Horror and revulsion were upon me. This was but a fresh snare
of Satan's baiting to lure me to destruction. Where the memory of Giuliana
had failed to move me to aught but penance and increasing rigours, the foul
fiend sought to engage me with a seeming purity to my ultimate destruction.
Thus had Anthony, the Egyptian monk, been tempted; and under one guise or
another it was ever the same Circean lure.
I would make an end. I swore it in a mighty frenzy of repentance, in a
very lust to do battle with Satan and with my own flesh and a phrenetic joy
to engage in the awful combat.
I stripped off my ragged habit, and standing naked I took up my scourge of
eglantine and beat myself until the blood flowed freely. But that was not
enough. All naked as I was, I went forth into the blue night, and ran to a
pool of the Bagnanza, going of intent through thickets of bramble and
briar-rose that gripped and tore my flesh and lacerated me so that at times
I screamed aloud in pain, to laugh ecstatically the next moment and
joyfully taunt Satan with his defeat.
Thus I tore on, my very body ragged and bleeding from head to foot, and
thus I came to the pool in the torrent's course. Into this I plunged, and
stood with the icy waters almost to my neck, to purge the unholy fevers out
of me.
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