different things, wide as the poles asunder, ere he woke the imperial
figure was sure to come and extinguish all the rest in a moment, stellas
exortus uti aetherius sol; for she came glowing with two beauties never
before united, an angel's radiance and a woman's blushes.

Angels cannot blush. So he knew it was a fiend.

He was alarmed, but not so much surprised as at the demon's last
artifice. From Anthony to Nicholas of the Rock scarce hermit that had
not been thus beset; sometimes with gay voluptuous visions, sometimes
with lovely phantoms, warm, tangible, and womanly without, demons
within, nor always baffled even by the saints. Witness that "angel form
with a devil's heart" that came hanging its lovely head, like a bruised
flower, to St. Macarius, with a feigned tale, and wept, and wept, and
wept, and beguiled him first of his tears and then of half his virtue.

But with the examples of Satanic power and craft had come down copious
records of the hermits' triumphs and the weapons by which they had
conquered.

Domandum est Corpus; the body must be tamed; this had been their
watchword for twelve hundred years. It was a tremendous war-cry; for
they called the earthly affections, as well as appetites, body, and
crushed the whole heart through the suffering and mortified flesh.

Clement then said to himself that the great enemy of man had retired
but to spring with more effect, and had allowed him a few days of
true purity and joy only to put him off his guard against the soft
blandishments he was pouring over the soul that had survived the
buffeting of his black wings. He applied himself to tame the body, he
shortened his sleep, lengthened his prayers, and increased his severe
temperance to abstinence. Hitherto, following the ordinary rule, he had
eaten only at sunset. Now he ate but once in forty-eight hours, drinking
a little water every day.

On this the visions became more distinct.

Then he flew to a famous antidote, to "the grand febrifuge" of
anchorites--cold water.

He found the deepest part of the stream that ran by his cell; it rose
not far off at a holy well; and clearing the bottom of the large stones,
made a hole where he could stand in water to the chin, and fortified by
so many examples, he sprang from his rude bed upon the next diabolical
assault, and entered the icy water.

It made him gasp and almost shriek with the cold. It froze his marrow.
"I shall die," he cried, "I shall die; but bett