“Yes, indeed, we should bury our idols.”  And then Father Daly asked if our idols were always external things, made of brass and gold, or if they were not very often cherished in our hearts—­the desires of the flesh to which we give gracious forms, and which we supply with specious words; “we think,” he said, “to deceive ourselves with those fair images born of our desires; and we give them names, and attribute to them the perfections of angels, believing that our visitations are angels, but are we sure they are not devils?”

The Prioress raised her eyes, and looked at him long and steadily, asking herself what he was going to say next.

He went on to tell how one of the chief difficulties of monastic life was to distinguish between the good and the evil visitant, between the angel and the demon; for permission was often given to the demon to disguise himself as an angel, in order that the nun and the monk might be approved.  Returning then to the text, he told the story of Tobit and Tobias’s son, and how Tobias had to have resort to burning perfumes in order to save himself from death from the evil spirit, who, when he smelt the perfume, fled into Egypt and was bound by an angel.  “We, too, must strive to bind the evil spirit, and we can do so with prayer.  We must have recourse to prayer in order to put the evil spirit to flight.  Prayer is a perfume, and it ascends sweeter than the scent of roses and lilies, greeting God’s nostrils, which are in heaven.”

The Prioress thought this expression somewhat crude, and she again looked at the preacher long and steadfastly, asking herself if the text and Father Daly’s interpretation of it were merely coincidences, or if he were speaking from knowledge of the condition of convents...  Cecilia, had she told him everything?  The Prioress frowned.  Sister Winifred was careful not to raise her eyes to the preacher, for she was regretting his words, foreseeing the difficulties they would lead her into, knowing well that the Prioress would resent this interference with her authority, and she would have given much to stop Father Daly; but that, of course, was impossible now, and she heard him say that the angel who bound the evil spirit in Egypt four thousand years ago is to-day the symbol of the priest in the confessional, and it was only by availing themselves of that Sacrament, not in any invidious sense, but in the fullest possible sense, confiding their entire souls to the care of their spiritual adviser, that they could escape from the evil spirits which penetrated into monasteries to-day no less than before, as they had always done, from the earliest times; for the more pious men and women are, the more they retire from the world, the more delicate are the temptations which the devil invents.  Convents dedicate to the Adoration of the Sacrament, to meditation on the Cross, convents in which active work is eschewed are especially sought by the evil spirits, “the larvae of monasticism,” he called them.