For a time he was very happy in his
new employment. After so stormy a life, the perfect repose and freedom
from care which he enjoyed in the convent, seemed to him the perfection
of bliss. But soon the novelty wore away, and his constitutional
despondency returned with accumulated power.
His dejection now assumed the form of religious melancholy. He began to
devote every moment of his time to devotional reading and prayer,
esteeming all amusements and all employments sinful which interfered
with his spiritual exercises. He expressed to the Bishop of Toledo his
determination to devote, for the rest of his days, every moment to the
service of God. With the utmost scrupulousness he carried out this plan.
He practiced rigid fasts, and conformed to all the austerity of convent
discipline. He renounced his pension, and sitting at the abstemious
table with the monks, declined seeing any other company than that of the
world-renouncing priests and friars around him. He scourged himself with
the most cruel severity, till his back was lacerated with the whip. He
whole soul seemed to crave suffering, in expiation for his sins. His
ingenuity was tasked to devise new methods of mortification and
humiliation.
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