Thérèse

“ I long to share your sorrows, your vexations, and your solitude.'—Was not that my duty and my right?—But you are happy, Thérèse, therefore so am I. I bless you for telling me. At last, I am delivered from the remorse that was gnawing at my heart! I can walk with my head erect, breathe freely, and say to myself that I have not marred and ruined the life of the best of friends. Ah! I am full of pride to feel within me this generous joy, instead of the horrible jealousy that formerly tortured me!
"Dear Thérèse, dear Palmer, you are my two guardian angels. You have brought me happiness. ”

“ Thérèse realised that she too might have been wiped out of existence, and later on not even her little daughter Marie would have been allowed to find in an album the likeness of one who had brought her into the world. At that moment Marie was already asleep in a room at Argelouse, where Thérèse would arrive late that evening: she would listen in the darkness to the murmur of that childish slumber; she would lean over the bed and her lips would drink in the sweetness of that sleeping life like a draught of clear water. ”

“ Seeing one of our Sisters very much fatigued, I said to Soeur Thérèse: "It grieves me to see people suffer, especially those who are holy." She instantly replied: "I do not feel as you do. Saints who suffer never excite my pity. I know they have strength to bear their sufferings, and that through them they are giving great glory to God. But I compassionate greatly those who are not Saints, and who do not know how to profit by suffering. ”

“ I will offer the same prayer for you, because I know your desires, and that humility is your favourite virtue.
Which Thérèse will be the more fervent? . . . She who will be the more humble, the more closely united to Jesus, and the more faithful in making love the mainspring of every action. We must not let slip one single occasion of sacrifice, everything has such value in the religious life . . . Pick up a pin from a motive of love, and you may thereby convert a soul. Jesus alone can make our deeds of such worth, so let us love Him with every fibre of our heart. ”

“ Yes, we must keep all for Jesus with jealous care. It is so good to work for Him alone. How it fills the heart with joy, and lends wings to the soul! Ask of Jesus that Thérèse—His grain of sand—may save Him a multitude of souls in a short space of time, so that she may the sooner behold His Adorable Face. ”

“ To-day's trial is one of those sorrows that are difficult to understand: a joy was set before us, one most natural and easy of attainment. We stretched forth our hands . . . and the coveted joy was withdrawn. But it is not the hand of man which has done this thing—it is God's work. Céline, understand your Thérèse, and let us accept cheerfully the thorn which is offered us. To-morrow's feast will be one of tears, but I feel that Jesus will be greatly consoled. ”

“ My Thérèse, you who are so good a Christian should not impugn the justice of God. Have you not suffered sufficiently to appease Him? Have you not even the right to breathe? Do you experience no emotion now that your husband is at your side? ”

“ She tried to recapture her imaginings of the night; and, indeed, at Argelouse the day was almost as quiet and as dark as the night. In these days, the shortest in the year, time disappears under the pall of rain, and one hour melts into the next; dusk passes into dusk in unalterable silence. But Thérèse had no desire for sleep, and her dreams became more and more vivid; she searched her past methodically for forgotten faces, lips that she had loved from afar, vague forms that casual encounters, or the chances of the night, had brought into contact with her young body. ”

“ On the evening of the election Thérèse might well have rejoiced that henceforth she could speak freely to her "little Mother," and, as of old, pour out her soul. But sacrifice had become her daily food. If she sought one favour more than another, it was that she might be looked on as the lowest and the least; and, among all the religious, not one saw less of the Mother Prioress.
She desired to live the life of Carmel with all the perfection required by St. Teresa, and, although a martyr to habitual dryness, her prayer was continuous. ”

“ Thérèse still loved the wretch! she confessed as much to me, and he loved her with a diabolical passion. There were heart-rending struggles, indescribable scenes, in which Thérèse fought with an energy beyond her years, I will not say beyond her sex; a woman, when she is heroic, is not heroic by halves. ”

“ I felt you were suffering, and my heart was one with yours. Since you have the humility to ask advice of your little Thérèse, this is what she thinks: you have grieved me greatly by abstaining from Holy Communion, because you have grieved Our Lord. The devil must be very cunning to deceive a soul in this way. Do you not know, dear Marie, that by acting thus you help him to accomplish his end? ”

“ When comes the evening of life, I shall stand before Thee with empty hands, because I do not ask Thee, my God, to take account of my works. All our works of justice are blemished in Thine Eyes. I wish therefore to be robed with Thine own Justice, and to receive from Thy Love the everlasting gift of Thyself. I desire no other Throne, no other Crown but Thee, O my Beloved!
In Thy sight time is naught—"one day is a thousand years." ”

“ A bird or a cloud, passing through the sky at night, had sufficed to overthrow the fragile edifice of happiness and passionate declamation which had sprung up in the morning in that childish, poetic imagination. The fear of making himself ridiculous had taken possession of him, or else the fear of being cured of his invincible and fatal passion for Thérèse. ”

“ Out of the little struggles of the day might grow the joys of eternity. The carved figures of the gateways looked at her with kind human eyes; until now they had seemed very far off—saints whose holiness was out of reach, martyrs who were martyrs, and not men. Thérèse used to gaze up at them with admiration, and get a little impatient. But to-day they had come down to her from out of their canopies. She had learned something of the divine lesson which glorifies life, and turns drudgery into an aureole. ”

“ What do you suppose will become of me, Thérèse, if you do not have pity for me?"
"To be sure, I have pity for you, my poor child," said Thérèse, wiping his eyes with her handkerchief; "but what good can that do you?"
"Ah! but if you should love me, Thérèse! Do not take your hands away! Have you not given me leave to be a sort of friend to you?"
"I have told you that I was fond of you; you replied that you could not believe in a woman's friendship."
"I might, perhaps, believe in yours; you must have a man's heart, since you have a man's strength and talent. ”

“ And that is how my life goes when I allow myself to be vanquished by this giant of an artist who is within me, and from whom the poor devil who is speaking to you removes one by one, by the forceps of his will, meagre, half-dead mice! So it is much better, Thérèse, that I should live as I have chosen to live, that I should commit excesses of all sorts, and kill this gnawing worm which my fellows modestly call their inspiration, but which I call my infirmity, pure and simple. ”

“ The day of the wedding was stifling, and it was on that very day, in the narrow church at Saint Clair, where the women’s whispering drowned the wheezes of the harmonium and their scents overpowered the incense, that Thérèse felt that she was lost. She had been in a trance when she entered the cage, and at the sound of the heavy door, as it shut behind her, the poor child awoke. Nothing was changed, but she felt that never again would she walk and dream alone. ”

“ TO a young Sister discouraged at seeing her imperfections, Sœur Thérèse said: "You make me think of a very little child who is just able to stand upright but does not yet know how to walk. Intent upon reaching the top of the stairs so as to get back to his mother he lifts his foot to climb the first step. Fruitless endeavour! At each attempt he falls without advancing in the least. Well, be like that little child; by the practice of every virtue keep on ever lifting your little foot to climb the steps of sanctity, and do not imagine that you will be able to mount even the first! ”

“ How could she lie and wait for sleep beside this great carcass whose snorings sometimes turned to choking agony? Thank God, he no longer came near her,—he thought love-making the most dangerous of all activities for his heart. The cocks of dawn brought the farms to life. The Angelus of Saint Clair tinkled in the east wind; Thérèse’s eyes at last closed. ”

“ Yes, Thérèse, that is the judgment which I myself should probably have pronounced upon another man for conducting himself as I have conducted myself toward you and Palmer with so much resolution and delight. I am not a brute, thank God! I am not good for much, but I understand how little I am good for, and I do myself justice. ”

“ If Thérèse had relations with this stranger, living alone and perfectly independent as she did, apparently owing nothing to any one, and never seeming to pay any heed to what people might say of her, had she any need of the pretext of a portrait to receive the object of her love or her caprice as often and for as long a time as she chose? ”

“ Sometimes, however, as this evening, at the close of a meditation spent in utter dryness, a word of comfort is given to me: "Here is the Master I give thee, He will teach thee all that thou shouldst do. I wish thee to read in the Book of Life in which is contained the science of love. . . ." [10]
The Science of Love! How sweetly do these words echo in my soul! That science alone do I desire. Having given all my substance for it, like the Spouse in the Canticles, "I think that I have given nothing." ”

“ Thérèse smiled at the caricature of Bernard that she drew in her mind: she reflected that he was, in point of fact, better than most of the young men she could have married. The women of those moorlands by the sea are much superior to the men, who see no one but each other after they have left school and hardly ever lose their boorishness. Their hearts are in their country, and in spirit they never leave it. ”

“ Long after he had shut the door Thérèse had remained lying on the sofa smoking cigarettes, and staring at the great letters of blackened gilt, fixed to the balcony opposite: then she had torn open the first envelope. No: it could not be that sweet little fool, that light-headed little Convent girl who had conceived these words of flame. It could not be that chilly little heart,—for such it was, and Thérèse ought to know!—which had poured forth that Song of Songs, that long ecstatic lamentation of a woman possessed, of a body almost stricken down with joy, from the first encounter. ”

“ Everywhere she saw the rigid rules of the true associated with the dream of the beautiful, and yet everywhere there were exceptions, terrifying anomalies, radiant yet blighted faces like Laurent's. Aspiration to the sublime was a disease of Thérèse's epoch and environment. It was a touch of fever which took possession of youth and caused it to despise the normal conditions of happiness as well as the ordinary duties of life. By the force of events, Thérèse was hurled, without desiring or anticipating it, into that awful circle of the human hell. ”

“ Thérèse believed only in one kind of happiness—our wills gratified, our dreams realised, all the little idols we have set up smiling down upon us from their pedestals: as we go on in life we find out sometimes that it was well our idols were shattered for us, or we might have been crushed under their weight ”

“ He likes to contemplate by Himself these little fruits of our virtue. They console Him.
You are quite wrong, Marie, if you think that Thérèse walks eagerly along the way of Sacrifice: her weakness is still very great, and every day some new and wholesome experience brings this home more clearly. Yet Jesus delights to teach her how to glory in her infirmities. [2] It is a great grace, and I pray Him to give it to you, for with it come peace and tranquillity of heart. When we see our misery we do not like to look at ourselves but only upon our Beloved. ”

“ Love attracts love; mine darts towards Thee, and would fain make the abyss brim over, but alas! it is not even as a dewdrop in the ocean. To love Thee as Thou lovest me, I must make Thy Love mine own. Thus alone can I find rest. O my Jesus, it seems to me that Thou couldst not have overwhelmed a soul with more love than Thou hast poured out on mine, and that is why I dare ask Thee to love those Thou hast given me, even as Thou lovest me. ”

“ I had seen Mother Prioress showing, as I thought, more confidence and affection to one of our Sisters than she extended to me. Expecting to win sympathy, I told my trouble to Soeur Thérèse, and great was my surprise when she put me the question: "Do you think you love our Mother very much?" "Certainly! otherwise I should be indifferent if others were preferred to me."
"Well, I shall prove that you are absolutely mistaken, and that it is not our Mother that you love, but yourself. When we really love others, we rejoice at their happiness, and we make every sacrifice to procure it. ”

“ It seemed to her as if all the world were against her—M. Deshoulières, Monsieur and Madame Roulleau; even Fabien, in his far-away home, had renounced her. Yet she never ceased to love him. Only hope was shaken, because faith had never been strong in poor Thérèse. Her childhood had been loveless; the child had little teaching,—teaching, that is, which should make her strive after high things, or shape her little life after a holier pattern than those she saw around her. ”