Tobias had to have resort to burning
perfumes in order to save himself from death from the evil spirit,
who, when he smelt the perfume, fled into Egypt and was bound by an
angel. "We, too, must strive to bind the evil spirit, and we can do
so with prayer. We must have recourse to prayer in order to put the
evil spirit to flight. Prayer is a perfume, and it ascends sweeter
than the scent of roses and lilies, greeting God's nostrils, which
are in heaven."

The Prioress thought this expression somewhat crude, and she again
looked at the preacher long and steadfastly, asking herself if the
text and Father Daly's interpretation of it were merely coincidences,
or if he were speaking from knowledge of the condition of convents...
Cecilia, had she told him everything? The Prioress frowned. Sister
Winifred was careful not to raise her eyes to the preacher, for she
was regretting his words, foreseeing the difficulties they would lead
her into, knowing well that the Prioress would resent this
interference with her authority, and she would have given much to
stop Father Daly; but that, of course, was impossible now, and she
heard him say that the angel who bound the evil spirit in Egypt four
thousand years ago is to-day the symbol of the priest in the
confessional, and it was only by availing themselves of that
Sacrament, not in any invidious sense, but in the fullest possible
sense, confiding their entire souls to the care of their spiritual
adviser, that they could escape from the evil spirits which
penetrated into monasteries to-day no less than before, as they had
always done, from the earliest times; for the more pious men and
women are, the more they retire from the world, the more delicate are
the temptations which the devil invents. Convents dedicate to the
Adoration of the Sacrament, to meditation on the Cross, convents in
which active work is eschewed are especially sought by the evil
spirits, "the larvae of monasticism," he called them. An abundance of
leisure is favourable to the hatching of these; and he drew a picture
of how the grub first appears, and then the winged moth, sometimes
brown and repellant, sometimes dressed in attractive colours like the
butterfly. The soul follows as a child follows the butterfly, from
flower to flower through the sunshine, led on out of the sunshine
into dark alleys, at the end of which are dangerous places, from
whence the soul may never return again.

"Nuns and monks of the Middl