We who, like Fray Luis de Leon, did not know the Mother Teresa on this earth, and can only judge of her by her works, may well wonder what manner of woman was the Castilian nun, whom even Voltaire praised, who exercised such an influence over Ferdinand de Toledo, the stern Duke of Alba, and the gloomy Philip II, and has so stamped herself into Castilian life, that to this day her votaries sign themselves 'su amigo Teresiano' in writing to one another. . . . The attempt of the author has been to paint Teresa de Ahumada the woman--as well as Teresa de Jesus the saint--to show why it was that she, from nothing, and with nothing but her own energy, was able to rescue the whole Order of Carmelites from the condition of apathy into which it had fallen. . . . [H]er life was one long journey; but from its starting-place in the windswept wall-girt town of Avila, to her last jornada from the Arrapil to Alba, she discovered what all saints do not, a never-ending fund of worldly wisdom, mixed with a vein of mysticism, about which she herself was never sure. --from the Preface