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 better this than fire eternal.”
And the next day he was so stiff in all his joints he could not move, and he seemed one great ache. And even in sleep he felt that his very bones were like so many raging teeth, till the phantom he dreaded came and gave one pitying smile, and all the pain was gone.
Then, feeling that to go into the icy water again, enfeebled by fasts as he was, might perhaps carry the guilt of suicide, he scourged himself till the blood ran, and so lay down smarting. And when exhaustion began to blunt the smart down to a throb, that moment the present was away, and the past came smiling back. He sat with Margaret at the duke's feast, the minstrels played divinely, and the purple fountains gushed. Youth and love reigned in each heart, and perfumed the very air.
Then the scene shifted, and they stood at the altar together man and wife. And no interruption this time, and they wandered hand in hand, and told each other their horrible dreams. As for him, “he had dreamed she was dead, and he was a monk; and really the dream had been so vivid and so full of particulars that only his eyesight could even now convince him it was only a dream, and they were really one.”