I felt as if seized on and grappled with by ice-cold talons: My periods faltered;--my whole discourse became always more and more confused. There arose a whispering and murmuring in the church;--but the stranger remained utterly unmoved; and the fixed regard of his eyes never for a moment relented. At last, in the full paroxysm--the climax of terror and despair--I screamed aloud--"Thou revenant!--Thou accursed sorcerer!--Away with thee from hence!--Begone! for I myself am he!--I am the blessed St Anthony!" CHAPTER VII. From that moment, I remember nothing more, until, on recovering from the state of utter unconsciousness into which I fell with these words, I found myself in my cell, on my couch, and carefully watched by Cyrillus. The frightful vision of the unknown stood yet vividly before mine eyes. Cyrillus, however, laboured to convince me, that this had been but an illusory phantom of my own brain--heated by the zeal and ardour of my discourse. But the more that he exerted himself for this purpose, the more deeply did I feel shame and repentance at my own behaviour in the pulpit--As to the audience, they, as I afterwards understood, concluded that a sudden madness had seized upon me; for which notion, my last exclamation had, no doubt, afforded them abundant reason. I was in spirit utterly crushed and annihilated. Shut up like a prisoner in my cell, I subjected myself to the severest penitential inflictions; and strengthened myself by zealous prayer for contention with the adversary, who had appeared to me, even on consecrated ground, and only in malice and mockery had put on the features and garb of the miraculous painter of the Lime-Tree. No one but myself would acknowledge that he had seen the man in the violet-coloured mantle; and, with his usual kindness, the Prior Leonardus, very zealously spread a report, that my conduct had arisen merely from the first attack of a severe nervous fever, by which I had been so frightfully borne away in my discourse, and confused in my ideas. Indeed, without any pretence, I was, for a long time, extremely ill, and this too for several weeks after I had again resumed the ordinary conventual mode of life. However, I at last undertook once more to mount the pulpit;--but, tormented by my own inward agitation, and still haunted by the restless remembrance of that horrid pale spectre, I was scarcely able to speak connectedly, much less to give myself up as before to the spontaneous fire of eloquence. My sermons, on the contrary, were now stiff, constrained, and laboriously patched up from disjointed fragments. The audience bewailed the loss of my rhetorical powers,--gradually gave up their attendance,--and the superannuated brother who had formerly preached, and who was now much superior to me, again took his place; so that I was utterly superseded. * * * * *