The chief labour of the Curé d'Ars was the direction of souls. During the last ten years of his life, he spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. He was sought by bishops, priests, religious, young men and women in doubt as to their vocation, sinners, persons in all sorts of difficulties, and the sick. In 1855, the number of pilgrims had reached twenty thousand a year. The devil, the implacable enemy of souls, exclaimed to the holy Curé by the mouth of a possessed woman: "How thou makest me suffer! If there were three men on earth like thyself, my kingdom would be destroyed." The publisher has added an Examination of Conscience by Fr. Ripperger at the end of the book.