The Fire in Rav Amram's House

It is told that a group of redeemed captive women once came to stay in the house of Rav Amram Chassidah in Nehardea. When the beauty of one of them was revealed to him, he was tempted, and he set up a very heavy ladder to climb to the upper chamber where the women were lodged.

When he had climbed halfway, he stopped and cried out, "There is a fire in the house of Amram." With that he refrained from sinning. The sages came and said to him, "We have shamed you." He answered, "Better that you shame Amram in this world than that you should be ashamed of him in the next world."

He then drove the temptation out of himself, and it left him in the form of a fiery column. He said to it, "You are fire and I am flesh, yet I am stronger than you."