It was not until eleven days before Eustochia’s death, at the feast of the Purification, that the evil spirit seemed to have been commanded to desist from doing bodily violence upon her; and now he redoubled his efforts to gain possession of her soul. A week before she died she received the last Sacraments, which were administered to her in church—to the general astonishment—in view of her feeble condition. Having returned to her bed of pain, Eustochia became absorbed in heavenly contemplation; when, all at once, she was attacked by a legion of hateful fancies, and there passed before her dying eyes a train of spectral revellings—from dances, feastings, and wedding banquets to other and darker things such as she had never given a thought to in the days of her youth and health. All she told to her friend, a certain Sister Euphrasia, remarking how the human soul is liable to such sensual temptations even on the brink of the grave, adding her conviction that God does not abandon His creatures in their supreme struggle. And so the hour of her death—which she had foretold—drew nigh for Eustochia. On the day—a Sunday—before that appointed from the beginning of all time for her departure out of this life, Eustochia made her confession and received absolution for the last time; then, begging Euphrasia to keep watch with her in the Valley of the Shadow, the little servant of God waited patiently for the end. The last night of Eustochia’s life, that of Sunday, February 12-13, 1469, drew on during some hours in utter stillness for Euphrasia, as she sat beside the bed in the dimly lit cell. Suddenly, towards morning, she became conscious of a disquieting, stealthy sound, as of a man climbing up the outer wall of the convent towards the roof—an altogether unbelievable sound to Euphrasia’s ears, considering the physical impossibility of such a thing. Nevertheless, as she listened, incredulous yet affrighted, the slow dragging of hands and feet over the smooth surface of the wall was distinctly audible to her; until, at last, the noises passed away into the silence overhead, and all was quiet once more, save for the laboured breathing of the form on the bed. And then Euphrasia’s eyes fell to the face of Eustochia, who was sleeping, and she saw that it was smiling, and all luminous with a kind of unearthly brightness; so she understood that what she had heard was the departure of the evil spirit from the body of her whom he had been permitted for so long to torment. These sounds were audible to all in the convent, by whom, and by Father Salicario, they were held to be those of the demon’s reluctant flight.