He and Don Clemente entered the hovel alone. No one had followed them. An old woman, the sick man’s mother, seeing him enter, threw herself weeping at his feet, repeating her daughter’s words:
“Are you the holy man? Are you he? You have healed one of my children, now heal this one also.”
At first, coming from the sunlight into that darkness, Benedetto could not distinguish anything, but presently he saw the man stretched on the bed; he was breathing hard, groaning and crying, and cursing the Saints, women, the village of Jenne, and his own unhappy fate. On her knees beside the bed, Maria Selva was wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. There was no one else in the cave. Near the luminous entrance the great cross, carved unevenly on the wall of yellowish stone, was repeating at that moment a dark and solemn word.
“Hope in God!” Benedetto answered the old woman gently. He went to the bed, bent over the sick man and felt his pulse. The old woman stopped crying, the sufferer stopped cursing and groaning. The buzzing of flies in the light fireplace could be heard.
“Have you sent for the doctor?” Benedetto whispered.
The old woman began to sob again,
“You heal him! You heal him! in the name of Jesus and Mary!”
Again the sick man’s groans were heard. Maria Selva said softly to Benedetto:
“The doctor is in Subiaco. Signor Selva, whom you perhaps know, has gone to the chemist’s. I am his wife.”
At this point Giovanni returned, out of breath and worried. The chemist’s shop was closed, the chemist absent. The parish priest had given him some Marsala, and some tourists from Rome, who had brought plenty of provisions, had given him brandy and coffee. Benedetto beckoned Don Clemente to his side, and whispered to him to bring the parish priest, for the man was dying. He would go for him himself, but it seemed cruel to the poor mother to leave them. Don Clemente went out without a word. A few steps from the hut, the party of smart people who had come from Rome out of curiosity about the Saint of Jenne, were holding a consultation; the party consisted of three ladies and four gentlemen, and was under the guidance of the citizen of Jenne, whom the Selvas had met on the hillside. On perceiving the Benedictine they spoke together rapidly, in an undertone, and then one of their number, a very fashionably dressed young man, screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and came towards Don Clemente, at whom the ladies were looking with admiration, and also with disappointment, their guide having informed them that he was not the Saint.