undertake to overcome him, and began
their assault by shutting him up in a tower of the castle. They tore in
pieces his habit on his back, and after bitter reproaches and dreadful
threats they left him, hoping his confinement, and the mortifications
every one strove to give him, would shake his resolution. This not
succeeding, the devil suggested to these two young officers a new
artifice for diverting him from pursuing his vocation. They secretly
introduced one of the most beautiful and most insinuating young
strumpets of the country into his chamber, promising her a considerable
reward in case she could draw him into sin. She employed all the arms of
Satan to succeed in so detestable a design. The saint, alarmed and
affrighted at the danger, profoundly humbled himself, and cried out to
God most earnestly for his protection; then snatching up a firebrand
struck her with it, and drove her out of his chamber. After this
victory, not moved with pride, but blushing with confusion for having
been so basely assaulted, he fell on his knees and thanked God for his
merciful preservation, consecrated to him anew his chastity, and
redoubled his prayers, and the earnest cry of his {526} heart with sighs
and tears, to obtain the grace of being always faithful to his promises.
Then falling into a slumber, as the most ancient historians of his life
relate,[4] he was visited by two angels, who seemed to gird him round
the waist with a cord so tight that it awaked him, and made him to cry
out. His guards ran in, but he kept his secret to himself. It was only a
little before his death that he disclosed this incident to F. Reynold,
his confessor, adding that he had received this favor about thirty years
before, from which time he had never been annoyed with temptations of
the flesh; yet he constantly used the utmost caution and watchfulness
against that enemy, and he would otherwise have deserved to forfeit that
grace. One heroic victory sometimes obtains of God a recompense and
triumph of this kind. Our saint having suffered in silence this
imprisonment and persecution upwards of a twelvemonth, some say two
years, at length, on the remonstrances of Pope Innocent IV. and the
emperor Frederick, on account of so many acts of violence in his regard,
both the countess and his brothers began to relent. The Dominicans of
Naples being informed of this, and that his mother was disposed to
connive at measures that might be taken to procure his esca