In these various abodes their action was violent; and their presence was discerned by the contortions and howlings of the miserable victims who were possessed.
Pope St.Gregory, in his Dialogues, gives a striking example of the facility with which devils insinuate themselves into women.

He tells how a nun, being in the garden, saw a lettuce which she thought looked tender.

She plucked it, and, neglecting to bless it by making the sign of the cross, she ate of it and straightway fell possessed.

A man of God having drawn near unto her, the demon began to cry out: "It is I! It is I who have done it! I was seated upon that lettuce.

This woman came and she swallowed me." But the prayers of the man of God drove him out.[409] [Footnote 409: Voragine, _La legende doree_, in the Festival of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.] The caution required in such a matter was therefore not exaggerated by Messire Jean Fournier.