"They often fly about us like insects, and fill the air without number.
The air is also full of demons, as the rays of the sun are full of
atoms. It is even like powder." And the eternal contest begins. The
saints are always victorious, and yet they are constantly obliged to
renew the battle. The more the demons are driven away, the more they
return. There were counted six thousand six hundred and sixty-six in the
body of a woman whom Fortunatus delivered. They moved, they talked and
cried, by the voice of the person possessed, whose body they shook as if
by a tempest. At each corner of the highways an afflicted one is seen,
and the first saint who passes contends with the evil spirits. They
enter by the eyes, the ears, and by the mouth, and, after days of
fearful struggling, they go out with loud groanings. Basilus, to save a
young man, contends personally with the Evil One. Macarius was attacked
when in a cemetery, and passed a whole night in defending himself. The
angels, even at deathbeds, in order to secure the soul of the dying were
obliged to beat the demons. At other times the contests are only of the
intellect and the mind, but are equally remarkable. Satan, who prowls
about, assumes many forms, sometimes disguising himself as a woman,
and again, even as a saint. But, once overthrown, he appears in all his
ugliness: "a black cat, larger than a dog, his huge eyes emitting flame,
his tongue long, large, and bloody, his tail twisted and raised in the
air, and his whole body disgusting to the last degree." He is the one
thing that is hated, and the only preoccupation. People fear him,
yet ridicule him. One is not even honest with him. In reality,
notwithstanding the ferocious appearance of his furnaces, he is the
eternal dupe. All the treaties he makes are forced from him by violence
or cunning. Feeble women throw him down: Margaret crushes his head with
her feet, and Juliana beats him with her chain. From all this a serenity
disengages itself, a disdain of evil, since it is powerless, and a