Letter 405. To the Saint's Niece, Beatriz de Ahumada, Palencia or Burgos, January, 1582

St Teresa’s pleasure at her niece’s visit to her uncle, Peralvarez.

... Your preoccupations are evidently very different from mine. My reason for not giving you anything was that I could not. It is a comfort to me, for which I thank God, that you are so happy in the home of your uncle, Sefior Peralvarez. I am very grateful to him and his wife for their kindness to you: remember me to them, I have not time to write to them now, but will do so another day when the courier goes. God has shown you great mercy in delivering you from that woman who isa perfect Best...

CCCCXXVIII

Prefatory note.

St. Teresa reached Burgos on Jan. 26, after a terrible journey over the Castilian plains, through violent storms of rain, snow and hurricanes of wind. The rivers had overflowed and the roads were hidden beneath the water. Ribera says that on one occasion the Saint saw the wageon containing her daughters swerveovera precipiceas though about to fall into the river, but a lad who was with them seized the wheel and held up the cart in a manner that seemed miraculous. The holy Mother always led the way so as to meet danger first. At one time when they came to a swamp she cried: ‘Let me get out of the wag-gon to try it,’ but Father Gracian went on with the best mule he could find. When he told her how hard it was to get out of the bog, she exclaimed: ‘Oh, sinner that I am! Such are the ways of the world!’ At the ‘Floating Bridges’, nothing but a sheet of water was fo be seen. A guide was engaged, the bridge being so narrow that if the waggon had swerved in the least, they would have fallen into the river. The nuns made their confessions before starting, asked the Mother for her blessing, and recited the Credo. She was not in the least disturbed, but said calmly : ‘Well, my daughters, what better fate could you wish for than to die here as martyrs, (if need be,) for love of our Lord? Stay where you are, for I want to go first, and if am drowned, I beg of you not to cross but to return to the inn.’ She reached the other side as our Lord promised her she should. She hurt her leg in crossing and was heard to say on the opposite bank: ‘O Lord, after so many trials, shis happens!’ ‘Teresa, this is the way I treat My friends,’ was the reply. ‘Ah, my God, that is why you have so few!’ she answered. The Saint owned afterwards that the torturing sore throat and fever she contracted had prevented heradventures from amusing her as much as they would have done,

TO MOTHER MARY OF S$. JOSEPH — 289

On reaching Burgos, the nuns, after visiting the miraculous crucifix, went to the house of Catalina de Tolosa. When Father Gracian applied to the Archbishop next morning for permission to make the foundation, he absolutely refused it unless the nuns had a house and an annual income. Catalina had already obtained the consent of the town-council by promising to give the sisters her house and an annuity, (Found. xxxi, note 13.) but the Archbishop would not allow them to accept the house, which he said was damp, nor would he permit Mass to be said while the nuns stayed there, although the chapel had been used by the Jesuits for that purpose for years. Consequently, about a month after their arrival, the community moved to the attics of the hospital of laConcepcion, where there was a tribune from which they could hear Mass. They suffered terribly from bad air, rats, vermin and bats, for people said that in all Burgos there was no such place for bats. St. Teresa used to visit the sick and comfort them, giving them any little dainties that were brought her. ‘Thank God,’ she used to say, when she received some fruit ‘for giving me something for my dear sick people!’ She would hide the oranges and lemons in her sleeves and take them down to the patients, coming back with a beaming face ‘because they were all so happy.’ She said to one man who was screaming with pain and disturbing the rest: ‘My son, why don’t you bear your trouble patiently for the love of God’? From that time, he made no sound, whatever he suffered. The patients were heart-broken when she left. While the nuns were waiting for a house, St. Teresa visited the different convents in the city, and short as her stay was, it permanently reformed the communities.

Vol. iv, 19