He slept twenty-four hours.
His kind nurse began to doubt. At the thirtieth hour she sent for the woman of art.
“Thirty hours! shall we wake him?”
The other inspected him closely for some time.
“His breath is even, his hand moist. I know there be learned leeches would wake him, to look at his tongue, and be none the wiser; but we that be women should have the sense to let bon Nature alone. When did sleep ever harm the racked brain or the torn heart?”
When he had been forty-eight hours asleep, it got wind, and they had much ado to keep the curious out. But they admitted only Fra Colonna and his friend the gigantic Fra Jerome.
These two relieved the women, and sat silent; the former eyeing his young friend with tears in his eyes, the latter with beads in his hand looked as calmly on him as he had on the sea when Gerard and he encountered it hand to hand.
At last, I think it was about the sixtieth hour of this strange sleep, the landlady touched Fra Colonna with her elbow. He looked. Gerard had opened his eyes as gently as if he had been but dozing.
He stared.
He drew himself up a little in bed.