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Her mother, Zelie, died of breast cancer in August 1877 after a 12-year illness. Thérèse was nearly five. She describes this part of her life as the most painful. "My happy disposition completely changed," she wrote. "I became timid and retiring, sensitive to an excessive degree ... I could not bear the company of strangers and found my joy only within the company of my family." Equally distraught, her father moved his household to Lisieux to be closer to his wife's family.
Her first instructors were her sisters, Marie and Pauline. When she was eight-and-a-half, Louis enrolled his youngest daughter as a day boarder at Lisieux's Benedictine Abbey. Thérèse hated the school and described her five years there as the saddest of her life. Because her sisters had educated her so well, she was academically advanced for her age. The nuns placed her with pupils as old as fourteen, and yet she usually was first in the class. Her brightness aroused the envy of many of her fellow pupils, and they teased her mercilessly. Without knowing how to defend herself, she suffered without complaint.
Each day after school, she joined her father for a walk. They would visit different churches and pray before the Blessed Sacrament. From childhood she interpreted all her world as only the beginning, only a glimpse of a glorious future. Sundays had tremendous significance for her, causing her to feel exiled on earth. "I longed," she wrote, "for the everlasting repose of heaven—that never-ending Sunday of the fatherland."
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