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."And this new keynote once struck, every tune ran upon it.Awake he was Clement the hermit, risen from unearthly visions of the night, as dangerous as they were sweet; asleep he was Gerard Eliassoen, the happy husband of the loveliest and best, and truest girl in Holland: all the happier that he had been for some time the sport of hideous dreams, in which he had lost her.
His constant fasts, coupled with other austerities, and the deep mental anxiety of a man fighting with a supernatural foe, had now reduced him nearly to a skeleton; but still on those aching bones hung flesh unsubdued, and quivering with an earthly passion; so, however, he thought; "or why had ill spirits such power over him?"His opinion was confirmed, when one day he detected himself sinking to sleep actually with a feeling of complacency, because now Margaret would come and he should feel no more pain, and the unreal would be real, and the real unreal, for an hour.
On this he rose hastily with a cry of dismay, and stripping to the skin climbed up to the brambles above his cave, and flung himself on them, and rolled on them writhing with the pain: then he came into his den a mass of gore, and lay moaning for hours; till, out of sheer exhaustion, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
He awoke to bodily pain, and mental exultation; he had broken the fatal spell.Yes, it was broken; another and another day passed, and her image molested him no more.But he caught himself sighing at his victory.
The birds got tamer and tamer, they perched upon his hand.Two of them let him gild their little claws.Eating but once in two days he had more to give them.
His tranquility was not to last long.
A woman's voice came in from the outside, told him his own story in a very few words, and asked him to tell her where Gerard was to be found.
He was so astounded he could only say, with an instinct of self-defence, "Pray for the soul of Gerard the son of Eli!"meaning that he was dead to the world.And he sat wondering.