Her career as a Carmelite was far from being the succession of mystical enjoyments, the basking in divine sunshine, which some imagine the contemplative life to be. She now experienced the common lot of the “proficient” in the mystic way; paying for her religious exaltation by reactions, long periods of aridity, which were doubtless due in part to psychic exhaustion. Then, in addition to the perpetual little sacrifices, self-deprivations, and penances which she imposed on herself, she seemed, as she says, to be plunged in a “terrible desert,” a “profound night” of darkness and solitude; and prayer itself became dreary and unreal. “Tout a disparu ... ce n’est plus un voile, c’est un mur qui s’éleve jusqu’aux cieux et couvre le firmament étoilé.” But an inner life which was nourished on the robust doctrine of St. John of the Cross could bear this deprivation with fortitude, and make of inward poverty itself a gain. Outwardly, too, her life was difficult. Her superiors seem at once to have perceived in her that peculiar quality of soul which is capable of sanctity; and since it is the ambition of every community to produce a saint, they addressed themselves with vigour to the stern task of educating Thérèse for her destiny. Still a child, sensitive and physically delicate, she was spared no opportunity of self-denial and mortification. Her most trifling deficiencies were remarked, her most reasonable desires thwarted, her good points ignored. When her health began to fail under a rule of life far beyond her strength, and the first signs of tuberculosis—that scourge of the cloister—appeared in her, the Prioress, in her ferocious zeal for souls, even refused to dispense the ailing girl from attendance at the night-office. “Une âme de cette trempe, disait-elle, ne doit pas être traité comme une enfant, les dispenses ne sont pas faites pour elle. Laissez-la. Dieu la soutient.” This drastic training did its work. Thérèse had a heroic soul, though her courage and generosity found expression for the most part in small and obscure ways. She has said that she felt in herself the longing to be a soldier, an apostle, a martyr; and within the limits of the cloister, she found means of satisfying these desires. “Elle accomplissait simplement des actes héroïques,” said the Superior after her death. Determined, in her own metaphor, to be a “victime d’amour,” her brave spirit never faltered in its willing acceptance of pain. She hid her mental and physical sufferings, fought her increasing weakness, ate without hesitation the rough food which made her ill, refused every comfort and amelioration. By this hard yet humble way she rose in a few years to the heights of perfect self-conquest and moral perfection: passing through suffering to a state in which love, and total self-giving for love, was realized by her as the central secret of the spiritual life. “La charité me donna la clef de ma vocation.... Enfin, je l’ai trouvée. Ma vocation, c’est l’amour.”