by severe subdivision of his time and thoughts, by unceasing prayers
and manual labour, he did in about three months succeed in benumbing the
earthly half of his heart.

But lo! within a day or two of this first symptom of mental peace
returning slowly, there descended upon his mind a horrible despondency.

Words cannot utter it, for words never yet painted a likeness of
despair. Voices seemed to whisper in his ear, "Kill thyself! kill! kill!
kill!"

And he longed to obey the voices, for life was intolerable.

He wrestled with his dark enemy with prayers and tears; he prayed God
but to vary his temptation. "Oh let mine enemy have power to scourge me
with red-hot whips, to tear me leagues and leagues over rugged places
by the hair of my head, as he has served many a holy hermit, that yet
baffled him at last; to fly on me like a raging lion; to gnaw me with
a serpent's fangs; any pain, any terror, but this horrible gloom of the
soul that shuts me from all light of Thee and of the saints."

And now a freezing thought crossed him. What if the triumphs of the
powers of darkness over Christian souls in desert places had been
suppressed, and only their defeats recorded, or at least in full; for
dark hints were scattered about antiquity that now first began to grin
at him with terrible meaning.

"THEY WANDERED IN THE DESERT AND PERISHED BY SERPENTS," said an ancient
father of hermits that went into solitude, "and were seen no more." And
another at a more recent epoch wrote: Vertuntur ad melancholiam: "they
turn to gloomy madness." These two statements, were they not one? for
the ancient fathers never spoke with regret of the death of the body.
No, the hermits so lost were perished souls, and the serpents were
diabolical (2) thoughts, the natural brood of solitude.

St. Jerome went into the desert with three companions; one fled in the
first year, two died; how? The single one that lasted was a gigantic
soul with an iron body.

The cotemporary who related this made no comment, expressed no wonder,
What, then, if here was a glimpse of the true proportion in every age,
and many souls had always been lost in solitude for one gigantic mind
and iron body that survived this terrible ordeal.

The darkened recluse now cast his despairing eyes over antiquity to see
what weapons the Christian arsenal contained that might befriend him.
The greatest of all was prayer. Alas! it was a part of his malady to
be unable to pray with tr