13. All men are well guarded by means of their _mantras_, medicines, austerities, devotions and charities, from all evils of the world; whence it is impossible for any body to destroy the indestructible devotee. (My all destructive devotion will destroy all; but render me indestructible). 14. I will perform the most rigorous austerities, with an unflinching heart and mind; because it is by intensity of painstaking, that we may gain what is otherwise hard to be had. (_Industria vincit omnia._—Labour conquers all). 15. Having thought so, she repaired to an inaccessible mountain, for the purpose of destroying all animal beings. (The Rákshasa cannibals are devourers of all flesh; and are of the omnivorous kind). 16. She climbed to the top of the mountain, by scrambling over it with her hands and feet; and stood on it with her body resembling a cloud, and her eye-balls flashing as lightnings. (_i.e._ Her body and eyesight, were similar to the cloud and lightning on the mountain top). 17. Having got to the summit, she made her ablution and then sat at her devotion; with her steadfast eyeballs resembling the two orbs of the sun and moon, and fixed on one object. 18. She passed there many a day and month, and saw the course of many a season and year. She exposed her huge body to the rigor of heat and cold, like the hill itself (on which she sat). 19. She with her huge black body, remained unmoved as a thick sable cloud, on the mountain top; and her jet black hairs stood up as if to touch the sky. 20. Seeing her body beaten by the blasts, and covered with nothing but her ragged skin; and her hairs standing up to their end, to be tossed to and fro by the raging winds; while the twinklings of her eyelids, shed a whitish glare on her sable frame, the god Brahmá made his appearance before her. CHAPTER LXIX. STORY OF VISÚCHIKÁ—(_continued_).[5] Argument. Brahmá’s boon to Visúchí, and the _mantra_ against her Power. Vasishtha resumed:—After the lapse of a thousand years, Brahmá appeared to her, in order to put an end to the ardour of her austerities, and crown her with success or the reward of her devotion. (Ardent devotion has the power of displacing even the gods from their heavenly seats). 2. She saluted him internally in her mind, and remained fixed in her position; thinking about the boon she should beg of him, for allaying her keen appetite. 3. She soon recollected a certain request, which she should prefer to her complying god; and it was to transform her soft and flexible form to the shape of an inflexible iron-nail, wherewith she could torment all living beings. (_i.e._ To make her fleshy form as stiff as a poker, so as to be able to pierce all others without being pierced herself). 4. At Brahmá’s bidding, she bethought in herself: “I will become as thin as a minute pin, in order to enter imperceptibly into the hearts of animals, as the odor of flowers enters the nostrils.”