"Beneath the marble peristyle of her father’s house he contrived to lodge at midnight a plate of brass, whereon he had engraved a potent spell. Hence, the first time she passed over it a wondrous illness seized her! She became furious, says St. Jerome; she tore her glorious hair, she gnashed her teeth, and raved over the name and image of the very youth whom she had so repeatedly driven from her presence in despair by her coldness and hauteur. "In sorrow and terror her parents conducted her to the hermitage of St. Hilarion; and then, when the holy hands of the old man crossed her, the devil that was within her began to howl, and to confess the truth. "’I have suffered violence!’ he exclaimed, speaking with _her_ tongue, to the fear of all. "St. Hilarion took a branch of blessed palm, and, having dipped it in holy water as an esperges, threw the sparkling drops profusely over her, on which the devil exclaimed again— "’I have been forced here against my inclination! Alas! these drops are as freezing ice! Oh, how happy I was at Memphis among the tombs of the dead! Oh! the pains, the tortures I suffer!’ "Then the hermit commanded him to come forth; but the devil told him that he was detained by a brazen spell beneath the peristyle of the maiden’s house. "So cautious was the saint, however, that he would not permit the magic figures to be searched for till he had released the virgin, for fear he should seem to have intercourse with incantations for the performance of a cure, or to have believed that a devil could ever speak truth. He observed that demons are always liars, and cunning only to deceive." "So the damsel was released?" said I, who had listened with some amusement to the story, which was told me with implicit faith in its veracity. "Yes; but the devil, ere he went back to Memphis, paid a terrible visit to his first summoner; for the young man was found in the garden of olives, strangled, with the marks of talons in his throat. So, _mon ami_, never again have recourse to such persons as Abd-el-Rasig. Promise this to your little sister, Archange!" "I may well promise you that, or anything else you ask," said I, charmed by her winning manner. "How sweetly your name sounds when pronounced by yourself." "Do you really think so?" she asked, while her dark eyebrows arched up. "My godfather named me Archange, that I might be under the protection of the archangels. You comprehend me, monsieur? When I joined the order of the _soeurs de la charité_ for my noviciate in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, to share with the Sisters of St. Martha the care of the sick in the hospitals of Paris, they saw no reason to change it; and hence I am still, as I was before—before I thought of being a sister of charity—Archange."