the Moors might suppose armed forces were at hand for the defence of the city. This produced the effect she desired. The knight penetrated to the camp, killed several sentinels, and re-entered Avila by the postern. Ximena passed the whole night on her palfrey, making the round of the city, keeping watch on the guards, and encouraging the men. At dawn she returned to her palace, and, summoning her three daughters and two daughters-in-law to her presence, she put on a suit of armor, and, taking a lance in her hand, called upon them to imitate her, which they did, as well as all the women in the house. Thus accoutred, they proceeded to the Square of San Juan, where they found a great number of women weeping and lamenting. “My good friends,” said Ximena, “follow my example, and God will give you the victory.” Whereupon they all hastened to their houses, put on all the armor they could find, and covered their long hair with sombreros. Ximena provided them with javelins, caltrops, and gabions full of stones, and with these troops she mounted the walls in order to attack the Moors when they should arrive beneath.
The Moorish captain, approaching the city, saw it apparently defended by armed men, and, deceived by the trumpets in the night, supposed the place had been reinforced. He therefore decided to retreat.
As soon as Ximena found the enemy really gone she descended from the walls with her daughters and daughters-in-law, distributed provisions to her troops on the Square of St. John, and, after the necessary repose, they all went in procession to the church of the glorious martyrs San Vicente and
his sisters, and, returning by the churches of St. Jago and San Salvador, led Ximena in triumph to the Alcazar. The fame of her bravery and presence of mind extended all over the land, and has become the subject of legend and song. A street near the church of San Juan still bears the name of Ximena Blasquez.
A convent for Carmelite friars was built in the seventeenth century on the site of St. Teresa’s family mansion, in the western part of Avila. The church, in the style of the Renaissance, faces a large, sunny square, on one side of which is a fine old palace with sculptured doors and windows and emblazoned shields. Near by is the Posada de Santa Teresa. The whole convent is embalmed with her memory. Her statue is over the door of the church. All through the corridors you meet her image. The cloisters are covered with frescoes of her life and that of St. John of the Cross. Over the main altar of the church, framed in the columns of the gilt retable, is an alto-relievo of St. Teresa, supported by Joseph and Mary, gazing up with suppliant hands at our Saviour, who appears with his cross amid a multitude of angels. The church is not sumptuous, but there is an atmosphere of piety about it that is very touching. The eight side-chapels are like deep alcoves, each with some scene of the Passion or the life of the Virgin. The transept, on the gospel side, constitutes the chapel of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, from which you enter a little oratory hung with lamps and entirely covered with paintings, reliquaries, and gilding, as if art and piety had vied in adorning it. It was on this spot St. Teresa first saw the light in the year 1515, during the pontificate of
Leo X. A quieter, more secluded spot in which to pray could not be desired. But Avila is full of such dim, shadowy oratories, consecrated by some holy memory. Over the altar where Mass is daily offered is a statue of St. Teresa, sad as the Virgin of Many Sorrows, representing her as when she beheld the bleeding form of Christ, her face and one hand raised towards the divine Sufferer, the other hand on her arrow-pierced breast. She wears a broidered cope and golden rosary. Among the paintings on the wall are her Espousals, and Joseph and Mary bringing her the jewelled collar. Two little windows admit a feeble light into this cell-like solitude. The ceiling is panelled. Benches covered with blue cloth stand against the wall. And there are little mirrors under the paintings, in true modern Spanish taste, to increase the glitter and effect. The De Cepeda coat of arms and the family tree hang at one end, appropriate enough here. But in the church family distinctions are laid aside. There only the arms of the order of Mt. Carmel, St. Teresa’s true family, are emblazoned.
In a little closet of the oratory we were shown some relics of the saint, among which were her sandals and a staff—the latter too long to walk with, and with a small crook at the end. It might have been the emblem of her monastic authority.
Beneath the church are brick vaults full of the bones of the old friars, into which we could have thrust our hands. Their cells above are less fortunate. They are tenantless, or without their rightful inmates; for since the suppression of the monasteries in Spain only the nuns in Avila have been left unmolested.
Here, at St. Teresa’s, a part of the convent has been appropriated for a normal school. We went through one of the corridors still in possession of the church. Ave Maria, sin peccado concebida was on the door of every cell. We entered one to obtain some souvenir of the place, and found a studious young priest surrounded by his books and pictures, in a narrow room, quiet and monastic, with one small window to admit the light.
Then there is the garden full of roses and vines, also sequestered, where St. Teresa and her brother Rodriguez, in their childhood, built hermitages, and talked of heaven, and encouraged each other for martyrdom.