In the second act you would almost invariably see the serving-maid appear on the scene—the “confidante” of the plays, a good soul, as indulgent to everyone as she is to herself, devoted, and not more thick-headed than becomes her, thoroughly convinced that she has something to gain from every intrigue. The mother has her own affairs and her dignity to attend to, which keeps her in ignorance of what is going on; whilst with the maid there are private conversations, mutual unbosomings, a companionship in study of the facts of life. Lucky, indeed, if some smart lackey, let in on the strength of his ingenuous manner, does not put in his word! Saint Theresa thus plunged with masterful strokes into the swirling tide of existence, with the aid of a serving-maid, at the age of fifteen. Her father placed her in a convent, but the walls were no barrier to her: she performed unheard-of feats, broke through the roof, wrenched away the gratings. She had to be despatched to a more reposeful situation—to an uncle stuffed with the fathers of the church, a man after Vivès’ own heart; from his care she returned with a passion for religion, and escaped once more, this time to enter a Carmelite convent in the teeth of opposition. She was now in her nineteenth year, and her trials, repentances, revolts were only just beginning; eighteen more years of struggle were required ere this tempestuous character was at last soothed definitively into mildness. Unhappily, the girls’ little love affairs sometimes had graver consequences. Plays and novels show us situations awkward enough: in one of Parabosco’s comedies, the mother arrives a little behind the fair. Laughing, boisterous, pitch-forked into life, the poor children do not pretend to have the ferocious virtues that men have not.[96] Is that their fault, since they have been brought up like men? If they go wrong, it is not from a bent towards wrong; it is as the birdling errs, buffeted by the storm on its first escape from the nest. To avoid risk altogether, they would have to remain for ever under the mother’s wing, as the early educators wished. In the sixteenth century, there were still good people who wished girls to become deaf-mutes again, and constitute Our Lady “the guardian and warder of their hearts.” But such talk was not very effective.