"Fall upon the maskt devil! the familiar!" they all shouted: "tear in pieces the profane creature who never yet set foot in a church!"
He was dragged and pusht into the street; no answer was made to his inquiries and intreaties, to his howls and shrieks, nor indeed was anything heard through the stormy tumult except curses and threats of death. "Bring me before the magistrate!" at length screamed the dwarf; "there my innocence will be made clear as day."
The constables were summoned, and seizing him led him toward the prison. All the people prest after him. "In here with him!" cried the chief of the officers: "chains and faggots are waiting for thee."
He tried to tear himself away from them; the constables laid hold on him and shoved him to and fro: one seized him by the collar, another by the arm, the next clung round his leg to hold him fast, a fourth caught his head to make quite sure of him.
While they were pulling him backward and forward in this way amid shouts and curses and laughter, on the sudden they all started off from one another; for each had got nothing but a piece of clothing, a sleeve, cap, or shoe of the monster; he himself was nowhere to be seen. He could not have run away; he seemed to have vanisht; but nobody could tell how.
When they had broken into Apone's chamber, those who rusht in found him lying on his bed, lifeless, having bled to death. They plundered the house; the magical implements, the books, the strange furniture, were all made over to the flames; and throughout the whole city nothing resounded except curses on the man whom but this morning all had honoured as a messenger from Heaven. This only embittered the loathing with which they now revolted from the phantom.
When the turmoil by which the people were agitated was somewhat allayed, the body of Pietro was silently buried at night, without the consecrated churchyard. Antonio and Alfonso renewed their friendship, and attacht themselves to the pious Theodore, who, after going through the solemn rites and pronouncing a devout oration, had the body of the beautiful Crescentia laid a second time in the vault designed for her. Antonio however could not bear to stay any longer at Padua; he resolved to revisit his native city, that he might settle his affairs, and then perhaps get admitted into a convent. Alfonso on the other hand determined to make a pilgrimage to Rome, where the holy Father had just been proclaiming a year of jubilee with a plenary indulgence for sins. Not only throughout Italy was every one in motion; but from France too, and Germany, and Spain, came numerous trains of pilgrims, to celebrate this till then unheard of solemnity, this great festival of the church, in the holy city.
After the friends had parted, Antonio pursued his lonely path, shunning the great road, partly for the sake of brooding uninterruptedly over his sorrows, and partly to avoid the swarms that were flocking along the highway, and were often troublesome at the nightly resting-places.
Thus following his own mood, he roamed through the plains and through the vallies of the Apennines. One evening the sun set and no inn was to be seen. As the shades were deepening, he heard a hermit's little bell tinkling in a wood on one side. He bent his steps toward the sound, and when the darkness of night was already closing, he arrived at a small hut, to which a narrow plank led across a brook, surrounded by bushes.