should meet with more observant and strict religious than they have seen before. The two fathers could also justify us to the Vicar-General. He thinks that