Benedetto offered no further opposition. Only when that night the moment came to go down to the carriage, and he realised that he could not stand alone, he said to the Professor, smiling, and placing his hand on his friend’s arm:
“You know that, if I continue thus, you will have a dead man in your house to-morrow or the day after?”
The Professor replied that he would not lie to him, that this was possible, but not certain.
“You know,” Benedetto continued, no longer smiling, “that first you will have—”
“I understand what you mean,” the Professor interrupted him. “Come in peace, dear friend. I am not a believer, as you are, but I wish I were; and I will throw my doors open respectfully to all whom you may wish me to see. Meanwhile shall we not take this with us?”
From the wall he took the Crucifix which Benedetto had brought with him, and then lifted the sick man in his powerful arms.
The journey was accomplished without accident. Stretched across the landau, upon a bank of cushions, Benedetto, who seemed to have shrunk in stature, answered the Professor’s frequent questions more often with a smile than with his feeble voice. The Professor kept his finger continually on Benedetto’s pulse, and from time to time gave him a cordial. At the entrance to the villa, either from emotion or from fatigue, the sick man’s poor, fleshless face blanched, and was covered with sweat, and he closed his great, shining eyes. Mayda carried him to his own bed, and thus it happened that when Benedetto regained consciousness he was quite bewildered.
In his state of extreme weakness he did not regain consciousness without passing through shadows of vain imaginings. He thought he was dead, and lying on the ever-dark face of the moon, in the centre of a funnel, formed by the solar rays, which streaked away to the infinite; and at the dark bottom of this funnel he saw the flaming eyes of the stars. Little by little be realised he was on an enormous bed which stood in darkness, but was surrounded by a pale light, so dim that the walls were hardly visible. Great shadows were moving about him. Opposite him was a blue, open space, all strewn with specks of light. His heart beat faster. Were they not, indeed, stars? He was obliged to remind himself of the feeling of the bed, and that he was alive, in order to convince himself that they were stars, but that he was not lying on the moon. Where was he, then? He gave himself up to a sense of sweetness which was coming over him, the sweetness of hardly feeling his body any longer, but of feeling God in his soul, so near, so tender, so warm. He was where God wished him to be.
A hand was laid on his forehead, an electric light dazzled his eyes, and an affectionate, strong voice said:
“Well, how do you feel?”