All these marks of curiosity and respect, however, were well justified, as the woman who was first to get out, dressed in the coarse cloth, was St. Theresa de Jesus, who was come to found a convent of barefooted Carmelites at Pastrana. It was not two years since Ruy Gómez had come into possession of his duchy, and he was hastening to do all he could for the material and moral welfare of his vassals. He wished to establish a monastery in his town, and the Princess a convent for women, which she had given over to Mother Theresa, attracted by the wonderful things she had heard of this marvellous woman, and anxious to flatter her own curiosity and vanity by associating herself with one with whom God held familiar intercourse and to whom He showed such stupendous wonders. The saint accepted the offer; she was just beginning her great reforms, and for this purpose went from Toledo to Pastrana, passing by Madrid, where she stayed with an old friend of ours and a devoted follower of the saint, Doña Leonor Mascareñes, in the Franciscan convent which Doña Leonor had founded and to which she had retired. She gave Mother Theresa many details of the Princess's difficult temper, having known her well at Court. Well primed with this information the saint went to Pastrana, where she arrived towards the end of June. Here, she says in her book about her foundations, "I found the Princess and the Prince Ruy Gómez, who received me very well; they gave me a private apartment, which was more than I could have expected, because the house was so small that the Princess had had much of it pulled down and rebuilt, not the walls, but many things. We were there for three months, hard times, the Princess asking me things contrary to our religion. I had even determined to leave rather than give in, but the Prince Ruy Gómez, in his gentle way (he was very gentle and sensible), made his wife come to reason." Besides the troubles alluded to by the saint the Princess made others from her capricious, domineering character and want of fine feeling. She had heard that St. Theresa was very beautiful, in spite of being fifty-four, and she was dying of curiosity to see her face, but the saint would not consent to show it to her, nor did she or her companions ever lift their veils before the Princess or anybody else. This exasperated the Princess, and she was always peeping through the windows and keyhole hoping to surprise Theresa in one of her trances, in which Our Lord used to appear to her. Theresa laughed at what she calls stupidities, but in the end this constant prying worried and became intolerable to her. The Princess also gave her another real cause for annoyance; knowing that her confessor had ordered her to write her wonderful life, the Princess, full of curiosity, wished to read it. Mother Theresa refused with much firmness; this piqued the capricious lady, who wrote to the saint's superiors, asking them to order her to let the Princess read the manuscript she had with her at Pastrana. They, being either very complacent or not knowing the Princess's character, did not hesitate to give the order. Theresa obeyed without delay, and then the Princess triumphed. She greedily read the ingenuous pages in which the divine marvels are told with such sublime simplicity; they excited her imagination, and, like all talkative women, feeling the necessity of imparting her feelings, she committed the breach of confidence of giving the manuscript to her duennas, waiting-maids and pages. So from hand to hand, in hall and antechamber, went the mysterious outpouring of the Virgen del Carmel, and so many comments were made that they reached the ears of the Inquisitor, who sent for the book. The severe tribunal kept it for ten years and then returned it without observation or alteration, but not before all this had caused very great annoyance.
At last the foundation was finished, and Mother Theresa left for Salamanca and the Prince and Princess for Madrid, where a year afterwards Ruy Gómez died in his house in the lane of St. Mary. He expired in the arms of his old and faithful friend Juan de Escovedo; his last moments were aided by two barefooted Carmelite friars who came from Pastrana. The Princess gave way to paroxysms of grief, which were more like fits of temper; in the first moments she roared rather than wept over her sorrow, as she really loved the worthy man who had gratified her vanity and her senses, the only two poles which guided this lady's life. Suddenly, thinking herself like St. Theresa, inspired by Heaven, she determined at once to retire to the Carmelite convent at Pastrana and end her days in retirement and prayer. In vain the two monks, her relations and friends put before her her obligations as a mother, the duties which the will of Ruy Gómez imposed on her by making her guardian of her children, and her strict obligation to administer the properties and fortunes of these minors.
The widow's obstinacy was fanned by this opposition, and as her only answer she requested the two friars to give her the habit. They replied that they could not do so without the permission of the superiors and the authorisation of Mother Theresa. The Princess shrugged her shoulders and ordered a new habit, but as one was not forthcoming at once, she attired herself in an old, dirty one and covered herself with a black veil, as she had seen St. Theresa do, never raising it to show her face. As the sandals of esparto grass hurt her bare feet she ordered them to be lined with the softest cloth. She also ordered a waggon covered with an awning like St. Theresa's, and with her duennas and maids set out for Pastrana, without taking leave of anyone and abandoning the body of her husband. Her mother, the Princess del Mélito, got into the cart almost by main force, so as to accompany her to the convent. One of the friars, Bartholomé de Jesus, seeing that she was really going, outstripped the Princess's waggon and arrived at the convent at two in the morning to warn the nuns. The Prioress, Elizabeth de San Domingo, a discreet woman of rare virtue, came downstairs, and on hearing that the Princess was arriving in a few hours, already habited as a nun and with the intention of remaining at the convent, exclaimed, clasping her hands in amazement, "The Princess a nun—then I give up this house as lost."
CHAPTER XVIII
The author of the "History of the Reforms of the Barefooted Order of Our Lady of Carmel," Fr. Francisco de Santamaria, thus describes the arrival of the Princess de Évoli at the convent of Pastrana. "The Prioress called the nuns, got ready the house, and prepared two beds, one for the Princess, the other for her mother, who arrived at eight o'clock in the morning. The Princess changed her habit, as the one she had taken in Madrid was neither suitable nor so clean as it might have been. She rested for a while, and suddenly showing her determination wished that the habit should be given at once to the two waiting-maids she had brought with her, paying with a little sackcloth the salaries of long years. The Prioress answered that the licence of the prelate was necessary. She said, very much offended, 'What have friars to do with my convent?' Not without resentment on the Princess's part, the Mother Prioress deferred doing it until she had consulted the Father Prior. Having conferred with him she resolved to give them the habit. This was done in the parlour, the Princess being placed between the two, so that she might also attain the blessings. They took her to eat meat with her mother in a room apart. She dispensed with this service and went to the refectory, and leaving the place near the Prioress which had been prepared for her took one of the lowest, without giving in to prayers and exhortations, preserving superiority in an inferior place.
"The Prioress, considering that such self-will would cause much trouble, consulted with the Princess, her mother, that it would be better if the lady took a part of the house, where she could live with her servants and be visited by secular people, with a door to go to the cloister when she wished, but not any secular person to use it. This seemed to everyone good advice, but she thought it bad, as it was not hers, and she remained as she was in the convent.
PRINCESA DE ÉVOLI
From a print of her portrait by Sanchez Coello,
belonging to Duque du Pastrana