Thérèse had a vocation: to leave her family, to leave the world to live in Carmel, this desert where the Good Lord wanted me to go hide (Ms A, 26r°). This desert, already known through his sisters Pauline and Marie, who entered in 1882 and 1886, this Carmel, what was it? Not one of those very first monasteries founded in the trace Carmelites from Spain, but a very poor Carmel. A laborious foundation that was just reaching fifty years old, settled in Lisieux in 1838 by Carmelites from Poitiers, monastery resulting itself from the first monastery founded in Paris. Little distance to Lisieux between Buissonnets and Carmel. But between these two places of life, what contrasts...
